College Towns: Urbanism from a Past Era
governance.fyi
governance.fyi
I could not convince anyone here to stop doing this. Again, for locals, this is their culture.
Similarly, I don’t think most Americans can grasp the difference between American cities (including in Puerto Rico) built for cars vs for pedestrians. Most will argue (including here), that this is a function of the size of the place. And America is big, and in places sparsely unpopulated, undeniably. But this is not the reason. Europe too is big. With many less populated places. And there are cars everywhere, most people own one.
It’s now cultural. Culture can change, but when combined with architecture at an industrial scale, I’m afraid the change will take much longer than a natural human lifetime.
What if it's some obnoxious rebellious college kids who think they can get away with it?
What if it's some tourists, like from Cuba or Argentina, who are rich and so nobody in authority will handle complaints against them, because tourism feeds PR's economy so effectively?
What if most Puerto Rico residents don't really go hang out at the beach at all, and they stay home with their families, and they cook in the kitchen and they enjoy conversations?
What if Puerto Ricans are mostly like Americans, and their faces are all in their smartphones, and some of them play loud music and some ignore it, and some hate it but don't complain, and some complain but also play their own loud music to try and drown it out?
What if Puerto Ricans don't have one monolithic culture that you can generalize while we're here on an English-speaking forum, based on the mainland USA? What if Puerto Ricans don't actually eat elephants or giraffes? https://youtu.be/mzK9_TbzReQ?si=-QsUIwt_0SIcY-gt&t=28
Maybe we could encourage folks to migrate to college towns from the exurbs with subsidies and job guarantees, versus them staying in place while where they exist today rapidly declines. They would then continue to support the town as residents through their social security or pension income they would spend locally through retirement until death. New urban builds take decades while retrofits and reconfigurations take much less time, effort, and fiat. "Skate to where the puck is going to be."
[1] https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2024/7/22/what-strong-to...
[2] https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2022/9/20/the-suburbs-ar...
[3] https://www.financialsamurai.com/average-new-car-price/
[4] https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/loans/auto-loans/total-co...
[5] https://www.pymnts.com/transportation/2025/car-repos-hit-lev...
[6] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-03-06/late-car-... | https://archive.today/dfCjJ
[7] https://iowacapitaldispatch.com/2024/03/11/who-will-be-left-...
[8] https://carsey.unh.edu/publication/rural-america-lost-popula... (draw your attention to "Figure 2. Population Change In Nonmetropolitan Counties, 2010 To 2020")
(think in systems)
How would it look like if there were reduced day-to-day car dependency? Maybe something like this: a "walking schoolbus" where senior citizens and schoolchildren connect with one another as they get exercise on the way to school. Who wouldn't want that? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeYBL5u97c8
“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” got us cars, and I think the new question is "How do we deliver locality and mobility for quality lives without cars, when possible?" Cars are not going away, but we should not build for them specifically as if they were the default option, as this cost burdens the future with potentially unnecessary and expensive personal mobility and infrastructure obligations. Even today, they are unaffordable for a substantial population of people, based on the evidence in my comment above.
Without changing the US' urban model to actually allow more homes, all that will do is keep the status quo and make everything more expensive.
A potential solution is for cities and communities to issue bonds, purchase housing near schools when the economics are favorable (ie try to avoid overpaying), and hold it as public affordable housing for families (perhaps in concert with upzoning; buy adjacent parcels, demo, and rebuild as more dense multi family). Political will is the wildcard.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42277358 (citations)
[2] https://www.haas.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/Howard_Wang... (pages 22-23, 27 specifically)
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VryFaFsKhVE
[4] https://www.epi.org/blog/the-school-bus-driver-shortage-rema...
[5] https://www.ncsl.org/state-legislatures-news/details/states-...
[6] https://usafacts.org/articles/how-have-us-fertility-and-birt...
[7] https://usafacts.org/articles/what-will-americas-population-...
It doesn't. It really, really doesn't. The per-capita housing units are close to the historical highs. And per-household stats are _even_ _better_: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=15tRv
What the US has is the density-despair spiral going. It's creating denser and denser pits of despair in the urban centers via economic forces.
After all, what use is housing in Iowa if you _have_ to live in New York? Because there are no jobs for you in Iowa. And housing in New York will NEVER be cheap.
Construction Capacity: America's Diminishing Housing Pipeline - https://www.governance.fyi/p/construction-capacity-americas-...
Housing Supply and Housing Affordability - https://www.nber.org/papers/w33694 ("The decline in housing affordability over recent decades has promoted an enhanced interest in housing supply. This chapter presents descriptive evidence about the evolution of us housing prices, quantities, and regulations since 1980, indicating that supply constraints appear to be increasingly binding. We then provide an overview of the various approaches used to model construction and land development for homogeneous and heterogeneous housing in static and dynamic contexts to understand housing supply. Our treatment incorporates empirical implementation and policy implications throughout. Finally, we provide an overview of quantitative evidence on the consequences of relaxing various types of supply constraints.")
We live somewhere in between the "new builds" part of town and the area that has a bunch of schools, so the walk from our neighborhood to our assigned (and closest) middle school is only 2.5 miles, a 55 minute walk with 155 ft elevation change. This walk takes you across a road with a 60MPH speed limit, basically an expressway. The elementary school is a bit closer, only a 40 minutes, 2 mile walk, but same expressway.
Oh, and they don't even offer a school bus of any kind. I suppose the gen-x parents killed that idea off 25 years ago because they were so worried their kids would be out of direct supervision even walking to a bus stop, so each child is chaufferred door to door, rain or shine, until 16 when they receive their own cars.
I agree with you that all this is absurd. Kids are capable of walking to school and shouldn't have to leave a medium-sized neighborhood to do so. But significant demolition of neighborhoods and construction of schools, local grocery markets, etc. is the only prescription for our ills that would provide anything resembling an alternative to cars for the residents of the tract homes that make up a significant part of our car-dependent suburbs.
This is why I think whoever upthread is arguing that people aren't exactly being reasonable expecting the America we inherited from the 20th century to stop stalling and transform itself into 1,000 Amsterdams. Even though the places that share that awesome non-car infra are highly sought-after.
It's not. It's the right design idea. But it's just missing one factor that will make it far superior to ANY other urban model: self-driving vehicles.
Imagine children being able to just get a self-driving taxi and ride to school by themselves. Or to other locations. All while having plenty of space at home, a yard to play, etc.
Even assuming we turned smarter and built clean nuclear plants everywhere, just all the paving of roads, tires etc. takes a lot of resources.
I believe that robotaxis will enable totally new behaviors. For example, if you don't live immediately near a park, you won't often go there. It's just too tiresome to use public transit to visit a park just for a short walk/run/play. And personal cars are not available for children.
With robocars, you'll be able to text your friend: "hi, meet you at the park corner in 10", jump into a car, and arrive there. This will have zero friction, so it's far more likely to become a habitual behavior.
> Even assuming we turned smarter and built clean nuclear plants everywhere, just all the paving of roads, tires etc. takes a lot of resources.
Ha. One line of Manhattan subway now costs as much as 1500 miles of modern 6-lane freeway. Urban construction is EXPENSIVE.
You can buy these cars new under $25K.
Toyota Corolla LE ($23,460), Hyundai Elantra SE ($23,025), Kia K4 LX ($21,990), Nissan Sentra S ($21,590), Mazda3 2.5 S ($24,150), Subaru Impreza Base ($23,495).
I make decent money and I would never spend more than $25K on a car. Of course you can also get used cars with low mileage.
As far as people in rural areas. They deserve every negative thing that they keep voting for.
A gravel road to a dying town doesn’t seem like a failure mode to me.
They don’t build train lines to dying towns in Europe either.
There's a good summary on Matt Yglesias's blog of Matt Darling (economist at Niskanen Center and Twitter debunker of this paycheck to paycheck myth) on the subject: https://www.slowboring.com/i/149683266/the-median-financial-...
Honest question: What's the difference? Mitigating the negative aspects involves making others aware of the negative aspects, but many people see that as ranting and railing. What does a productive conversation look like?
An example: I live roughly 200m from the Costco in the center of town, but there's a major 4 lane road between us. Walking would be so convenient, but it's so much safer to drive. A footbridge would address this without impacting drivers. I have no intentions of giving up my car, but this particular activity would be so much nicer without it!
The size of the country has almost no bearing on the way we develop our towns and cities, subsidize car production, assume/require car ownership in public policy, etc.
It's also quite the stretch to claim the UK as the best country in the EU and even more to claim that it doesn't also have a car culture. And it's not just "America's worst state", the vast majority of US town and cities are car dependent.
1. The stock is divided into two sets: single decker trains that are falling apart but are still better than new stock because they were designed during an era where there was actual consideration given to comfort. They are old and run down but more comfy.
The new double decker trains are a design by committee nightmare: they have uncomfortable molded chairs made mostly out of plastic, super cold, noisier due to the terrible shifting whine of the electric motors, and now poorly maintained (god help you if you have to use their rest rooms).
2. They are constantly stopping due to priority given to amtrak and commercial rail. In the best case scenario the train takes ~45 mins to get from central NJ to NYC with stops. For about ~20 miles of track distance, that averages out to ~29-31mph. If Amtrack stops you that time is extended.
3. Very slow speeds due to old track technology.
4. Rising ticket costs for the same lousy service. (~$21 round trip from central NJ to NYC) I guess being able to have a digital ticket helps? (It probably helps them more than it helps you)
5. Pure depression because outside the main routes going into NYC and Hoboken, the dregs of society are the only ones riding these trains. This really grates on you if you take the train for years like I did.
6. Recently, they couldn't even provide working windows so people can see the 'beauty' of NJ. ( To be fair after all the TikTok meme videos called them out on this they finally got embarrassed enough to start replacing them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-a3r6i4hiQ )
It all priorities. People in the US just dont want mass rail over other priorities. The people who do are internet keyboard warriors.
(Possibly you mean by some other metric, but I'm struggling to think of _any_ metric by which the UK could be said to be the best country in Europe. Sitcoms, possibly. It does a good sitcom. Even outside London!)
This is the polar opposite of Europe. I've taken even the run down ugly german trains that they still run on irregular routes and even though the trains are antiquated, they make sense and get the job done. People are respectful even if the train is packed. I wouldn't want to go back to trains in America other than for sparse occasional trips.
I often look at maps like this and think maybe that would be amazing: https://i.imgur.com/srMhE1X.png
But then i'd probably just take an airplane for most trips because 1-2 hrs of leg cramps with a typically quiet passenger crew is better then a misbehaved train carriage.
Fixing the trains is not fixing the society. The trains are probably broken because the society is broken.
An orientation towards adopting new ways of living when the old ones become impractical or harmful can be just as part of a person's "culture" as a piece of technology.
Well yes, corporations are considered 'people'. I think it was some of these 'people' that tore up the streetcar networks in order to replace them with buses.
Please don’t accept 100 extra funerals a day. It can and will get better.
My country had very bad traffic deaths record. few decades later, traffic is much more intense and there're many more cars, but traffic deaths are waaaaaay down. Thanks to better infrastructure, better cars and better culture especially when it comes to drink and drive...
America already bulldozed through walkable streetcar towns for cars less than a century ago. So, the precedent for the change is there. It's not like cars are the way of the ancestors
As another comment mentioned, car infrastructure is an unsustainable spend. America is entering an era of expensive labor, lower fertility and bi-polar super powers. Therefore, unsustainable systems are beginning to give.
It's tempting to call car centrism a personal preference. But North America stands alone against a near-global consensus on what urban infrastructure should look like.
At some point, there’s going to be a large number of cities where a majority of homeowners are too old to drive.
If you're too old to drive you're probably also not in the best position to walk far or walk while carrying shopping/groceries. Combined with the obesity epidemic many people simply aren't healthy enough to walk 1km.
One big problem people have, for example, is that we just focus so much on roads and there is literally no safe infrastructure for other kinds of people; but drivers also balk at using taxpayer money to build said infrastructure, particularly if it is perceived as reducing driver convenience even by mere seconds. Or even pausing the construction of new, dangerous infrastructure.
People at large are rational and will make rational transportation choices given incentives. The incentives are all aligned towards driving right now because that benefits the auto industry.
You cannot make assertions about how Americans behave, "culturally," based on their transportation choices because these choices are not happening in a vacuum.
Case in point: when Americans visit Disneyland, or NYC, or Amsterdam, they do not typically insist on driving through those places.
But even if we accept your premise that American “culture” prefers cars (rather than being a result of decades of expanding as fast and as cheaply as possible across the country), culture can change. It does change.
A lot of American beaches will have signs up saying no music. As well as no beer etc but they aren't always followed.
Almost empty. The only noise is nature and waves.
[1]:https://i.imgur.com/6Af0Yip.png
[2]:www.thetruesize.com
(Keep in mind that picture was taken when the US has 58 million less people or 17% smaller than today)
But we also have to understand that the US continent could grow to a billion people and still only have the density of France. That is not a matter of lack of land, its a matter of political will.
There have been attempts to push this idea: https://ui.charlotte.edu/story/why-not-1-billion-americans-o...
Anyway given that the land is sparsely populated it is still a fair comparison: When you have such a small population but access to such abundant resources that few others have on the planet, you are going to end up in a scenario like what the US has now.
Here's a map of it; see how densely it links up this vast country: https://vizettes.com/kt/rta/maps/usa-rr-1920.gif
Meanwhile, the Netherlands was completely car centric just like the USA until the 1990s, when they decided to start redesigning roads to prioritize walking and cycling. Are you sure these things are really inexorably linked to geography?
People in Europe dont take a train from Greece to Sweden. They fly. In fact most fly Vienna to Amsterdam.
In the same way somebody from New York would definitely fly to LA. (They are not driving now btw)
That doesn't preclude the existence of public transport connecting NY to Philadelphia. It also does not preclude NY from being walkable! Or bikeable. It doesn't stop NY from having good public transport! It doesn't force you to drive to work in NY.
This is much more about local policy.
Different solutions at different scales!
Feeling like you don't belong in your own country is maddening and difficult to accept.
If you look at the US, the old (by American standards) cities like Boston, NYC, are pretty car-free friendly. Same with the cores of European cities which are much older.
The further west you go, the newer the city and the more they are designed around having a car.
If you do not zone for housing you are zoning for homelessness. Plain and simple.
You don’t have to go far from SF to get to single family houses, which should not be possible. They can solve this by adding a land value tax inversely proportional to the distance from specific city functions.
We can have beautiful, clean and safe cities that are much more affordable. It is a choice not to.
As it stands now housing is completely unaffordable. The median income in San Francisco is $120k which means half the people there don’t even make that. I would like my kid’s elementary school teacher to be able to afford not to have roommates.
Also for what it’s worth 70% of the homeless in SF are from SF.
(Self reported) - and why would you tell some survey taker you came in on a Greyhound from Bakersfield because you know they have far better amenities for you in SF?
But I gave up on SF and left years ago because the majority of their voters apparently like the situation, since they keep electing the same set of people and supporting ballot measures to keep trying the same failed strategies. Just one more tax increase. Just one more blocked condo tower, just one more $100M bond, and we'll fix homelessness AND housing affordability. Just one more!
When you're young and not tied down, and also likely lack much money, you prioritize a different lifestyle and are also in college to, presumably, accomplish your goal of getting a degree and learning something.
For many, once they get older and desire a slower, calmer, quieter life, and especially if you want more space with kids, the suburbs start holding more appeal. And that also factors in constraints about job availability.
Suburbs don't need to be car-dependent. The suburban appeal in fact has nothing to do with cars.
In Germany as just one example, there was (when I lived there) excellent, reliable bus service in and between suburbs. And connecting the suburbs to light rail, which connected to the city center.
The big complaint I had in my 20s was that the light rail stopped running before midnight.
Probably true, but unless you have infinite money, building enough housing with expensive rail infrastructure is pretty tough. We can only manage truly world-class(ish) transit in (parts of) one city, NYC, and plenty of people still routinely choose to move out of Manhattan upon having kids instead of staying, either because they can't afford enough space to reasonably make a go of it, or because it's so much easier to do the car-dependent suburb. So, the people themselves are choosing it. Whatever anyone thinks of it, there is plenty of evidence that a lot of people who have a choice choose something other than the urban walkable deal.
PS: Don't come at me please, I loved living in a big urban city, but moved out because I refused to choose only one of: big enough home, safe neighborhood, decent schools, reasonable commute distance. And honestly to stay in the urban core where I used to live, only "commute distance" was even available.
Take a look at a satellite view of the suburban areas where most Americans actually live. They're mostly post-1950 and were built with basically the opposite assumptions as Europe:
1. Homes spaced generously with residential districts stretching out tens of miles in every direction from the dense-ish core.
2. Homes fully isolated from business districts (i.e. anywhere anyone would want to go)
3. High-speed arterial stroads or, in tonier suburbs, basically expressways, which serve as the connection between neighborhoods.
4. Offices and other workplaces dispersed into strip malls, long stroads, and industrial parks throughout an area, rather than concentrated in a primary central business district.
Turning all that into a cool Dutch city or town where people are going to bike or take trains everywhere pretty much requires bulldozing and starting again. Again I say this with no judgment, I think 'Not Just Bikes,' for instance, makes a perfectly good case that our way is lame and the Dutch are doing great. But realistically I would never hold my breath expecting the US to transform even 1/10 of the way to the Europe style of transport.
I'm 61 now, and for the last 6 years I've lived in a very small village in rural NM. Those big cities? Well, I'll go if I have to and will not complain the way some folks would. But I certainly do not love them the way I once did, and it's not because they changed.
Too noisy, too dirty and the bad traffic...
If colleges represent the ideal social environment, count me out.
I like city density myself, but you do have to remember that "high capacity accommodations" in this case means "sharing a room with a stranger and a bathroom with twenty."
Well they certainly aren't able to buy within walking distance of their office job. Even if housing exists, is not dangerous, or they could afford it, it won't work if a couple doesn't work in same exact area, unlike strolling around campus between classes.
Also, American liberal culture tends to follow higher education, which not only means a desire for certain things, but also a love of rules to block "bad things". This often means preserving old cities.
Depends on how they were built. For some college halls in the UK, maybe a few hundred years worth?
So you end up with worn out carpet, paint flaking, broken door handles, etc etc.
That’s why there is a different much smaller but much better pool of properties for people willing to do an 18+ month lease.
This is why it can’t really play out as nicely everywhere. You might work across town from your partner vs merely across campus, or in another town. Your location is compromised by definition and not benefiting from economies of scale like it was when it was at least compromised with another 40k people in your demographic with a similar commute and life pattern within 2 square miles. And you don’t have to pay a couple thousand a year for parking privileges either so you might be taking the car on trips that would have been a forced walk in college for lack of car.
The disneyland point is a bit tired and worn imo among internet urbanists and doesn’t even make sense in practice if you’ve ever been to disneyland. Main street isnt the draw. It is this strip of shops you are obligated to walk through as you enter the park to try and tempt you from your dollar. You can’t even hang out there; all the shops are packed with people looking at merchandise, all the restaurants on main are like coffee and ice cream “please leave and keep walking” places, and during fireworks display it is a miracle and a testament to the staffing that there isn’t a crowd crush from people leaving through the bottleneck as well as people staying to see fireworks framed with the castle. In these situations they actually open up a staff only alley to the public that is parallel to main street to relieve some of this bottleneck.
A more universal example is probably towns with large seasonal influxes, such as ski towns or beach towns, but unlike a college town, these locations attract people of all ages and incomes. College towns in the US have an influx of specifically 18-22 year olds who can afford college but might not have a lot of disposable income, and most leave during the summer.
You mean Tom and Jerry?
> Ryan Allen is a professor of international education at University of America in Southern California
What in the… what? That’s not a university. That’s not even a university system. The only sort of person I would expect to call… I don’t know, USC?… that has never observed the name of an American state university used in context in the English language.
Enormous red flags in like the first three sentences.
One time I had this project in Switzerland and my co-worker, who also travelled there, figured he'd save money if he rented a bunk bed in illegal (due to density) quarters.
Terrible experience, which got him fired eventually because he quickly lost steam due to having to share a tiny room with three other people.
I on the other hand moistened every Swiss Frank banknote with tears, but splurged thrice the amount on a proper room and survived until the end of my involvement in that project.
You suggested that flophouses are worse than a proper room.
Both of these things can be true.
The "modern" urbanism (flophouses, shoebox-sized apartments, 15-minute don-you-dare-to-walk-out neighborhoods) is leading only to decay of the country. Evidence: it absolutely helped to elect Trump.
higher ed has drifted toward more of an “all inclusive resort” model over the last 50 years where students get to live in a “parallel” version of the city with their own police force, medical center, dining halls, entertainment venues, etc. this is an intentional move to let them live in a utopian setting that pacifies them to prevent widespread student activism like the 70s