Those crazy planners at Smart Growth America are at it again: issuing another report all about how urban sprawl is bad and people are better off living in compact communities. Most news reports take it for granted that sprawl is evil and something ought to be done about it. But the report does devote all of three out of 51 pages to repeating claims about how sprawl makes housing unaffordable, transportation expensive, people fat, and lives shorter.
Almost all of these claims cite another report written back in 2010. Most of the claims are readily dismissed for several reasons.
First, some of the claims are based on models the planners made of cities and how they affect people, not on real life. For example, claims that transportation is less expensive in compact areas are based on models, not actual measurements. (They also fail to account for the huge differences in subsidies between transit and driving.)
Second, some of the claims are based on comparisons people living in different counties but not people actually living in suburbs vs. cities. The planners calculated a “sprawl index” for each county, but population densities, incomes, and other factors vary widely within most counties, so the averages may not really reflect differences between low-density suburbs and compact cities. The studies that result are no more than pseudoscience.
Third, many of the claims rely on the presumption that correlation equals causation. For example (as the Antiplanner has previously noted), they claim that sprawl makes people fat, but other studies have found that the small differences in weights between suburbs and cities are due to self-selection: people don’t get fat because they live in the suburbs, but some people who are overweight choose to live in the suburbs.
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Finally, some of their numbers are simply an attempt to mine the data to find anything wrong with low-density areas. For example, they claim that housing is less affordable in sprawling areas, which is demonstrably false. To make this claim, they didn’t actually measure housing affordability but how much people choose to spend on housing as a percentage of their incomes.
Compare, for example, Houston–the most sprawling large metropolitan area by their measure–with New York–the most compact. According to the Census Bureau, in 2012 a median house in Houston was worth $141,600, which was 2.2 times median family incomes. A median home in New York was $401,600, which was 5.3 times median family incomes. Does that sound more affordable?
According to Coldwell Banker, in 2013 a four-bedroom, two-and-one-half bath, 2,200-square-foot home in Houston would sell for $191,000, while in the suburb of Sugar Land it would sell for $212,000 and in the Woodlands master-planned community it would be worth all of $260,000. A similar home in the Bronx is worth $422,000; in Brooklyn it would sell for $498,000; while in the suburb of New Rochelle it would sell for $721,000.
Houston and New York are just the end points of their sprawl index, but most of the regions that they’ve rated “compact” have become unaffordable thanks to land-use regulation and other housing policies, while most of the regions that they’ve rated “sprawling” remain very affordable.
In the end, living in low-density areas is just as valid a choice as living in more compact areas. Failing to see the costs of regulations imposing compact living on people is also choice. The authors of this report have chosen to put on blinders allowing them to ignore housing costs and transit subsidies in order to make their choices appear morally superior.
claims that transportation is less expensive in compact areas are based on models, not actual measurements.
Huh. Which measurements are these?
DS
Something Dan doesn’t know about? Cue mock surprise.
As a planner, my opinion is not that lower density development on the periphery of urban areas is bad on the face of it, but rather that it is often implemented poorly, particularly from a transportation/emergency management perspective. I’m not a huge fan of cul de sacs, but that’s not what I referring to. Some of these developments are like giant cul de sacs, with a single entry and exit point on to an arterial roadway. These arterials may have several developments of this nature along the road. This creates horrible bottlenecks and a street system with no forgiveness, particularly in cases of automobile accidents or emergency situations.
What I’ve found interesting in my time as a professional planner is that suburban residents are some of the most vocal in opposition to traffic congestion while also vehemently opposing efforts to reduce congestion and increase emergency response effectiveness in their neighborhoods. They don’t want to sit in traffic and heaven forbid somebody drive down “their” street.
It’s always puzzled me a bit how much people who consider themselves to be very knowledgable can demonstrate the exact opposite with faith in models.
Something Dan doesn’t know about? Cue mock surprise.
Cue mock surprise an important assertion to the argument was made without evidence. Cue mock surprise other debunked assertions were repeated despite being shown to be false.
Cue mock surprise a weak mischaracterization attempt was made in the same manner as all the other cheap tactics.
DS
The reports really don’t say that people are better off in dense housing rather than in suburban “sprawl”. They say that Big Brother Government is better off if people would just forego their lives for the benefit of government. Suburbia has way too much private property and private decision making.
Bennett I live on a street that does not have drive through traffic and it is great for me and my family, living here. I use to live on what the Portland planners seem to love, a gird street, with lots of traffic. The house was cheap and I don’t live therr now because it was not a good place to raise children.
I prefer low density neighborhood, without a lot of traffic, that is why I chose to live here and moved away from my first house. That was fine when I was single and had to find a affordable starter home, to build equity.
What I find interesting about “sprawl” vs “density” is that these are really just euphemisms for particular aesthetics. Such proponents or opponents of each can’t really define what specific population density defines “sprawl” or “dense” but they can tell you what it looks like. “Sprawl” looks like single family, freestanding homes on quarter acre or fifth acre lots and “density” looks like Boston or Philly but not necessarily NYC. They never use NYC as an example, because, really, who wants their community to be like NYC?
I offer the following visualization of high density for any proponent of density who is serious about density. I drove by a trailer park in Galveston County, two weekends ago. There were rows of doublewides located on 40 by 80 foot lots with a 30 foot lane running between rows. There was also a little pocket park and community pool with clubhouse in the development.
I calculated that, including the lane, there were just shy of ten units per acre. Say there are an average of three occupants per unit, then you have 30 people per acre and 19,200 per square mile, including the lane! Call it, conservatively, 17,000 per square mile when you factor in the pocket park which was less than an acre. That’s denser than Boston, 12,900 psm; than Philly, 11400 psm; about the same as San Francisco, 17,600 psm; but less than NYC by just a third, 27,500 psm.
Imagine that! A trailer park provides the same density as the urban forms – Philly and Boston and San Francisco – so desired by the densifiers.
These trailers were 28 by 60 and cost about 85 grand, on average. That represents an installed square foot cost of fifty dollars a square foot. Trailers do not require a concrete footprint, they sit on piles, so trailer parks rarely cause the drainage issues that stick built subdivisions present. At end of useful life, a trailer can be towed away and completely recycled as scrap. It is environmentally more benign than either a sprawling suburb or even a dense place like boston. If you are serious about increasing density, or reducing housing costs, or reducing your environmental footprint, then you should permit more trailer parks.
Sprawl,
I’m not advocating for a grid per se. I understand that the suburban subdivision form is suitable and desirable for many. What I advocate for is SOME forgiveness in the street system, SOME connection across subdivisions, not a total grid.
A few years ago in the midst of the worst drought Central Texas has seen in years we had some severe fires some close to my old residence. We saw how a lack of simple street connectivity created massive safety problems during these fires. In Steiner Ranch, a subdivision near Lake Travis many homes were destroyed. Part of the problem was that a massive traffic burden was created trying to evacuate residents via 2 outlets onto the same arterial. Not only was the evacuation process slow and dangerous, it prevented fire fighters from getting to hot spots as quickly as they would have liked. Steiner Ranch abuts two other subdivisions that have access to other arterial roadways, but the subdivision street networks do not connect at all. 2 minor connections could have potentially saved a lot of property.
These two connections would have created some through traffic on the average day but I bet nobody would have noticed because the route would not be as efficient as existing routes. When I brought this up at public meeting after the fire I was sneered and yelled at (mostly for being a planner that didn’t live in the area) but because lord-baby-Jesus the nimby’s go to the mat to protect “their” street and prevent anybody from driving (don’t even bring up the “P” word) on it. I wasn’t proposing turning the street into a major thoroughfare, just a simple connection used mostly for emergency management situations and the occasional passer by.
Quite honestly, I’m getting tired of the big brother/socialist labels and the Portland examples and analogies. Most professional planners are not trying to get people to move into a condo or make suburban subdivisions into a street-grid-planner-utopia. There is a middle ground that for some reason most of my Antiplanner opponents are blind to. Sometimes we’re just trying to keep you house from burning to the ground.
Jardinero1,
You bring up a great point. One of the planning professions follies is that plans for increasing density have the lime light stolen by multifamily high-rise projects and plans. The fact is you can double the density of a single family neighborhood without apartment buildings and without compromising the style and character of the neighborhood. Lots can add secondary dwelling units via additions, granny flats, garage apartments, or if you prefer, trailers. If they are designed and constructed in a way that is consistent with the surrounding buildings the neighborhood essentially stays the same.
Increases in density is inevitable. It’s been happening since the dawn of humanity. Convert a single family lot in a city center to a multifamily building… that’s a density increase. Build a suburban subdivision on a greenfield… That’s a density increase. A density increase isn’t good or bad, it just is.
Bennett,
The interesting thing about urban densities is that they ebb and flow of their own accord even in the absence of planning. Inner loop Houston, especially Montrose and Midtown, are good examples today. Some places that we think of as incredibly dense, like Paris, were actually much more dense in the past. http://www.demographia.com/db-parisprofile-1836f.pdf found here: http://www.demographia.com/dbx-uzahist.htm
I agree Jardinero1. Probably where we differ is that I think planning has it’s place in accounting for growth. The wold is increasing in density with or without planning. The reason people like planning (epically in suburbia) is that it gives them a modicum of control over how growth impacts them and their neighborhood.
claims that transportation is less expensive in compact areas are based on models, not actual measurements.
Randal, a paper you thought was compelling enough to support another flawed argument refutes “your” “assertion”. You may want to be a little more careful in putting these screeds so close to each other in the future. Jus’ sayin’.
DS
I agree with Jardinero1 about how “urban densities is that they ebb and flow of their own accord even in the absence of planning.”
It took me a while to understand bennetr’s hatred of cul-de-sacs, since I grew up on one and try to live on them. Turns out we agree, I think — cul-de-sacs are great places to live, but the neighborhood also has to have a few streets that connect in all directions for emergencies and flexibility.