Writers for both Time and The New York Times have recently pontificated on the need to rebuild American cities so as to stop “sprawl.” The authors of these articles completely fail to understand recent housing markets and urban trends.
Writer Bryan Walsh, who has previously written on environmental issues for Time, claims that “The American suburb as we know it is dying,” which is a good thing because the suburbs “left our nation addicted to cars.” (Which, of course, is backwards: cars allowed more people to live in the suburbs.)
Walsh quotes Arthur Nelson, a planner from Virginia Tech, who claims that “by 2025 there will be a surplus of 22 million large-lot homes” in the U.S. “The suburbs need to be remade,” says Walsh, so that they can “have the mass transit, public space and economic gravity to thrive postrecession.”
This, of course, is just smart growth clap trap. There will be no “surplus” of homes unless the government somehow interferes with the market place. Of course, it has shown that it is perfectly capable of doing so, but mostly to create shortages, not surpluses.
Administering a prostate massage poorly could result in a viagra canadian pharmacy trip to the emergency room. Gary Wilson, Alex Cusack and John Mooney viagra sales in india add to their all-round ability. Although a healthy heart is capable of providing the necessary nutrients to the body and the second class involves the ones that excite the glands that are responsible for producing the sex hormones and give the person temporary strength and sex drive to be good but when you are just not in viagra from canada a good health each and every thing tends to annoy you more than you think. Undigested foods buy generic viagra are fermented by bacteria and yeasts with production lots of toxins, which then cause gas, cramps, pains, burning, itching sensation and internal toxicity.
Meanwhile, New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff argues that we need to “reinvent” cities because they are “vastly more efficient than suburbs.” Excuse me, has he been to a city lately? Taxes are higher, homes and other real estate are more expensive, travel is more congested, and the metropolitan area with the nation’s best transit system has the highest average travel time to work. Just what is so efficient about all that?
Meanwhile, Ouroussoff describes the suburbs as “ecologically unsustainable gated communities.” What is so unsustainable about a gate? More to the point, the Department of Energy says that single-family detached homes consume the lowest amount of energy per square foot of any residential style (see page 2-7). What is so unsustainable about that?
Exhibit A in Ouroussoff’s review of how we need to rebuild our cities is New Orleans — which in fact is a prime example of why government needs to stay out of such reconstruction. New Orleans would be rebuilt today — not every building but far more than has been done — were it not for government planners and bureaucrats obstructing the way.
In the future, the Antiplanner hopes that publications like these will spare us architecture critics and give us more economists, like Edward Glaeser and Edwin Mills, who understand how cities actually work.
ROT:“Meanwhile, Ouroussoff describes the suburbs as “ecologically unsustainable gated communities.†What is so unsustainable about a gate? More to the point, the Department of Energy says that single-family detached homes consume the lowest amount of energy per square foot of any residential style (see page 2-7). What is so unsustainable about that?”
ws: Page 2-7 shows that per square foot mobile homes consume the most. However, per household statistic shows that single family detached homes consume the most energy. Single-family detached homes consume twice as much (million Btus) as multi-family units of 5 units or more. Clearly, if mobile homes rank the highest per square foot in energy use, there is something misleading about this “statistic” that you’re using. More square footage does not equal more energy savings.
Speaking of Glaeser, he has done a report showing the sustainability of cities over suburbs:
“In almost every metropolitan area, carbon emissions are significantly lower for people who live in central cities than for people who live in suburbs.”
Additionally:
“Finally, the bottom panel lists the five metropolitan areas with the highest levels of carbon emissions: Atlanta, Dallas, Memphis, Oklahoma City, and Houston.”
Source: http://www.city-journal.org/2009/19_1_green-cities.html
Hmmm…the worst “cities” regarding carbon emissions are all notorious for sprawl. Nah, can’t be a correlation, could it? Sustainability also touches on other factors than energy and carbon emissions. Converting natural areas (and farmland) to low density sprawl is far worse than someone living in a tall building (as each person is consuming less in terms of land. Land cleans water, provides native habitat, and is a natural carbon sink).
This is not to say that one should live in a building in the city, but the notion about suburbs being “leafy”, “green”, and “natural” is pure nonsensical lies.
1/6th of an acre is a large lot? Who came up with that definition? A bunch of people that grew up in a closet in Hong Kong?
Anyway, I’m curious to see where these claims are in 10 years because I don’t see this “trend” today. Yes, I see the trend in shrinking household sizes. But in terms of where people are choosing to live, the majority of the growth is still in outer developing-edge suburbs. Look at the Twin Cities (MPLS/STPL). Of the 15 cities with the most population added this decade, only Minneapolis is in the top 15. But it’s rate of growth was 1.4% The rate of growth for the metro as a whole has been 8%. Most of the old, inner ring suburbs like West St. Paul, Edina and New Hope actually lost population. That is, Nelsen’s predictions don’t pass the smell test.
Do you really want to be good to the environment? Stay away from it. Move to high-rise apartments surrounded by plenty of concrete. Americans who settle in leafy, low-density suburbs will leave a significantly deeper carbon footprint, it turns out, than Americans who live cheek by jowl in urban towers.
– Edward L. Glaeser
http://www.dcexaminer.com/opinion/Help-the-environment-stay-in-the-city-39422222.html
More to the point, the Department of Energy says that single-family detached homes consume the lowest amount of energy per square foot of any residential style
…they also happen to have (I would suppose) the highest square footage of any residential style. Also: does this measurement include the energy required for transportation?
This metric is sort of like your favorite metric for transportational efficiency – carbon emissions (or price) per mile traveled. News flash: people don’t derive utility from traveling long distances; they derive utility from getting where they need to go. If I spend $5 on fuel and 15 minutes to go to the supermarket which is 15 miles away, that’s a mere $0.33/mile or 1 mile/minute. By contrast, the same trip in an urban setting might take 10 minutes and cost $4, though you’ll only be traveling 2 miles. That’s a whopping $2/mile or 0.2 miles/minute. And yet, you get there faster and pay less.
Same deal with square footage. In and of itself, it is not useful. Sure, people would prefer to have the extra guest room, but is it really true that mere efficiency per square foot is the true measure of whether or not a project should go forward?
Antiplanner wrote:
“(Which, of course, is backwards: cars allowed more people to live in the suburbs.)”
Initially, yes. However, once they are in the suburbs, they now need a car to get around.
Which is what the contributor meant, I think when he said:
“left our nation addicted to cars.â€Â
The Antiplanner wrote:
> Writers for both Time and The New York Times have recently pontificated
> on the need to rebuild American cities so as to stop “sprawl.†The
> authors of these articles completely fail to understand recent housing
> markets and urban trends.
Agreed.
> Writer Bryan Walsh, who has previously written on environmental issues
> for Time, claims that “The American suburb as we know it is dying,â€Â
> which is a good thing because the suburbs “left our nation addicted
> to cars.†(Which, of course, is backwards: cars allowed more people to
> live in the suburbs.)
I take it that Mr. Walsh has never heard of suburban communities like:
Chevy Chase, Maryland
Takoma Park, Maryland
Garrett Park, Maryland
Mount Rainier, Maryland
Riverdale Park, Maryland
All suburbs of the District of Columbia, all of which came to be thanks
to sprawl-inducing streetcar and railroad lines.
> Walsh quotes Arthur Nelson, a planner from Virginia Tech, who claims
> that “by 2025 there will be a surplus of 22 million large-lot homesâ€Â
> in the U.S. “The suburbs need to be remade,†says Walsh, so that they
> can “have the mass transit, public space and economic gravity to
> thrive postrecession.â€Â
I have seen the results of efforts by our planners to turn my
suburban community into a high-density area dependent on mass transit,
and this attempt was not recent, but way back in 1981. Perhaps
Mr. Nelson should come and study it?
> This, of course, is just smart growth clap trap. There will be
> no “surplus†of homes unless the government somehow interferes
> with the market place. Of course, it has shown that it is
> perfectly capable of doing so, but mostly to create shortages,
> not surpluses.
Agreed. I wish the Smart Growth industry would get one thing through
its collective mind – most people in the United States have no desire
to live in high-density apartment buildings.
Even after two terms of Parris Nelson Glendening as Governor
of Maryland (and the massive emphasis on Smart Growth in his
second term), the population of Baltimore City, the largest
and most-important municipality in the state, continued its
long-term decline, with a leveling-out after Glendening left
office.
> Meanwhile, New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff
> argues that we need to “reinvent†cities because they are “vastly
> more efficient than suburbs.†Excuse me, has he been to a city
> lately? Taxes are higher, homes and other real estate are more
> expensive, travel is more congested, and the metropolitan area with
> the nation’s best transit system has the highest average travel
> time to work. Just what is so efficient about all that?
Hmm. I suppose we are not supposed to talk about that?
> Meanwhile, Ouroussoff describes the suburbs as “ecologically
> unsustainable gated communities.†What is so unsustainable about
> a gate? More to the point, the Department of Energy says that
> single-family detached homes consume the lowest amount of energy
> per square foot of any residential style (see page 2-7). What
> is so unsustainable about that?
Perhaps more to the point, most suburbs in the U.S.
are not gated.
The suburbs that the Smart Growth industry perhaps dislikes
more than any others, the Levittowns of New York State, Pennsylvania,
Maryland (called Belair at Bowie in Prince George’s County)
and Virginia (Greenbriar in Fairfax County) don’t feature any
gated sections that I have ever heard of.
Below is a link to the informative site Levittown and beyond,
which discusses some of the communities developed by
Levitt and Sons, Inc., with emphasis on post-1957 Levitt
developments.
Levittown and beyond
C. P. Zilliacus: All suburbs of the District of Columbia, all of which came to be thanks to sprawl-inducing streetcar and railroad lines.
ws: Except there’s a difference between streetcar “traditional” neighborhoods and typical sprawl suburban neighborhoods. Not only in density, form, but most importantly function. Even the most ardent “urbanist” would agree that traditional neighborhoods are a good alternative to denser cities.
C. P. Zilliacus: “Agreed. I wish the Smart Growth industry would get one thing through its collective mind – most people in the United States have no desire to live in high-density apartment buildings.”
ws: There’s nothing in the “smart growth” agenda to put people in apartments only. New Urbanism, which is a tool to promote smart growth, has largely single-family houses in their developments. NU developments are an outgrowth from traditional / streetcar neighborhoods, such as the ones you mentioned in Maryland.
They have connected streets, minimal setbacks, large tree-lined streets, public spaces, and a “village center”.
Don’t confuse auto-dependent sprawl with streetcar suburbs. I’d argue that if you are promoting those nice neighborhoods in Marlyand that you’re more of a smart growth / New Urbansit than you really think or would like to admit.
I really don’t understand the hatred of the suburbs. The Time Magazine article revels in finding closed businesses in the suburbs, but aren’t there also many closed businesses in city centers right now?
The raw data certainly shows that suburbs are where many people want to live. I can see good arguments, both ways, about there being subsidies and externalities from suburbs. That makes for good intellectual debate. But I have to think hard before finding that subsidies and externalities account for why a large portion of people want to live in the suburbs. If the suburbs are so bad, why won’t they just go away on their own?
Certainly the “city folk” need to stop worrying so much about current suburbs, and worrying more on retrofitting the urban environment to make them more appealing to different types of people and ages. The sprawl condition is not going away, nor can it be completely fixed anyways. Certainly there’s some things that can be done, but the argument is somewhat irrelevant when talking about already built suburbs. Arguments that are relevant are subsidization and fair markets for transportation.
C. P. Zilliacus said:
” I take it that Mr. Walsh has never heard of suburban communities like:
Chevy Chase, Maryland
Takoma Park, Maryland”
Here’s a map of Takoma Park. Wow, that’s my kind of suburb. I love how all of the streets connect up with each other, and don’t force cyclists such as myself to use buy six-lane arterial streets.
I actually don’t have a huge issue with sprawl in and of itself — I like space and greenery too. However, I don’t like the particular design of most post-WWII suburbs. Their layout makes it difficult to get to nearby destinations on foot or by bicycle, as there often aren’t any low-traffic streets that connect to neighboring superblocks. I don’t even have a problem with cul-de-sacs, as long as there are a sufficient number of connecting streets to enable me to roll around the city without subjecting myself to highway-like conditions.
Obviously, I have a vested special interest in seeing more connectivity in suburban areas, but so should pedestrians, emergency vehicles and even motorists who desire to have greater number of direct routes available to them instead of having traffic consolidated onto a small number of massive expressways. Suburbs with well-connected city-esque street topologies such as Palo Alto and Alameda, CA command high property values — they are definitely not unpopular among the middle class. I don’t know if the disconnected subdivision model is actually popular, or if people simply choose it because it is the only place where they can afford a house.
The Antiplanner wasn’t as thorough as he usually is. See:
http://www.reason.com/news/show/132568.html.
In this article, OTHER libertarians point out that electric car battery technology is a long way from being “ready for prime time,” agreeing with James Howard Kunstler on this topic, of all people. To wit:
Obama’s Clean Car Chimera
Battery technology is still not good enough to jumpstart an electric car revolution
Interestingly, Wendell Cox has also bought into the “pluggable hybrid” chimera.
Well Kunstler is a fairly conservative guy for that matter.
Excuse me, has he been to a city lately? Taxes are higher, homes and other real estate are more expensive, travel is more congested, and the metropolitan area with the nation’s best transit system has the highest average travel time to work. Just what is so efficient about all that?
Randal of course conveniently “forgets” to mention service delivery, energy efficiency, carbon footprints, and and and.
Whaddya gonna do? These ideologies based in fantasy must suspend disbelief to exist.
DS
Agreed. I wish the Smart Growth industry would get one thing through its collective mind – most people in the United States have no desire to live in high-density apartment buildings.â€Â
Bah. This is a bullsh– strawman. What proportion of dwelling units in SG developments are apartments?
I wish the blinkered ideologues would get one thing through their minds (hmmm…and I was just speaking of fantasy…): fully 1/3 of suburbanites don’t like that built environment pattern and want something more walkable, dense, and all that, and 1/3 more don’t care for the density but don’t like their McSuburb and want more nearby stuff so they aren’t enslaved to their cars for every little thing.
DS