The myth of revealed preference for suburbs
cityobservatory.org
cityobservatory.org
This article makes its point from the book "Zoned Out" (2005.) Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the argument is that zoning policies make suburban sprawl, not free markets. They argue that if zoning restrictions were lifted and development responded to free market forces, higher density housing would result and more people would prefer that to sprawl.
I think that might be true - moderately. You might get a relative increase of higher-density housing.
But I think sprawl just represents a long tail of real preferences among the population. It may be relative price, it may be having a yard, it may be the suburban school districts, it can be all kinds of things. And yeah, if people had control, the suburbs wouldn't sprawl forever. It would be just their nice suburban neighborhood and everybody else could be jammed into the city.
>In Boston, about 40 percent of respondents said they preferred denser, more pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods, while in Atlanta, just under 30 percent of respondents did so.
In the absence of prohibitive zoning laws and other restrictions, the split between urban and exurban properties should converge to align with consumer preferences. Of course, it’s possible that consumer preferences will change if increased urban development results in lower crime, cheaper housing, better schools and transit, etc.
That's pretty much it. Everyone who lives in a suburb likes a different subset of suburban features, and that all aggregates together to result in the kinds of suburbs we have.
It makes sense to consider zoning law to be a reflection of people's preferences rather than a constraint on them. In many cases zoning laws are the result of established homeowners trying to preserve the suburban features they like.
That doesn't mean renters didn't care for housing when they were a minority, it just means they were efficiently marginalized.
I think this is half true (that zoning regulations have caused a good amount of sprawl) but I think that other posters here are right that the free market may also create sprawl, as it will respond to preferences and cultural biases that may favor sprawl.
Really the point of zoning is to prevent that, to guide the market toward development that is in the interest of the common good. Without zoning regulations you tend to get pretty nasty tragedy of the commons effects.
Zoning codes shouldn't be overly restrictive, in fact they should be a gentle touch that doesn't interfere with competition very much, but they are often hugely beneficial and guide the market toward a solution that benefits the community at large.
Developers still basically just plop large single-family residential developments on random plots of land with few ways to stop them. In the absence of zoning, developers will not build denser properties because they’re riskier.
In fact that's such a strong counterexample to the article you can basically discount it entirely.
> will not build denser properties because they’re riskier.
Or because people don't want them. What's riskier about them?
Those are all pro-sprawl. My dense, walkable neighbourhood in Montreal would be illegal in Houston.
https://marketurbanism.com/2016/09/19/how-houston-regulates-...
(And, while we're dreaming, putting benches in the streets so that tired walkers could have some rest, and maybe even putting little plazas at street intersections to provide spaces for people to socialize and thus making the whole process of walking around the city more enjoyable).
In the spanish cities you can walk comfortably. The buildings are tall enough and near enough to the sidewalk that you can always find shade. And everyone walks on the shaded side of the street.
In the american cities the buildings are set back, and there is no shade. People still walk (they're poor), but there are a lot more horse carriages that pass by to offer people lifts. Walking isn't so feasible.
Living in the south, it would take me 15 minutes walking just to leave my neighborhood. And most neighborhoods remotely outside the cities do not have sidewalks. So it’s a chicken-and-egg problem.
Just bear in mind most cities in the south (especially Texas) were very small prior to the mass adoption of automobiles and air conditioning. My hypothesis is that the car was required for large Texas cities to exist, and as a result the city has always been a sprawled mess.
So the real question is whether we should build cities this way in the first place? But it’s kind of an irrelevant question — we do and will continue to build cities this way regardless of it being a good idea or not.
But, is it possible that cities were small because the wrong building style was used? After all, the Spanish colonies to the south of the US are warmer than the South, but had large cities.
It also mandates setbacks from the street, wide roads, and long blocks.
Overall Houston does a lot of stuff right! But, I think they have still baked sprawl into their system.
From what I can see, my dense Montreal neighbourbood would be illegal in Houston. (It's illegal almost everywhere in North America, of course)
https://marketurbanism.com/2016/09/19/how-houston-regulates-...
It’s not an accident that Texas looked more like Montana in 1900 than California. The mass adoption of automobiles and air conditioning made large cities in Texas possible; and the low population density made land cheap.
The centers of most big southern cities were never walkable. Most of those cities would never have existed without cars. I don’t know how you introduce density into a situation like that, and I don’t think zoning rules would be able to undo the damage of the last century. These cities were built around cars, and you can’t just roll that back without remaking the whole city and displacing many, many people.
“Oh ... well ... we just didn’t deregulate enough last time. Let’s just deregulate a little more, and we’ll see the results!”
There are huge numbers of zero lot line 2-4 story townhouses being built within say 5 miles of downtown. 4-6 houses on 1/4 acre so not a lot of room to waste.
And then once you get past say 5-10 miles from downtown the sprawl is undeniable.
But to paint Houston as all sprawl just isn't honest.
I've lived in very high density housing in Japan (20 floor manshion type apartment) and medium density in US (2 level apartment).
Higher density in Japan is much more pleasant due to the culture of being considerate of others.
If I have to live in the US, I will choose suburbia for that reason.
Japanese people tend to follow all rules, written and unwritten. I guess Americans follow only rules that can be enforced (cf. Uber, Airbnb, etc...)
Probably from a culture of rebellion against Britain colonial government... In some cases it is good and in some bad.
In Japan there is also no tolerance for the 1% that ruins public spaces for everyone (compare Tokyo subways against San Francisco subways). This allows true public spaces that can be shared by everyone.
Those are not unique to Japan though. My SF apartment had the thinest floors ever and I got all kinds of complaints even though I'm way more aware of the noise I make than most, even going so far as to always watch TV with wireless headphones.
Conversely I've lived in apartments designed for noise in Los Angeles where the landlord told me it was okay to run the washing machine 24/7 because the neighbors wouldn't be able to hear it next door as the walls were concrete and doubled with a space between to absorb the sound.
I know some of the newer 20-30 floor apartment buildings in Japan are built similarly but I don't currently make enough to live in a place like that, probably $3k-$4k a month for a 2LDK
The other problem with this long tail is that (like other long tails of, say, bandwidth or storage utilization) it has a disproportionate effect on the whole. If 60% of, say, 100k people in a metropolitan area prefer to live in urban, high-density housing at 20,000 people per square mile, and 20% prefer to live in low-density suburbs at 4,000 people per square mile, you have 3 square miles of urban housing and 10 square miles of suburbs. And the small number of rural folks on the outskirts who are living the American dream of having their own 40 acres (160 houses per square mile) have an even larger effect on average land usage.
Once you include the drawbacks that can not be removed, you will find they are living exactly where they want to live.
The kind of analysis in this report is one of those "lying with statistics" things, because I don't think it's measuring what the authors think it's measuring.
Drunks/junkies/mentally ill people shitting, pissing, and vomiting everywhere, while verbally (and sometimes physically) abusing the passers-by.
Noise.
Breathing the stench of exhaust fumes, week-old garbage, and someone else's idea of cooking.
Having no place for your children to sit on the grass without worrying about them finding someone's discarded needle or excrement.
Having no space for gardens, hobbies, or gatherings of family and/or friends.
Bad schools with apathetic parents.
The inability to leave personal property unattended for even a moment.
The need to have extensive home security (bars on windows, etc...)
The much higher likelihood that you or one of your loved ones will be mugged, raped, or killed.
Those are just a few that come to mind.
My favorite part of the suburbs is that my kids are physically incapable of walking or biking to an urban area. When they have grown to acquire the sense to look out for themselves, then they coincidentally will have the freedom (e.g. drivers license) to go to an urban place. Until then, I love that I can let them just go outside without supervision and dick around. American urbanity is just not for families.
My impression of most high density cities would be that my options would be more limited as a kid. Sure there's a lots of shopping, restaurants, and bars but what is there for kids?
Of course I only have the places I've experienced to go on.
High density doesn't me
Even if you could build miltistory underground car parks you still need roadway space. German narrow gauge trams quite happily chug Elon in two directions on 10 feet carry highway capacity traffic one highway lane is 12 feet. They don't need the space. So car traffic takes up much more space that means you can't have the same density. If you don't have those cars you could put all the factories and warehouse space underground and you would have even more surface room this would allow a higher density of people. To imagine this take a look at your closest city on Google maps and how much space is taken up by car parks and roads now if you can reduce that use to 20% while keeping the same city boundaries, the density of the city hasn't changed but a lot more land is available. How much bigger can your house be if the highway is only one lane wide? How many more people can you add in?
You would also have the issue of getting people to and from the miltistory underground but that is exactly what happens on car free areas. You take the tram/bus/train pick up your car/rental/rideshare/uber at the multi story car park and continue on from there. If it's right on the major highways around the area you reduce a lot of the traffic headaches.
Someone age 2 or 6 or 12 or 17 or 23 generally has a better time in the city: more freedom, more things to do within walking/transit distance, less time wasted on car transportation, more people of all ages and interests to engage with.
The density of cities can support a higher density of parks, playgrounds, plazas, markets, museums, libraries, schools, art galleries, music venues, coffeeshops, restaurants, ice cream stores, churches, community centers, ...., which means these can all be easily accessed on foot.
In typical American suburbs everything is dispersed and there are oceans of concrete standing between any two points, so walking around is unpleasant and impractical. People who walk around are viewed with suspicion, and children walking around alone are often reported to the police. In many suburbs, almost nobody rides a bike or takes the bus. Instead, nearly all trips are taken by car, which adds a ton of time overhead to every trip and makes anyone without car dependent on someone else.
And most of those other benefits you cited you cited would have been practically useless to me as a kid because I had hardly any desposable income.
Also, are you planning on having kids and raising them in the city?
I lived in an "urban" area and I didn't have bars on my windows. I'm sure the chance of me being mugged was higher than a suburb, but that's more a function of population than anything else. It's still low enough that it's a negligible risk for me and my girlfriend. While I've certainly seen discarded needles in big cities, I've never come across them on the lawn of major parks and actually tend to find them in the more suburban areas of cities. Most big cities have at least some schools that are very good, even if some of them are sub par.
Government sites and government persons enjoy tight security. The rest of the city... Not so much.
The reality seems to be more one of the market chasing changing preferences - as desire for denser areas increases relatively, a lot of inside-the-perimeter denser construction has followed.
Most evidenced by new luxury apartments at West end station with surprising rents for a studio (targeting pilots)
Most single family homes seem unattainable (going over ask price, quickly) in the North of the city, but South and West are still cheap and attainable.
I think we might also be reaching a tipping point where school districts may not even hold people back. If you can afford a house anywhere, you probably also can afford to send your kids to private school.
I live in the Boston area and that doesn't sound right. I guess you could say Brookline is low density and rich. But you have to consider the Back Bay, Beacon Hill, South End (north of Mass. Ave)--really the densest areas are the most expensive. Places like Chelsea, Roxbury, are cheaper and lower in density. Proximity to jobs, transit, and amenities is the driver of cost, and density goes with it.
The first is confusing want with what you're culturally conditioned to say based on style of question. We don't know how the questions were led or if they attempted to be neutral, they made a huge logical leap from asking people what they want to declaring thats what they actually want, real world doesn't work that way. We know from prior propaganda issues that people can be led to claim almost anything, when questioned correctly to lead to it. Its a universal part of human existence that what people are socialized to say to get along, generally has nothing to do with what they'll actually want (or do) in private or semi-private, which also generally has nothing to do with whats best for them (and good luck finding a fair and unbiased judge of whats best for them, LOL). The study actually abstracts to "I know from intensive propaganda my whole life that a good person would say they want X, therefore I'll say I want X, but I actually want and will execute plan Y". What could be more pithy than "do as I say not as I do?" The study doesn't even scratch the surface of "what should they do" which is a totally orthogonal third dimension. The study is willfully and intentionally ignoring a major component of human psychology to push a propaganda point; this really does not look good at all.
To help non USA people, there's a large aspect of group affinity and identification going on. Essentially a non-metaphysical religion, complete with proselytizers and those who define whats holy and who is or is not. So for the "new urbanists" for over half a century, fervent belief in returning to the cities after white flight from the 60s race riots is the definition of what a good person is, in a simplistic 1 to 1 mapping. Trying to argue rational logic merely strengthens their beliefs, like trying to reason about fossil records with a creationist Christian. If your worldview is defining being a good person as holding a set of beliefs X, Y, Z, regardless if those are good or terrible ideas, then someone trying the atheistic rational argument against those beliefs "just think about it", well, a good person would NOT think about it, they would believe, wouldn't they? That type of argument will just strengthen the belief set; look here is a bad person who is defined as bad by not having matching beliefs, being bad by making sacrilegious statements, why look how great my beliefs must be? People who don't understand this try to interact with urbanists on a rational level which certainly doesn't work. No Christian ever lost their faith by a pagan nostalgia along the lines of "My childhood as a pagan was not so bad, I don't understand the hate". Likewise its a waste of time to tell an urbanist that suburbs are not that bad why all the propaganda. You'd have better luck trying to convert a Christian Fundamentalist by telling them that Satan guy gets a lot of bad press but he's not all bad all. Trying to talk a urbanist out of the city is literally on a psychological level like trying to talk a devoted missionary out of going on a mission. It is the same thought process. Please don't waste everyone's time trying to convert them, merely wish them well on their pilgrimage and hope they survive, etc.
Everyone on both sides should understand and accept the group affinity issue. There is absolutely no moral, ethical, medical, technological, or rational argument that black tennis shoes are worse or better than white tennis shoes. None the less, the cool kids have proclaimed one or the other is cool this year and the only choice you have in the issue, the only reason for discussing it anywhere including here on HN, is to declare your group affinity with the cool kids for todays fad, or try to be that cool apostate rebelling against "the man", or just be confused about the social dynamics of the whole thing and make the huge mistake of thinking the discussion is actually about sneakers or ethics or anything other than declaring your allegiance or opposition or cluelessness. Are tattoos rebellious or conformist today? Well, fundamentally they're neither, they're art ink on skin. If the argument is about enforcement of conformity, such as devout belief in new urbanism, don't get in weird side arguments about tattoo ink toxicity or stretch marks, thats totally not the point of the discussion. This incredibly boring topic boils down to are you an new urbanist conformist or a rebellious suburbanite, and the only thing that matters is the conformity or rebellion. Forest for the trees and all that.
If you can't tell I think "new urbanist" stories are pointless and should probably be globally banned on HN, they're just trash, fibrous filler, the low formaldehyde particle board of furniture, as a discussion topic, but others disagree, sometimes with strong arguments that I admit may be strong but none the less disagree with. So the article is this weeks two minutes hate on the burbs, oh well, whatevs.
Extremely close to the city and well connected through transit. Safe, with great schools and communities. All this while downtown is never more than 30 minutes by transit and the neighbourhood is still extremely walkable.
Parking is still an issue, and the NE weather can be terrible at times. But that apart, I really like those areas.
It’s not possible that we actually love it here, that we like the clean air, wide open spaces, huge yards, non-crowded downtown, small family friendly parades, and our rodeo.
Nope, we’re all just lying to ourselves and really want to love in a cramped arcology.
With a topic as sensitive as urban density, where city planners have been bombarding us with the "right-answer" of high-density living for decades, I would expect people to over-report preferring high-density living, especially on a survey conducted by someone trying to prove their case that people prefer high-density housing.
... of the voting population, whose demographics unfortunately don’t match up with the population at large.
There’s also a vested self-interest for property owners to vote in such a way that preserves their property values. And what better way to do so than to restrict supply?
Big caveat: My opinion comes from large amounts of anecdata. But at the same time, it has often been noted (especially on HN, given its demographics) that San Francisco, where there is a huge demand for dense housing, is fraught with many barriers to actually build dense housing.
You can see City Observatory’s (an urbanist publication, so YMMV) take: http://cityobservatory.org/homevoters-v-the-growth-machine/
Your linked homevoter article underlines the point by suggesting that low density housing areas are more likely to be downzoned than zoned for higher density, which is odd if a majority of their population has an unexpressed desire to live in a less suburban area, especially since it's most likely to happen where residents are homeowners and wealthy and white enough to be an influential voting bloc.
Restricting supply is itself a perfectly valid reason for actually preferring lower density housing, but it's only part of that equation. It turns out that many people who might answer survey questions saying that they ideally want a walkable neighbourhood with better transit actually end up obstructing plans to put a train line through their leafy suburb and a mixed-use development towers a few blocks away from their house.
For example, MTV/Palo Alto have the same per sq ft price as san francisco. There are sources showing each one as higher than the other, but not to any significant degree.
Second there are a tremendous number of factors that affect housing prices other than personal preference.
I'm really unsure if you are trying to be serious here, because it's so rare a preference like we are talking about here really has a majority at one of the extremes.
I worked in a city where only the very richest people could live in the very expensive high-density areas. A tiny condo being perhaps four times the cost of my very large luxurious suburban house, maybe ten times the cost of a cheap suburban house. They had experimented generations ago with high-density poor people housing; that was not exactly paradise for anyone involved, so high density is only approved if the rent will be over $3000/mo otherwise the police budget cannot handle the crime issues. There is a self imposed demographic separation where only wealthy live in the penthouses therefore being wealthy the prices charged to fit their budgets are high. Of course there are maybe 1000 suburbanites for every CEO in the nicest five million dollar penthouse. And the population of the burbs combined is approximately 20 times the population of the high density areas. Its possible to cheat such that you are "in the city" but in a tiny house near the dangerous part of town that hasn't been gentrified into unaffordable condos... yet. But I'm not counting SFRs as "high density urban" because its basically substandard suburban lifestyle.
Let me ask you this--why don't the very richest people in your city live in very expensive suburbs instead of very expensive high-density areas?
Don't they? The only rich person that I know that lives in a penthouse is the dropbox CEO. Bill gates, Jeff Bezos, Andy Jassy, Mark Zuckerburg, Larry and Sergey all live in suburbs as far as I know.
The point I got from it is that some people want to live in dense neighborhoods and others want to live in less-dense neighborhoods - and in certain areas that were built up more recently (e.g. Atlanta), there is more demand for dense areas than there is supply, while in some older cities (e.g. Boston) there is a short supply of both dense and less-dense neighborhoods.
If anything, your comment dismissing dense areas as "cramped arcologies" is more dismissive of other people's desires than the article is. Do you have trouble believing either or both of the following: (1) some (though not all) people want to live in densely populated areas where they can walk to most amenities and (2) modern urban building patterns have underserved such people?
Nobody wants to outlaw suburbs and single-family homes with huge yards and setbacks via zoning fiat, people want other options to not be outright illegal.
I'm sincerely sure you enjoy living where you do, we're just asking for such preferences to not be encoded and mandated in the zoning/land-use laws and regulations and procedures.
At home, I like parking in a driveway better than parking on the street.
At home, I like parking in a garage better than parking in a driveway or alley.
At home, I like parking in an attached garage better than parking in a detached one.
I like living in my own house better than an apartment.
I like living in a free-standing house better than a duplex or row house.
I like a large yard where my young kids can play with their friends and I can keep an eye on them out the window.
I want to be able to make some noise without disturbing my neighbors, and vice-versa. I don't like living cheek-by-jowl with my neighbors.
I like living in a neighborhood that has virtually no violent crime or burglaries. I don't want to have to run a gauntlet of panhandlers when I go for a walk around the neighborhood.
I prefer to live in a house built since 1978, so I don't have to deal with lead paint, asbestos, knob & tube wiring, wood lath walls, lead (water) service lines, buckling foundations, damp moldy basements, rotting, leaking box gutters, or cheap, chalky aluminum siding that was installed in 1968 over Insulbrick that was installed in 1938. Unfortunately, those houses tend to be relatively rare and exorbitantly expensive in my local city.
I don't know why so many city dwellers seem to obsess over the fact that there are many people who simply prefer living in the suburbs. But there are.
There's also an aspect of affordability to why I ended up in the suburbs (in downtown or midtown Nashville, I'd be in a one-bedroom or studio condo for what I paid for my three-bedroom house), but it's mostly because I like living in my own standalone house. I have a yard; I have a garage and a driveway; I don't have upstairs neighbors rolling bowling balls around on their floor at 2 in the morning.
Tribalism and a desire to see the whole world remade to their own fancy, just like everything else people have strong opinions about
1. Not outlaw my preferred lifestyle choices. The vast majority of the country makes it illegal to build walkable urban neighborhoods.
2. Don't make me pay for your lifestyle choices. Car use is heavily subsidized in the US via road and parking infrastructure, laws that require private citizens to build parking at their own expense to be able to build buildings and by car users being able to externalize the cost of their environmental damage.
You are free to live in your preferred type of neighborhood; just let me do the same.
"Live and let live" has to go both ways, or the party getting the short end of the stick won't put up with the arrangement for long.
Educational outcomes, crime (both as victim and perpetrator), and mental health are all worse for those who grew up in cities, and not just slightly worse. Much worse.
Thought so.
Pretty much everywhere in the country, but heroin et al have been problems in the cities for generations.
And even if that were true, we're talking about suburbs, not rural areas.
5000 people in just over 0.32 miles, plenty of trees and Greenspace.