Urban sprawl is how much of the US provides new housing. And here's Conor Dougherty in the New York Times arguing that America needs more of it to fix its housing shortage:
Even if all the regulatory restraints were removed tomorrow, developers couldn’t find enough land to satisfy America’s housing needs inside established areas. Consequently, much of the nation’s housing growth has moved to states in the South and Southwest, where a surplus of open land and willingness to sprawl has turned the Sun Belt into a kind of national sponge that sops up housing demand from higher-cost cities. The largest metro areas there have about 20 percent of the nation’s population, but over the past five years they have built 42 percent of the nation’s new single-family homes, according to a recent report by Cullum Clark, an economist at the George W. Bush Institute, a research center in Dallas.
The obvious benefit is that the resulting housing tends to be cheap. The above article is filled with examples of people buying large homes for a few hundred thousand dollars in newly formed communities across Texas. And if you live in a high-cost city, the social algorithms have almost certainly found you at some point with a shockingly cheap house in one of these places. But, Dougherty also admits that sometimes this may be the only redeeming quality:
Escobar told me he moved to Princeton because he could find a big house there for less than $300,000, but now the city is home, and he didn’t like where it was headed. Over the next four years, he said, his goal is to redevelop the downtown, try to attract offices where locals can work and build out a park system that voters recently funded with a bond measure. “You ask anybody what they love about Princeton, and it’s simply just the affordability,” Escobar told me. “We need to be more than that.”
According to the article, this isn't necessarily a problem, because it's just how cities are built in this day and age. What you do is start with low-cost housing in fringe locations. You grow as quickly as possible until traffic becomes "godawful" and vital infrastructure can't keep up. Then you implement moratoriums on new housing, and start working on other uses like, you know, employment. Eventually, after all this chaos is complete, you end up with something that possibly resembles a real city.
Yeah, I don't know, this seems like a roundabout way of getting to where you want to go. Why not build and plan for something with a high quality of life right from the start?
Cover photo by Leon Hitchens on Unsplash
Last year, Pew Research Center asked over 5,000 adult Americans whether they would rather (1) live in a community with smaller houses that are within walking distance of schools, stores, and restaurants, or (2) live in a community with larger houses, but where schools, stores, and restaurants are several miles away. The result:
Urban sprawl is how much of the US provides new housing. And here's Conor Dougherty in the New York Times arguing that America needs more of it to fix its housing shortage:
Even if all the regulatory restraints were removed tomorrow, developers couldn’t find enough land to satisfy America’s housing needs inside established areas. Consequently, much of the nation’s housing growth has moved to states in the South and Southwest, where a surplus of open land and willingness to sprawl has turned the Sun Belt into a kind of national sponge that sops up housing demand from higher-cost cities. The largest metro areas there have about 20 percent of the nation’s population, but over the past five years they have built 42 percent of the nation’s new single-family homes, according to a recent report by Cullum Clark, an economist at the George W. Bush Institute, a research center in Dallas.
The obvious benefit is that the resulting housing tends to be cheap. The above article is filled with examples of people buying large homes for a few hundred thousand dollars in newly formed communities across Texas. And if you live in a high-cost city, the social algorithms have almost certainly found you at some point with a shockingly cheap house in one of these places. But, Dougherty also admits that sometimes this may be the only redeeming quality:
Escobar told me he moved to Princeton because he could find a big house there for less than $300,000, but now the city is home, and he didn’t like where it was headed. Over the next four years, he said, his goal is to redevelop the downtown, try to attract offices where locals can work and build out a park system that voters recently funded with a bond measure. “You ask anybody what they love about Princeton, and it’s simply just the affordability,” Escobar told me. “We need to be more than that.”
According to the article, this isn't necessarily a problem, because it's just how cities are built in this day and age. What you do is start with low-cost housing in fringe locations. You grow as quickly as possible until traffic becomes "godawful" and vital infrastructure can't keep up. Then you implement moratoriums on new housing, and start working on other uses like, you know, employment. Eventually, after all this chaos is complete, you end up with something that possibly resembles a real city.
Yeah, I don't know, this seems like a roundabout way of getting to where you want to go. Why not build and plan for something with a high quality of life right from the start?
Cover photo by Leon Hitchens on Unsplash
Last year, Pew Research Center asked over 5,000 adult Americans whether they would rather (1) live in a community with smaller houses that are within walking distance of schools, stores, and restaurants, or (2) live in a community with larger houses, but where schools, stores, and restaurants are several miles away. The result:
On average, most respondents preferred the latter option -- the larger home. However, there are some demographic groups that feel differently. If you're young (under 29), highly-educated, Democratic-leaning, and/or Asian, this survey suggests that you have a preference for smaller houses in more walkable communities.
More specifically, in this chart, it's interesting to note that 62% of Asians (survey only counted English speakers), 55% of those aged 18-29, 54% of those with a post-graduate degree, and 65% of liberal Democrats prefer denser places that allow you to walk to more places.
A lot of this isn't surprising, but I don't think I've seen data supporting such a strong leaning from Asian adults before. What makes this even more interesting is that White and Asian households are by far the two richest ethnic groups in America. And here, when it comes to built form preferences, they're on opposite ends of the spectrum.
Another important consideration is the cost of living in walkable versus car-oriented communities. Generally speaking, the latter is less expensive on a cost per square foot basis for homeowners; though, this obviously doesn't include the indirect costs of transportation and the additional time it to takes to commute places.
It is also more expensive to service and bring infrastructure to more spread-out communities. There are real economies to density. Despite this, higher-density living tends to be more expensive. Part of this has to do with higher build costs and more restrictive zoning, but it could also be a scarcity of supply (most of the US is car-oriented).
Indeed, there is a well-established premium to living in walkable communities, which creates an interesting dynamic. The thing that the majority of people reportedly don't want or don't prefer is actually more expensive. This always makes me wonder: What if this wasn't the case? What would happen if we didn't have this cost-of-living differential?
Charts from Pew Research Center; cover photo by Dmitry Tomashek on Unsplash
Good morning from rainy New Hampshire.
It’s been raining all morning, but apparently there is an ocean hidden in the above picture. We also got in after dark and so all I really saw was what I could see on the drive from the airport.
Whenever I am reminded that the vast majority of built form in North America is car-oriented in nature, I can’t help but think of how sticky all of this is going to be.
Witold Rybczynski put it accurately when he said, “urbanism and architecture observe different time lines.” Buildings may take forever to build, but relative to urban form, they actually change pretty quickly.
New materials and styles emerge, and so do new buildings. But the streets that surround them change so slowly, that for all intents and purposes, they mostly don’t change.
What that means is that, for better or for worse, most of what we see is likely to persist. No wonder there is an arms race going on with autonomous vehicles.
On average, most respondents preferred the latter option -- the larger home. However, there are some demographic groups that feel differently. If you're young (under 29), highly-educated, Democratic-leaning, and/or Asian, this survey suggests that you have a preference for smaller houses in more walkable communities.
More specifically, in this chart, it's interesting to note that 62% of Asians (survey only counted English speakers), 55% of those aged 18-29, 54% of those with a post-graduate degree, and 65% of liberal Democrats prefer denser places that allow you to walk to more places.
A lot of this isn't surprising, but I don't think I've seen data supporting such a strong leaning from Asian adults before. What makes this even more interesting is that White and Asian households are by far the two richest ethnic groups in America. And here, when it comes to built form preferences, they're on opposite ends of the spectrum.
Another important consideration is the cost of living in walkable versus car-oriented communities. Generally speaking, the latter is less expensive on a cost per square foot basis for homeowners; though, this obviously doesn't include the indirect costs of transportation and the additional time it to takes to commute places.
It is also more expensive to service and bring infrastructure to more spread-out communities. There are real economies to density. Despite this, higher-density living tends to be more expensive. Part of this has to do with higher build costs and more restrictive zoning, but it could also be a scarcity of supply (most of the US is car-oriented).
Indeed, there is a well-established premium to living in walkable communities, which creates an interesting dynamic. The thing that the majority of people reportedly don't want or don't prefer is actually more expensive. This always makes me wonder: What if this wasn't the case? What would happen if we didn't have this cost-of-living differential?
Charts from Pew Research Center; cover photo by Dmitry Tomashek on Unsplash
Good morning from rainy New Hampshire.
It’s been raining all morning, but apparently there is an ocean hidden in the above picture. We also got in after dark and so all I really saw was what I could see on the drive from the airport.
Whenever I am reminded that the vast majority of built form in North America is car-oriented in nature, I can’t help but think of how sticky all of this is going to be.
Witold Rybczynski put it accurately when he said, “urbanism and architecture observe different time lines.” Buildings may take forever to build, but relative to urban form, they actually change pretty quickly.
New materials and styles emerge, and so do new buildings. But the streets that surround them change so slowly, that for all intents and purposes, they mostly don’t change.
What that means is that, for better or for worse, most of what we see is likely to persist. No wonder there is an arms race going on with autonomous vehicles.
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