Federal Highways and Urban Form

Note: This is the first of what may become a series of interblog debates between the Antiplanner and Charles Marohn of the Strong Towns Blog.

Many opponents of low-density suburbs — areas they derisively call “sprawl” — argue that Americans would not have chosen to live in such areas unless they were subsidized or forced to do so. One of the most important such subsidies, they claim, is the Interstate Highway System.

“For more than a generation,” argues former Milwaukee Mayor and current head of the Congress for the New Urbanism John Norquest, “urban sprawl sprung up with federal assistance [such as] excessive road building . . . that interfered with the free market.” He adds that, “urban superhighways should be relegated to the scrap heap of history.”

Would our cities look a lot different if the federal government had not built the urban interstates (which were the first major urban highways built with federal assistance)? I argue that the differences would be minor.

First, unlike many local roads, 100 percent of the cost of the interstate system was paid for out of gas taxes and other user fees (tolls plus taxes on autos, trucks, and tires that were created to pay for such roads). The urban interstates make up 42 percent of the lane miles of the interstate system but carry 66 percent of the vehicle miles of travel, which makes up for much of the differences in the costs of urban vs. rural roads. While gas taxes are a poor user fee, this shows that people were willing to pay build the urban interstates, so most would have been built even if they were left to the states or private highway companies.

More important, the interstates were not the primary force shaping our urban areas. This is illustrated by a 1927 New York Times review of what is now considered a classic film, Metropolis. This movie depicted a futuristic city consisting almost entirely of skyscrapers, but the reviewer — none other than H.G. Wells — argued that this was “silly.” Such a “vertical city of the future” is “highly improbable,” he said, because cities had already begun decentralizing (or, as the English put it, “centrifugal”) years before the automobile became popular. “The British census returns of 1901 proved clearly that city populations were becoming centrifugal,” says Wells, “and that every increase in horizontal traffic facilities produced a further distribution.”

Those “horizontal traffic facilities” include the horsecar in 1832, the electric streetcar in 1888, and Henry Ford’s mass-produced automobile in 1913. Each of these gave a new class of people the mobility they needed to escape the dense cities — and escape they did. By 1922, Ford himself predicted that most people would soon live outside of the cities. “Cities are doomed,” he said, adding, “We shall solve the city problem by leaving the city.”

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Census data show that the population of Manhattan, the closest American city to the Metropolis vision, peaked in 1910. By 1950, before any interstate had been built, its population had fallen by 16 percent. By 1960, when most interstates were still only on the drawing boards, Manhattan’s population had fallen a total of 28 percent. Today it is around 30 percent less than in 1910, meaning only a small portion of the loss took place after most interstates were built.

The same story can be told of other American core cities. Yes, some of them lost population after the interstates were built, but they were already declining before.

The automobile, not federal highways, enabled people to move out of the cities. If anything, as Harvard planning Professor Alan Altshuler once pointed out, the interstates actually slowed the decline of downtowns by relieving the traffic congestion that many people and businesses were trying to escape.

The automobile would not have led people to move to low-density suburbs if they didn’t want to live in such suburbs in the first place. As previously noted, before 1900 wealthy and middle-class people were already moving to suburban areas thanks to electric streetcars. The automobile democratized mobility and the suburbs, offering working-class people the opportunity to own their own homes. (Sadly, it too often appears that what many anti-sprawl types want is a return to a more stratified society in which only the well-to-do enjoy low-density suburbs and the working class are confined to higher-density areas.)

Nor are suburbs a purely American phenomenon. When Peter Newman and Jeffrey Kenworthy compiled their massive databook on Cities and Auto Dependence, they thought they were proving that European cities were less auto-dependent than American and Australian ones. Instead, their 1960-1990 time series data showed that all cities were rapidly decentralizing thanks to increasing auto driving. Since Asian and European cities were denser to start with (and had lower average incomes), they just appeared to be less affected by decentralization than their younger counterparts if you only looked at one year, not the entire time series. What Newman and Kenworthy call “auto dependence” is really “auto liberation.”

I am not saying our urban areas would look exactly the way they do today without the federal interstate highway program. A system of toll roads driven by profits, or at least the need for each road to cover its costs, would have avoided many of the costlier parts of the Interstate Highway System. It is impossible to predict just exactly what differences this would make.

But with or without interstates, most Americans would still be living in single-family homes on moderately large lots in neighborhoods that separate residential uses from businesses. Those who advocate a return to nineteenth- or early-twentieth-century patterns of development mast face the fact that they are going against the desires of most Americans. The regulatory regimes required for a return to more compact development are not only undemocratic, they will have huge unintended and undesirable consequences.

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About The Antiplanner

The Antiplanner is a forester and economist with more than fifty years of experience critiquing government land-use and transportation plans.

14 Responses to Federal Highways and Urban Form

  1. the highwayman says:

    The Autoplanner: What Newman and Kenworthy call “auto dependence”

    THWM: When the automobile is your only viable means to get around, that’s “auto dependence”.

    The Autoplanner: First, unlike many local roads, 100 percent of the cost of the interstate system was paid for out of gas taxes and other user fees (tolls plus taxes on autos, trucks, and tires that were created to pay for such roads).

    THWM: No, that’s cross subsidization coming from local roads paid for by property taxes & again those other taxes, like with gas taxes are not user fees, they are sales taxes. Though tolls are a direct user fee.

    The Autoplanner: But with or without interstates, most Americans would still be living in single-family homes on moderately large lots in neighborhoods that separate residential uses from businesses.

    THWM: If you say that then you guys wouldn’t have had to resort to things like zoning.

    I live in a single family house, yet within a 1000 ft radius of my home, there are other single family homes, businesses(retail, office & industrial), churches, parks, schools, condos, duplexes, apartments & a suburban train station.

  2. Mike says:

    Even now, you see the leading edge of commercial development in suburban and exurban office parks (what the British would call a “trading estate,” hat-tip to the UK “The Office”) more than in the downtowns. Why set up a business that will require 95% of the workforce to endure a harrowing commute when suburbs are more than happy to host beautiful, ample-parking, highly-accessible commercial plazas with nearby restaurants, child care, etc…

    Here’s some anecdata for those interested: Linked article. As of 2010, everything projected in the article has been built, as well as additional amenities such as a Hilton hotel. A few companies (Countrywide) have fallen by the wayside and been replaced.

  3. Dan says:

    But with or without interstates, most Americans would still be living in single-family homes on moderately large lots in neighborhoods that separate residential uses from businesses.

    For the 174th time, survey after survey find that this is incorrect. One wonders why the incorrectness needs to be repeated over and over. The reason why SG developments get their rents bid up is because 1/3 of folk want to live in one, and another 1/3 want the amenities inherent in a SG development. For the 175th time.

    DS

  4. Neal Meyer says:

    Antiplanner,

    You touch upon something here, namely, that yes, transportation plays a big role in suburbanization, but it is by no means the only thing that matters when it comes to examining urban areas.

    The fact that we have become wealthy enough to build large networks of water and sewer systems for homeowners and business concerns matters. How we trade information or communicate also matters. The invention of the telegraph, then telephones, then television, then the Internet and mobile devices allows people to be anywhere and still gather and trade vital information. They don’t have to be in one place for word to spread quickly about something. Also, it is not necessary anymore for factory, manufacturing concerns, or subdivisions to be located in some central area near a river, coal mine, or some other resource thanks to the fact that we can build electrical power networks to distribute energy anywhere, indeed this abetted sprawl 100 years ago via the original urban rail networks. All of these factors enable suburbanization, but stuck with their obsessions about motorized travel, I rarely see critics talk about them or offer analysis.

  5. ws says:

    Your analysis did not factor in the role of the FHA in the 1930s, which favored single-family detached homes through its lending practices.

    ROT: “Census data show that the population of Manhattan, the closest American city to the Metropolis vision, peaked in 1910. By 1950, before any interstate had been built, its population had fallen by 16 percent.”

    ws: That might be due moreso due to numerous housing regulations that occurred in NYC during this time that dictated better living standards. You’re using this a statistic to show that people moved away from cities in droves, rather than the conditions simply got better due to developers not being able to cram extra units on one lot.

    There’s a difference between density and overcrowding. NYC was overcrowded and lacked housing units back then.

  6. T. Caine says:

    I agree with Neal’s prognosis. I would even agree that while transportation infrastructure helped encourage suburban flight, it could have happened without there construction. People moved to the suburbs because they liked them. They liked the idea of having a home that could be their castle on an individual plot of land where lawn could be mowed and leaves could be raked. Nonetheless, this does not mean that suburbs are a great American construct, or that they are not markedly inefficient, or that sprawl is not decidedly real and detrimental to the quality of our society. Now matter what notion that society thought was a great idea at the time got us into our current position, we should find our way out of it.

  7. Dan,

    For the 176th time, your data are wrong. See http://tinyurl.com/ykwbhf9

  8. Mike says:

    From the report the AP just cited:

    In fact, many people hold internally inconsistent preferences, such as the desire for low density and the desire to reduce auto dependence. […] [P]references under ideal circumstances differ from preferences under more realistic circumstances.

    And, ballgame. Sure, we’d all like to reduce auto usage. Lefty statists seek to assuage their white liberal guilt; greedy capitalists wish to save money. But where the rubber meets the road, most of the time people just do what’s most convenient or comfortable for them, aspirations be damned. Period, full stop.

  9. John Dewey says:

    T. Caine: “that sprawl is not decidedly real and detrimental to the quality of our society”

    How is sprawl detrimental to the quality of our society? If what most Americans desire is freedom from congestion – as demonstrated by revealed preferences as well as surveys – how is pursuing that desire detrimental to society?

    Do you really mean “communting long distances to workplaces is detrimental to the quality of our society”? Sprawl – the georgraphical dispersion of workplaces and residences – does not necessarily require long commutes.

  10. Dan says:

    Randal, thanks for providing a study that predates the evidence I’ve given here before and helps back my claim. Rule of thirds still stands in this paper, albeit teased out a bit.

    DS

  11. Mike says:

    Dan,

    Victoria TRANSPORT POLICY institute =/= University of Southern California, when it comes to credibility regarding a report on subjects related to, uh, “transport policy.” You knew this, of course, but you never pass up a chance to present bias under color of objectivity.

  12. Spokker says:

    I live in a medium-density apartment building with a bunch of Indians and Hispanic people and I love it. I would love to live in a high density building with black people.

  13. John Dewey says:

    Spokker,

    What is your point?

    My upper middle class Dallas suburban neighborhood of single family detached homes is populated by white European Americans, African Americans, Nigerians, Indians, Hispanics, Chinese, and one Middle Eastern guy. Almost all of them have been at my home for block parties. I love my neighbors. But I would not want to live in a high density building with them or with anyone else. Been there, done that.

  14. Spokker says:

    “What is your point?”

    What’s your point?

    I’m just talking about what I like, just as you have mentioned what you like.

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