They want:
1. Large, sparsely populated suburbs, away from everything. 2. Cars to drive long-distances from their suburbs to "the things we want to actually go to when not sleeping". 3. No heavy traffic, please!
Good luck achieving all 3!
And yeah, public transport sucks here. For obvious reasons - nobody can design effective public transport when the average commute from someone's house to their work is fifteen miles one-way and there's no population density to speak of to make it cost-effective.
I consider myself lucky that I can just walk to a nice grocery store and don't have to get in a car to go buy some milk.
edit: responses below are moving the goalposts. I didn't ask what major metros are missing culturally vibrant dense communities with a great mix of walkable amenities, I asked what metros didn't have townhouse-style developments (small house, no yard).
The answer is obvious if you spend ten minutes in redfin - every major metro has plenty
http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2143/2206169789_71e4f452b3_b.j...
No, because if everyone else had them too that'd mean living in a very low-density area, likely without anything in walking distance or decent public transport.
Yes you have to be ultra rich for this to be possible, but what if you actually were that rich? Would you still live as you do?
There are advantages and disadvantages to everything.
That doesn't sound like a very realistic scenario, though; I think I'll stick with my small terraced house that's walking distance from the city centre.
We have large detached houses in Ireland; they're probably the primary type of rural housing. I get that some people like them, but they definitely wouldn't be for me.
Living in a detached house is annoying. I grew up in detached houses. I now live in a nice Manhattan building. Having to worry about maintenance, heating, lawns and all that junk seems parochial. For a vacation home? Sure, you can get a management company. For a primary residence? How do people have time for that!?
(Note that I'm playing devils advocate here)
Me, I'd love to have a large, centrally located, detached house at an affordable price. It's not a realistic desire though, and that lack of realism means that any policy based on it will be equally unrealistic.
You can also choose a smaller, non-detached house for the same prices inside a denser neighborhood. You then don't need a car and can bike or take publish transport to everything.
Most people prefer the latter.
Not in the sense that that is somehow the only way to define 'success' in living arrangements.
Personally I value community and amenities to a vastly higher degree than I do the house itself.
Totting it up so far I think I've lived in 9 different houses in 3 different countries. Some house were large and detached, some were semi-detached, one was end terrace. If the house was large enough to live in and put my things in it became essentially a utility that performed a function.
The most important thing was who lived next to or near me, what services and amenities were around and how easy access was to them and what were schools like for kids.
Perhaps that's because I didn't own them but rented them, but I do own a house that I haven't lived in yet and I feel no more attachment to it than the rest. Instead choosing the area and community over the bricks and mortar themselves.
If people truly wanted this, we wouldn't need a large zoning law apparatus to legally enforce it, now would we?
Historically these laws came about due to White Flight and wanting to keep the "other" people out.
My hypothesis is these laws persist due to effectively creating legally enforced housing cartel, pushing up house prices. Throw in some rent control to turn some poor folks against new housing, and you've got a recipe for ever increasing house prices, falling fertility rates, and the squeezing of the middle class.
The historical ratio of house price to income that was considered affordable was about 2.6. If you earn $100k, you should spend $260k at most on your house under this rule.
Nowadays very few metros have median house prices at a level where the median household income would qualify, using that 2.6 ratio. Almost all of the cities with cost levels at that ratio or better are Rust Belt cities, and even many of them are right at the threshold.
Check out the full list: https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/05/where-the-house-price...
Obviously interest rates, tax policy, etc. can change the monthly expense equation, so what may have been too expensive in the past might be more affordable now with lower interest rates.
However, even with a reduced cost to finance, there are still hefty down payments that need to be saved up for which are cost prohibitive. And higher property values need to pay higher property taxes. Maybe even "mansion" taxes in a few places.
Here's the problem:
- Start with a nice, quiet, picturesque suburban neighborhood.
- Naturally people want to move into this neighborhood because it's so nice and want it to be affordable so, absent zoning, developers build apartments and condos to fill the need.
- Then all the people move in and the neighborhood slowly learns that the reason it was actually nice and picturesque was the low density and high buy-in.
- Property values start going down, along with tax revenue, the schools decline, $/student plummets, and all the people with the means move somewhere else.
Without at least some laws it's incredibly difficult to break this cycle.
However, there are multiple cycles going on. If you build a development you end up with a lot of people of similar means all buying homes. But, over time things change as people get fired / retire / inherent homes etc you revert to the mean over time. On top of that as homes age and become less desirable you get massive downward pressure on property values over time.
In the other direction you have artificial scarcity and sometimes increasing population propping up home values.
In the Bay Area it's expensive near job centers but it's still expensive 40 miles away. The sprawling mess is too low density to sensibly cover with trains so poor people end up with insane highway commutes.
Anacostia DC has apartments for 90k despite people paying 4+x as much to commute into DC from the suburbs. However, those prices are very much on the rise.
SV prices are limited largely by geography and local parks. Having less land area available for development relative to commute distances drives up prices on top of other issues.
It sounds like you are saying that Anacostia is cheap, dense, and close to jobs and that there's also a demand for luxury housing farther away. That all sounds reasonable to me.
In SV we don't have cheap housing close to jobs. I argue this is because we don't have dense housing.
Anacostia is an example of less expensive, but also not cheap. You can get a 'cheap' condo in much of the US for 35k. However, Anacostia is not staying that way prices are very much on the rise, became larger forces are at work.
SV does not have cheap housing close to jobs largely due to geographic issues. It has a tiny strip of land that can be developed so all of it is going to be expensive. On a block by block basis low density is driving prices down, while on a regional basis lack of housing anywhere drives prices up.
Now, in Manhattan the city center is expensive. However, very near the city center, housing can be affordable while still having a reasonable commute. This is because of density.
> SV does not have cheap housing close to jobs largely due to geographic issues. It has a tiny strip of land that can be developed so all of it is going to be expensive.
You are totally wrong here. The housing is expensive due to undersupply which is brought about by restrictions on zoning. There is a huge amount of land to build on but zoning laws require that most of the land here be used for detached single family homes.
I agree that it's a massive factor, but it's just one factor among many. Look at a satellite map of the area, in the middle you have the bay which not only takes up space but also chokes traffic. West you have the ocean, and north is again limited by the bay. South and east you have mountains and parks which limit where you could build transit or housing.
For comparison look at D.C. it's zoned to be low to mid density, and has terrible roads. But becase people can commute from a huge area to the hart of the city it's prices are not insane. Further, many office buildings clump up in various areas around the city. That can't really happen to SV which props up land value.
It's possible to find a listing for an old studio apartment in Jackson Heights, possibly with an existing tenant you'll have to evict, and possibly with a long walk to the train. Throw in the condo fee ($300+ per month maybe?) and you've got yourself a deal.
At ~$400 / square foot that's relatively pricey. I think typical construction costs are like $125 - $150 / square foot, so this could be a $80k or less free standing house in a truly cheap region.
https://www.redfin.com/NY/Unknown/112-50-Northern-Blvd-11368...
Try getting anything like that near public transportation that gets you to work in Silicon Valley.
But my point isn't that it's cheap, it's that it's relatively cheap compared to Manhattan while still being close to the city.
You're essentially arguing that housing is a Giffin Good and exists outside the normal laws of supply and demand. Don't get me wrong, after a point there is a tipping point where more people start pushing prices up in general because they exhaust the supply of things you can't just produce more of. But building more housing still decreases the price of housing.
Take an island city of say 1 million people living in single family homes. Now, over 50 years replace 1/2 of those with 5 million high density apartments. Assuming steady growth the apartments are going to fill with workers, but the number of single family homes dropped. Further, the total number of highly paid professionals like Doctors and Middle Management increases which increases demand for those single family homes.
Now, block growth for 30 years and you reduce the number of people that can actually make enough money to drive up prices. Net result people move elsewhere and even if the market is tight and people pay a higher percentage of their income they simply make less money on average.
PS: And to be pedantic while more housing is being build to total supply drops because nobody is living in the demolished buildings.
They also cost less per unit, which is a thing people (i.e. new homeowners) like even more.
> - Property values start going down, along with tax revenue, the schools decline, $/student plummets, and all the people with the means move somewhere else.
This can be solved by adjusting the mil rate to generate the original amount of property tax revenue per unit against the lower housing prices.
I also don't see how the cycle is not self-defeating. If there are a hundred low density units and someone builds a hundred high density units near them so the original inhabitants leave and build a hundred new low density units somewhere else, now there are three hundred housing units available. The higher supply reduces the profit in building new condos anywhere in the region. If the cycle repeats then even more housing is constructed. At some point the profit in building new condos falls below the construction cost, because people don't want to live in a condo in the otherwise low density area more than they want to have a much smaller mortgage payment.
This is obviously an argument in favor of high density zoning. Even if you want to live in a detached single family home, you want as many other people as possible to be able to live in high density housing to minimize the amount of land you have to drive through between your home and the city.
To me it has always seemed that presented a big empty plot of land, large detached houses are more profitable for the builder- I figure single houses are probably easier to slap together. Then, as an area grows and land is suddenly constrained in supply, then the developer wants to build dense.
Multi-family houses are more profitable for the owner. You pay some maintenance costs but you also collect a profit on recurring condo fees, services you provide, and deals you might make with other companies (like internet providers).
> Property values start going down
So you're saying that because it's so desirable, property values go down?
* Yes, the existence of less expensive high-density housing in a neighborhood puts downward pressure on the price of single-family homes.
* Yes, because the value of an affluent, quiet, low-density neighborhood is just that -- exclusivity.
> Yes, the existence of less expensive high-density housing in a neighborhood puts downward pressure on the price of single-family homes.
That's false. If land can be redeveloped into high density housing, developers will pay top dollar for it. An 80-story tower going up next to your bungalow may seem annoying to you, but some developer is going to pay you a mountain of money for that bungalow - way more than you could get for it from a regular purchaser - knock it down, and build their own 90-story tower.
But likely they attract a different kind of people than those who want quiet and picturesque low-density suburbia.
My suspicion is that car based planning is the cause.
So long as you don't try to use zoning laws to make that the only game in town, I think we'll get along quite well.
Zoning laws exist because people don't just live in houses, they also live in neighborhoods. And when they buy into a neighborhood, they want the neighborhood to generally maintain it's character (since that's part of what attracted them to the neighborhood in the first place). In fact, neighborhood character is so valuable to many people that they will opt into restrictions (CC&Rs) above and beyond what is required by law in order to achieve an even more uniform character in their neighborhood.
I tend to have a more libertarian bent, personally, when it comes to people building what they want on their land, but zoning laws are not about oppression of private property owners. You see them as a bug, but many people see them as a feature.
No. You are confusing residents with all people. Left to their own economic devices, a company will get what it wants before a person in most cases. How many companies want large, detached houses? If they truly did then yes, we wouldn't need zoning laws.
No. In most central and southern Europe there are laws to ensure that density stays above a threshold, cities stays walkable and apartments are built with proper walls and corridors to prevent any noise from the neighbors.
This led to much cheaper housing and less need for driving.
The smiley implies a lot of people want that. That's true, but the flip side of that question is "Do you no want to drive for everything you need?" which, especially in Europe, is going to get a lot of people answering "Hell no".
I don't want one. They also say that people want SUVs but I don't want that either. I think there is a lot of cultural conditioning in what people want.
1. I have a small kid with a lot of running energy who plays in the yard every day. Having to walk to the nearest park (if one exists) is inconvenient especially if it’s miles away.
2. I’m done with loud neighbors. Constant parties, loud bass music rattling the shared walls, loud sex at all hours, loud conversations right outside my door. It was a constant attribute of dense urban living.
3. Hobbies that require lots of private space and machinery, like sheet metal working and carpentry. Not going to be possible in a townhome without being yourself the annoying loud neighbor.
4. Freedom to customize. If I want to mount a huge antenna on my roof or build a backyard shed, only a detached home allows this.
5. Related to 4: Authority to fix things when they break. If my roof is leaking I can choose if and when to fix it. I can shop around for contractors to make sure I’m not overpaying. I can inspect and approve the work. In an apartment or condo these important tasks are out of my hands and done (always poorly) by an incompetent committee or landlord.
6. (For car owners) Indoor car parking and protection from the elements measurably reduces the maintenance cost of those cars. And fixing cars is tons easier in a garage. Nothing worse than replacing your power steering system in a 2 by 4 meter parking space surrounded by your neighbors’ cars. Ask me how I know.
I think more people around me is a net positive overall, though there are definitely exceptions.
So now we're thinking about moving into an urban area to give them more opportunity to engage with others. The problem is that I've lived like that before as well and it makes me nearly homicidal after a very short while. It's clearly a personal flaw, but I don't know how to fix it. I could be surrounded by 99% awesome people, but it just takes that special mongrel to spoil it all. Maybe I've matured enough in the past few years to handle it better, but it sure would be nice to have the option to bail if we choose poorly.
There is a huge swath of possibilities in between, including dense, detached housing, smaller condo developments, and villages that provide many of the benefits you attribute only to detached low density housing, including self maintenance, private parking, etc.
With higher density, these places also provide easy access to greenspace for children, with the qualification that it is usually public greenspace.
You are not as likely to find this setup in big city centers like Manhattan or Chicago, nor in the vast low density suburban sprawl, but rather in older pre-car towns that have retained their human scale development pattern.
Because it was opposite side of the house from his bedroom and because it was semi-soundproof my sister and I could have slumber parties with 4-8 friends over and be as loud as we wanted.
Why wouldn't I want that again?
I loved being able to be loud. To watch an action movie at 2am . My dad's stereo had 8 sets of speakers floor to ceiling. Him and my mom would host an 80 person New Years Eve party every other year.
Ever since I moved out 30 yrs ago I've lived in nothing but apartments where I mostly have to tiptoe to not annoy the neighbors. Can't have a dog. Can't have a workbench with tools. Can't have more than 2-4 guests over at once. Have to watch TV with headphones on if I want any volume.
I get the desire to live downtown near other things but I also get the desire to own a single family detached house. They're awesome!
You have to understand that in the US houses are not just houses. They are the primary vehicle by which the middle class is able to build wealth. There are scores of tax regulation and perks to home owning that don't exist for any other asset class.
That's only really true for the suburbs and rural areas. Most Americans live in cities, where rowhomes and apartment complexes are more popular.
[1]https://www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/census/historic/unit...
It's complicated to determine what's urban and suburban--much less exurban (which is what ESRI calls where I live). [1] But the census uses a measure where the areas it counts as "rural" are mostly very rural.
[1] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-suburban-are-big-am...