Portland New Urbanist Joe Cortright has rarely seen a high-density development he didn’t like. Like Marxist economists who always begin their papers by referring to quotations from Karl Marx, Cortright takes his cues from Jane Jacobs.
Most recently, he argues that the reason why most Millennials, along with most people of almost all other categories, live in suburbs is that they are forced to do so by evil zoning rules that prohibit that densities that people actually prefer. Or, as he put it, there is a “pent-up demand for more urban neighborhoods that can’t be satisfied because of zoning.”
He bases his claim on a survey of people in Atlanta and Boston asking whether they would prefer to live in a walkable neighborhood or an auto-oriented neighborhood. More people in Atlanta preferred auto-oriented neighborhoods, and 90 to 95 percent of the auto-oriented people in both cities actually lived in auto-oriented neighborhoods. However, in Atlanta, just 48 percent of people who said they preferred walkable neighborhoods were able to live in such neighborhoods, compared with 83 percent in Boston. Cortright attributes the shortfall in walkable neighborhoods to zoning.
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The answer is cost, a variable that was completely ignored in the surveys cited by Cortright. Though Cortright claims to be an economist, he seems to consider costs irrelevant. The reality is that density costs more. Land in dense areas costs more because there is more competition for its use. Construction of dense housing costs more per square foot.
If the surveys cited by Cortright were honest, they would have asked, “Would you rather pay $400,000 for a 1,000-square-foot condo in a walkable neighborhood or $200,000 for a 2,000-square-foot single-family home in an auto-oriented neighborhood?” If the question were asked this way, then the answers would be a lot closer to how people actually live. If anything, there is a shortage of low-density housing in places like Boston, not the other way around.
Jane Jacobs was right on what makes a city great and fun. Unfortunately the phenomena only lasts as long as the property taxes don’t rise to remove the people that make it fun in the first place. Every urban planning book ever written focuses on one thing. Nostalgia; despite what they say the planners have a propensity for viewing the city as some sort of static feature that never changes.
The one thing she got right was in her book ‘Dark Age Ahead”
where she chronicled the five arguments that lead to the downfall of societies. Community and Family, Higher Education, Bad Science, Bad Government, Bad Culture.
Density is irrelevant, the following factors above are what matter for a city, be it impoverished or wealthy, the characteristics aren’t economic, they’re cultural/ideological and the cities and towns where we see the examples of how corrupt government, indoctrinated education system and the embracing of failed cultures and ideologies.
Chicago: Bad Government, nearly all the cities mayors in the last 50 years have been involved in some sort of scandal, 5 out of 9 of it’s recent state governors has been jailed for criminal acts.
San Francisco: Bad Culture, in less than 50 years San Francisco went from hippie haven to shit strewn global technocracy.
Baltimore: Community/Family breakdown
When government who runs your city, have a political motivation to pander to people who’re dysfunctional, poorly behaved, engage in lewd or self destructive behavior, their policies do nothing but foster more dysfunctionality, poor behavior and lewd acts and disavowing and neutering those peoples self respect and personal dignity. Or WORSE, out of either compassion or stupidity embrace the failed ideologies that ruined nations and states before. You can destroy a persons dignity and principles in a short time; it takes nearly forever to get it back. Then your cities problems of the consequences of people who have zero dignity and self respect……only continue to get worse. Even Worse when you indoctrinate the entitlement mentality on those dysfunctional people you embolden them to be angry or violent when they don’t get their way…where does that behavior sound familiar? AMONG CHILDREN. If you subsidize a culture of degeneracy and debasement, you make it attractive for more people. Combine with it an entertainment and urban culture that glorifies drug abuse, illicit activities, gun violence, criminality and abuse against woman and distrust and enmity against law enforcement, DON’T BE SURPRISED when EXACTLY THAT kind of behavior proliferates in your neighborhood when you encourage Children to Enjoy it.
Ah, this trope once again. The survey he’s referring to was conducted nearly 20 years ago and so cannot be expected to even represent Millennial residential location preferences. This is entirely aside from the fact that stated preferences are inferior to revealed preferences in determining demand.
Another issue with the original survey is that it did not ask the respondents for the reason why their choice of neighborhood did (or did not) match their preferences. This would be necessary to distinguish between cases where dense/walkable/compact/sustainable/[fill in the blank subjective descriptor] neighborhoods were truly in short supply and cases where the households involved preferred such a neighborhood but simply could not afford to live there.
Of course there are other ways of eliciting this information as well. If these neighborhoods were in high demand but short supply, there would be a large premium attached to them which would make the incentives to increase supply too large to ignore. Local governments might nominally respect the wishes of their existing residents, but few are loyal enough to this objective that they would turn down the possibility of substantially more tax revenue, which trumps nearly all other aims.
Plus, as Randal mentions and Cortright either blithely or mendaciously ignores, zoning is not iron-clad. Zoning designations change all the time, and the potential for large changes in land value (and hence property tax revenue) make such changes substantially more likely.
Is there a bigger driver of where and what people buy than the quality, or lack of it, of government schools?
Is there a bigger driver of where and what people buy than the quality, or lack of it, of government schools?
What people want, especially in a city, is some peace, quiet and privacy in their home. Density is part of it, but a well insulated, spacious and private condo will work too for many. But the same privacy on a half acre lot in the burbs is a lot cheaper than the very top of the line condos in the city.
Of course asking people about “walkability” or “auto friendly” is just stupid without giving them the costs and noise levels.