Comment by S_A_P | Hacker News Reader

Comment by S_A_P | Hacker News Reader

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This is a really great response. I think there are a ton of both selfish and altruistic reasons for the urban sprawl that is Houston. I grew up here (Alief area) and that was the burbs when I was young. (It’s about 15-20 minutes drive from downtown) there was a 10 or so mile gap between where I lived and Sugarland. Now it all runs together. I now live due south of Katy in an unincorporated area about 40 miles away from downtown Houston. Land and housing is still relatively cheap here but it’s filling out every year.

I say that to say this- I didn’t move way out here to get away from some ethnic group or to some other insidious reason. I moved here because I have a large (blended) family and we wanted to own land. It’s a popular narrative to blame sprawl on racism or living above your means. I think the real reason is way more boring than that. Move away from a population center and things get cheaper. Gas is cheaper. Groceries are cheaper. Price per square foot is much cheaper. Those who are upper middle class can live well in the sprawl so of course they do. I have neighbors of every race religion and culture here. They all want the same thing- decent schools elbow room and some fresh air...

Right, and this is a big part of the post-war economics. After WWII a huge number of people were looking to buy homes in an unusually short span of time, and they pretty much all wanted a "typical American home" with lawn and fence. On top of this, there was a large workforce available that basically kickstarted the American homebuilding industry as we know it today, and made buying a brand-new home a very affordable and attractive option.

And what do you get when you have a huge number of people looking to buy brand-new houses? Urban sprawl, there's not really any way to avoid it.

Cheap land and big house is a huge draw for sprawl.

The problem is this is a fundamentally unsustainable proposition. The US is hitting those problems now and it's not pretty. It's not just gridlock but problem that once things stabilize, maintaining sprawl costs more than maintaining a compact city[1]. The roads and the schools in the suburbs are often good only when they're new - once they age, the problem become visible (California is harbinger for the rest of sprawl land, this state has the older sprawl, remember). Poor services can cause an area of sprawl to become undesirable and then it's hard to recover - public transit is hard to add when distances are large but you can still wind-up poor people lacking vehicles in the hinterlands.

[1] https://usa.streetsblog.org/2015/03/05/sprawl-costs-the-publ...

It seems like there would be solutions to most of those problems. Roads are long due for a replacement but something more efficient and cost effective. Utilities are already moving towards decentralization with electricity leading the way but sanitation is on the horizon (see Bill Gates efforts). Depending on the outcome of COVID schools are going to be radically transformed. I think there’s enough energy pushing away from city centres right now to fuel a renaissance of the suburbs.

Roads are long due for a replacement but something more efficient and cost effective.

What could that possibly be? I don't know of anything even on the horizon. Rails and steel wheels are more energy efficient but far more costly to build and maintain. Other nations use rail well by ... not having sprawl. Suburban sprawl essentially rests on the private automobile. As the gp essentially said, the draw of sprawl is a big house and a car, which can be nice 'till your whole planet is on fire and you're choking in rubble (I live in California, can you tell - But Texas will notce climate change too, if they haven't). A road is a just a flat piece of ground, it's pretty hard to find something simpler. Freeways are cheaper to build than railways. But the cost of rebuilding gets huge.

So basically, there are not solutions to these problems. We've basically hit Decline of the Roman Empire levels here. That empire took hundred of years to fall. I'm hoping things last past my lifetime.

Nah, you just lack imagination.

I grew up in Alief too, back when you had to drive past miles of farm fields to get there. We moved there because my dad, a pilot, flew out of Andrau Airpark. (Also, seeing your post history, I am a friend of Roger Linn.)

Tell Roger hey for me and I would love to beta test the next linn drum!!!!

Houston is by far one of the most diverse areas I’ve ever visited in the US, up there with NYC.

And look at that- my cousin has joined the discussion.

What up, Craig!

The INTERESTING QUESTION is did the Federal Housing Administration prioritize white wealth and lives by moving them into an area less likely to get nuked by the USSR?

Also kudos for not being a racist...

But you might want to take a look at history. The US government actively encouraged urban sprawl with low-cost loans and redlining starting with Roosevelt and the New Deal.

"Beginning in 1934, the Federal Housing Administration (HOLC) included in the FHA Underwriting Handbook “residential security maps” used to help the government decide which neighborhoods would make secure investments and which should be off-limits for issuing mortgages[...] Green areas were were explicitly homogenous, lacking “a single foreigner or Negro.”

SOURCES:

- https://www.thoughtco.com/redlining-definition-4157858

- https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-federal-governmen...

- https://www.businessinsider.com/how-redlining-kept-black-ame...

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