Guest post by Charles Marohn
There is no question that the greatest force that shapes the form of American cities is transportation. And, since the National Defense and Highways Act of 1956, the federal government has dictated that the country’s transportation system would be based almost exclusively on the automobile. While we won’t overlook the improved standard of living and prosperity this has created, we do argue that we have long since crossed the threshold of diminishing returns on this approach. If America is to have true prosperity going forward, we need to reexamine our transportation investments and the land use pattern they induce and choose approaches that pay a higher rate of return.
America’s cities of the industrial era are sometimes romanticized by the ill-informed. While “efficient†from a pure land-use standpoint, these were not places of prosperity for the masses. Living conditions were horrid by today’s standards, with poor sanitation and environmental quality leading to rampant disease and high mortality rates. No American today would desire to live in such a place.
There were two groups of people, however, that avoided the urban suffering of the industrial era. The first was the wealthy, who could live on larger properties in and on the outskirts of town and, during the most suffocating times for one’s health, could escape entirely to the countryside. The second were farmers. While a tough life, farmers avoided what Thomas Jefferson called the “pestilence to the health†found in the city.
After World War II, America emerged from the dark days of the Great Depression with unrivaled economic power and opportunity. While the Soviet Union had lost approximately 28 million people– mostly young men – and had, along with Europe, been physically decimated, the United States suffered comparatively few casualties and no damage to the domestic structure. As the economy transitioned to peacetime, there was an opportunity to enter the post-New Deal era by truly expanding prosperity for the long-suffering middle class.
A myriad of programs were put in place to help the returning troops get an education (previously something accessible almost exclusively to the rich), obtain job training, buy a house and generally partake in an expanding “American dreamâ€, a term coined by historian James Truslow Adams in his 1931 book, The Epic of America, but put on hold for a generation. As Adams described it,
“The American Dream is that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.â€
Part of expanding the American Dream – a life better and richer and fuller for everyone – meant co-opting the new interstate highway system, which was originally envisioned primarily for national defense, to free the middle class from the ill effects of urban life. The increased mobility of highway travel, along with new government housing subsidies, allowed millions to “flee†to the new suburbs. This created wealth, prosperity, opportunity and a much higher standard of living for the American middle class.
(It should be noted at this point that this did not apply to everyone. Racial segregation and discrimination meant that many could not partake in this new prosperity. Programs of Urban Renewal – the planning profession’s response to the inequities of “white flight†– only made the problems of urban poverty worse.)
In the 1950’s and 1960’s, Americans built thousands of miles of highways as the cities devolved and the suburbs expanded. This pattern continued through the Jet/Satellite era of the 1970’s and 1980’s, with inner suburbs maturing and the second and third ring suburbs being established. As the Internet era was experienced in the 1990’s and early 21st Century, many major urban areas were experiencing rapid development beyond their third tier. The U.S. Census even coined a new term – “micropolitan†– to describe what were essentially critical masses of people without the traditional urbanity.
At some point in the half century between the 1956 Federal Aid Highway Act and the start of the recent Financial/Housing Crisis, our approach to transportation infrastructure became less about sound investment in America’s future and more about propping up a false reality that manifests itself in our land use pattern. Consider:
- We started off paying for highways primarily with gas taxes. Now the highway trust fund is insolvent and we are financing much of our highway improvements through debt.
- We started off using federal funds only for interstate highways. Now, through a myriad of programs and earmarks, we fund regional and local road systems as well.
- We used to fund transportation improvements based on national priorities. Now we get projects such as the famed “Bridge to Nowhere†in Alaska, a $320 million bridge to serve 50 people on a remote island in the state of a powerful senator.
- We used to only assist G.I.’s in getting into a new home. Now we have numerous programs and subsidies for an “ownership society†where everyone that desires can own a home.
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Most people in America now enjoy a standard of living that, from the perspective of an early 1950’s citizen, would have normally been experienced by only the wealthy. We don’t disparage this outcome. We simply ask two basic questions:
- At what cost?
- Can it be financially sustained?
Our auto-oriented transportation system has fully matured. At some point in the last five decades we crossed over from improvements that generated a return in prosperity to ones that rob us of our wealth yet provide little in the way of added benefit.
If today we simply removed the subsidies that prop up the current system, we would find that the decentralizing of our urban form would slow, or reverse, and sheer market efficiencies would create a more dense development pattern. If we can’t stop subsidizing, if we at least focused our resources on projects that had the highest return, it would have much the same impact.
The “American Dream†is about opportunity, not about providing each family with a single-family home on their own lot. Our national transportation system needs to be about national priorities, not about propping up a false vision of American prosperity.
This post, composed by Charles Marohn, is jointly posted at the Strong Towns blog
Well done, Randal. Thank you.
DS
I agree with Dan S. – Thanks, Randal.
If today we simply removed the subsidies that prop up the current system, we would find that the decentralizing of our urban form would slow, or reverse, and sheer market efficiencies would create a more dense development pattern.
I would project a different outcome — but I am most definitely willing to join this wager and find out! Let’s remove the subsidies and let individual volition rule the day.
“The “American Dream†is about opportunity, not about providing each family with a single-family home on their own lot”
Says who? I’ve discussed suburban living with many of my neighbors in the half dozen American cities I’ve lived in. Our American Dream is exactly living in a single family home on our own lot. Furthermore, the choices made by Americans over the past two centuries, as they moved across this great continent, shows that to have always been the American Dream for many millions of us.
“The “American Dream†is about opportunity, not about providing each family with a single-family home on their own lotâ€
Says the tens of millions who disagree with you and your hasty generalization fallacies.
DS
dan,
I’m not arguing that everyone wants a single family home on their own lot. I’m arguing that most Americans have voted with their wallets for exactly that choice. And continue to make that choice.
Charles Marohn implied he knows what the American Dream is. I don’t believe he does.
If you have evidence – evidence stronger than revealed preferences – that most Americans do not want single family homes on their own lots, please show it to me.
John Dewey:“I’m not arguing that everyone wants a single family home on their own lot. I’m arguing that most Americans have voted with their wallets for exactly that choice. And continue to make that choice.”
ws: Nobody’s paid with their wallets because the costs are subsidized. You won’t know what people want unless the actual costs are present and transparent to the individual. Yes, lots of people will still want a single-family house. Keep in mind, there’s plenty of single-family houses in the inner-city, too.
“Keep in mind, there’s plenty of single-family houses in the inner-city, too.”
Yeah, I just moved from one in September. It was a beautiful 1920s craftsman.
Unfortunately, the population density was too high, leaving me feel like everyone was in my business or broadcasting theirs, from the the hipsters right behind my back yard who constantly had personal phone conversations outside; to the drug dealers across the street who had black Mercedes stopping by at all hours to pick up brown bags; to the white trash, toothless, unemployed hicks across the street who buzzed around the neighborhood on motorized dirt bikes and who played basketball right in front of our house at all hours, often taking shots from our front yard and trampling the freshly planted flowers; to the homeless guy who camped out in his broken down truck in front of our house and who would get wasted drunk and rev his engine at 3 am; to the kids who spoke almost no English and who frequently kicked a soccer ball down the road the distance of four or five houses, often hitting my car parked in the drive way; to the gang bangers traipsing through the neighborhood after dark, spraying graffiti and smoking crack.
With my job in the suburbs, I asked myself why I was living in the inner city. So my wife and I moved to a wonderful, quiet, newer suburb a half mile from work and we haven’t looked back. We even pay 20% less rent for our townhouse, and it has more square footage and is far more energy efficient; our utilities have dropped $145 a month. (For those of you counting, that’s a savings of $400 a month on rent and utilities, not including transportation savings.)
Our old single-family house and its neighborhood is not the American dream, at least not for me. For me, it was a nightmare. For me, the dream is an acre of land with plenty of space from my neighbors and space for a large garden, a few chickens, and maybe goat; but for now, I’ll take my new neighborhood while I work toward that dream.
The dream of living in a single-family house in a good part of the inner-city, like the Pearl or Laurelhurst or Irvington, is a dream only the rich can afford.
Dan says that tens of millions of Americans do not want to live in a single-family home on their own lot (#5).
You might be right, but that still leaves hundreds of millions of Americans who do. That is not even a problem if the planners didn’t want to use government coercion to force what a few want.
Andy said: That is not even a problem if the planners didn’t want to use government coercion to force what a few want.
THWM: I don’t disagree with what Frank did.
Though at the same time your political hostility toward railroads & transit, so that more gasoline & automobiles can be sold, is unjust government coercion too.
Pardon the pun, but it’s a two way street.
Charles Marohn wrote: “…the federal government has dictated that the country’s transportation system would be based almost exclusively on the automobile.”
Civil engineers who design roads and bridges will tell you that they are designed for the biggest, heaviest vehicles that travel on them. This means that the highways and most streets are designed for trucks, not automobiles. A developer who wants to put in streets that won’t accommodate fire, delivery, maintenance and garbage trucks is going to run into opposition from governments, businesses, and customers of their projects. Also, except for travel to Canada and Mexico nearly all international travel from the US by people is by aircraft, not automobiles, and even domestic travel between Los Angeles and Honolulu.
Some broad generalizations such as this “almost exclusively on the automobile” indicate narrow-minded thinking to me.
This essay acknowledges the often-ignored fact that 19th-century cities were not attractrive places, and that there’s are lot of romanticizing of tenements and trolleys.
There’s a minor historical error in claiming that the Interstate system was conceived as a defense measure and was only “co-opted” into making it a road system. It was always intended to be a public automobile road. The phrase “and Defense” was added to the legal name when it was feared that there was insufficient constitutional grounds for mandating the Trust Fund on drivers and the states. (How quaint that seems, now that the federal government is dictating what kinds of light bulbs we buy.) The motivating political force behind the Interstate System (which was authorized in 1944, not 1956 under Eisenhower, as is usually supposed) was the possibility of driving coast-to-coast without meeting a stop light. It had nothing to do with moving missiles and troops.
Aarne H. Frobom: “There’s a minor historical error in claiming that the Interstate system was conceived as a defense measure and was only “co-opted†into making it a road system.”
I agree. There were several rather than a single justification for the interstate highway system.
Aarne H. Frobom: “it had nothing to do with missles”
I’m pretty sure defense issues were paramount from the very beginning, but I’m not willing to shell out the money to prove that.
A couple of years ago I saw a television documentary on the planning and building of the interstate highway system. It included interviews from years ago with key members of Eisenhowers staff. They claimed that defense mobilization in the event the Cold War became hot was Eisenhower’s chief goal in pushing the interstate highway system.
I have been unable to find a transcript of this program, and it’s not important enough that I will obtain a copy of the documentary. So I cannot provide exact quotes from the gentlemen.
Aarne,
During his 1952 presidential campaign, Eisenhower stated that a modern network of roads is “as necessary to defense as it is to our national economy and personal safety.”
As historian Richard F. Weingroff explains, defense considerations were a key factor before debate began in Congress. For example, Weingroff cites Nixon’s 1954 speech to state governor’s:
“The vice president read the president’s recollection of his 1919 convoy, then cited five “penalties” of the nation’s obsolete highway network: the annual death and injury toll, the waste of billions of dollars in detours and traffic jams, the clogging of the nation’s courts with highway-related suits, the inefficiency in the transportation of goods, and “the appalling inadequacies to meet the demands of catastrophe or defense, should an atomic war come.”
John:
If you have evidence – evidence stronger than revealed preferences – that most Americans do not want single family homes on their own lots, please show it to me.
First, when you analyze the falsity of ‘revealed preferences’ in a limited choice set, you get the examples of the harrumphing about how expensive Smart Growth developments are – Ricardian rents and equilibrium rents go up due the pent-up demand (unrealized in Euclidean zoning schemes). I have discussed this many times here.
Second, indeed culturally traditionally the “Murrican Drayme” is the white picket fence, and dad coming home to mom’s cooking and his pipe and paper. No one denies that at one time Leave it to Beaver was the personification of it. The issue is the ability to offer people choices other than an endless sea of roofs in a single-use development to see if people can dream of living outside of a cookie-cutter slapped-up house. I have discussed this many times here. Had we offered better choices after WWII maybe we’d be discussing something else and people would have more freedom and have invested in something other than a home and not have been taken by aggressive lenders.
That is: The quaint dream was from a time long ago. You see it changing in front of your eyes, gaining speed as gas prices rise.
DS
Why do you respond this way, dan? Just because a large portion – the majority, IMO – has different desires than you do, why try to demean their choices by ridiculing them as fantasy?
The problem with your argument, dan, is that the zoning schemes you decry have not existed at all times in all places. Yet Americans – and Canadians and Aussies and citizens of every nation with inexpensive land – have continued to choose single family detached homes.
As to your argument about aggressive lenders: they only responded to the desires of their customers. Yes, lenders and – especially – government conspired to place home buyers in undesirable situations. But they could never have done so if families did not desire the single family detached homes you are so quick to ridicule.
The gasoline price argument is not really valid. Real gasoline prices are far from historic highs. But even more important, gasoline represents a tiny portion of household expenditures.
Revealed preferences are real. The choice set in newer urban areas such as Dallas and Phoenix is not limited. Yet single family detached homes continue to dominate the landscape.
I have pointed out the traditional ‘American Dream’ was based on an old model. If you need to characterize this as “ridculing as fantasy” to have a point, good for you. It is true that cheap energy and consumer culture has driven sprawl in other countries, as they copy American cultural exports. The topic however was America, and that post-WWII American development patterns were set by Euclid.
Entire books have been written on this topic. The single-digit minority is not going to drive policy and trends. There will continue to be demand for SFD, but it will decline with demographics, to perhaps ~25% of demand in, say, 2040. So things are changing now to meet likely future demand. Get over it. This change does not really negate a small minority’s ideology, unless that ideology is dependent upon demographics from 40 years ago.
Wider housing choices are good for everyone.
DS
John Dewey,
Why do you respond this way, dan?
Because government planning is his meal ticket. Good luck getting him to disclose that in the context of any of his “arguments.” You will never get anything but a pro-planning argument out of Dan, never ever, amen, yea unto the seventh generation.
Dan,
Since you’re so sure that everyone will suddenly lurch toward New Urbanism, why not let the market go its way? Oh wait, because that’s not the skin you have in this game. As I said above: I am most definitely willing to join this wager and find out! Let’s remove the subsidies and let individual volition rule the day.
Though “New Urbanism” is a rebellion against things like zoning & government parking requirements.
Why are you & The Autoplanner so scared of an open market place?