About a month ago, a reader of ATC and friend of mine suggested that I write a post on some of the common misconceptions that people hold about cities. I immediately thought it was a good idea and so I started a draft post with some of my initial thoughts.
Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been collecting fallacies as they came to me, waiting until I reached a nice round number like 5. Well today, I reached that number. So here are 5 misconceptions that I think people often hold about cities. If you have any others, or if you disagree, please share your thoughts in the comment section below.
1. Adding more lanes will solve traffic congestion
There’s a saying I read somewhere: Adding more lanes to solve traffic congestion is like loosening your belt to deal with obesity. I can’t remember where I read it, but I like it a lot because it gets at the heart of this fallacy: Trying to build our way out of traffic congestion has proven time and time again to be a losing battle. In fact, it has been shown to make traffic even worse as a result of “induced demand.” The more roads you build, the more people drive.
About a month ago, a reader of ATC and friend of mine suggested that I write a post on some of the common misconceptions that people hold about cities. I immediately thought it was a good idea and so I started a draft post with some of my initial thoughts.
Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been collecting fallacies as they came to me, waiting until I reached a nice round number like 5. Well today, I reached that number. So here are 5 misconceptions that I think people often hold about cities. If you have any others, or if you disagree, please share your thoughts in the comment section below.
1. Adding more lanes will solve traffic congestion
There’s a saying I read somewhere: Adding more lanes to solve traffic congestion is like loosening your belt to deal with obesity. I can’t remember where I read it, but I like it a lot because it gets at the heart of this fallacy: Trying to build our way out of traffic congestion has proven time and time again to be a losing battle. In fact, it has been shown to make traffic even worse as a result of “induced demand.” The more roads you build, the more people drive.
2. A suburban home is always cheaper
While it is true that the
direct
cost of a suburban home is usually less than one in the center of a city, many people often neglect to factor in the
indirect
costs of a home purchase – the biggest of which is usually transportation costs.
As you move out from the center of a city and home prices start to fall, I like to think of it as transfer from housing costs to transportation costs. In other words, what you save on the price of your home, simply gets used to pay for a car (or perhaps a second car), as well as the additional time you’re going to spend traveling.
So how much is an hour of your time worth? Have you ever attached a value to it and added it to the price of your home? Because if you factor in transportation costs and your time, you might find that your suburban home is actually more expensive.
3. Opposing new development and advocating for affordable housing is a responsible way to build cities
Community opposition is a big part of the development game. But what a lot of people don't think about is that when you oppose or stop new development (let’s say it’s residential), the demand for that housing doesn’t go away.
In fact, all it does is create more pressure on the housing stock that does exist and foster an environment where the rich will starting outbidding the poor for housing. More simply, you end up creating a supply constrained market and that drives up home prices. Demand > supply. So in reality, opposing new development and, at the same time, advocating for more affordable housing is a contradiction.
As a comparative example, let’s think about another basic human need: water.
Imagine that you could only buy water from stores (it didn’t come out of taps). But that every time the delivery people were trying to bring more water to these stores, that there was a group of people who fought and opposed them. These opposers already had enough water for themselves and they didn’t want additional water being sold as it would bring new customers into their local grocery store and disrupt their way of life.
This, of course, caused the price of water to rise as the rich people started offering more for the water. This in turn made it difficult for the poorer folk to afford any water at all. But instead of allowing the delivery people to simply deliver more water, it was decided that out of the water that they have, that some of it should be earmarked as “affordable water” and priced accordingly. That would guarantee that the poorer folk could still have some.
Does that sound like a sensible solution to you?
4. Developers don’t want to build big apartments
Here in Toronto there’s a somewhat pervasive belief that developers don’t want to build big condo and apartment units. The thought is that small units are more profitable and so developers are doing everything they can to squeeze people into small units. But I’ve argued before that this isn’t the case. It’s far more nuanced than that.
To illustrate this point, imagine you’re a developer debating between building two 500 square foot condo units or one 1,000 square foot condo unit. If you build the two 500 square foot condo units you’ll need 2 x kitchens, 2 x entry doors, 2 x separate color selection appointments, 2 x separate PDI appointments, and you’ll have to pay development charges on two 1 bedroom units (to name only a few things).
On the other hand, if you build one 1,000 square foot condo unit you’re only going to need 1 of each of the items listed above and you’ll be paying development charges on only one 2 bedroom condo unit (which currently works out to be less than what you’d be paying for the two 1 bedroom units – it’s not quite double).
Which one do you think would be cheaper to build?
5. Technology is going to make cities irrelevant
Lastly, during the dot com era there was a growing belief that technology and the internet were going to make cities and real estate irrelevant. Capital was flowing out of real estate and into tech companies, because that was seen as the future. Bricks and mortar were passé.
But since then we’ve learned that it’s actually the opposite. Paradoxically, technology has made cities even more important. The returns to being smart and talented are huge in the right place. So much so that our biggest concern shouldn’t be whether cities are going to become irrelevant, but whether we’re concentrating too much wealth and talent in only a select few.
So there you have it, 5 misconceptions about cities. I’m sure there are many others, so I’d love to hear from you in the comment section below.
If you’re a regular reader of Architect This City, you’ll know that I’m a supporter of congestion and road pricing. Any valuable good or service, such as a road, that’s offered for all intents and purposes as free, will never be able to keep up with demand. You need to price it.
However, the political risk associated with implementing something like this has made it such that few cities around the world have done it. London and Singapore are the two most common examples.
The more populist solution is to simply build more roads and highways, even though study after study shows that this doesn’t work. If it did, we would have already solved the problem of traffic congestion. And we most certainly haven’t.
Which is why I’m excited about a new startup that recently launched called Urban Engines. Their solution is twofold. It’s based on incentives and on treating people and cars in cities as sensors that feed back data into their network. Here’s a brief video. If you can’t see it below, click here.
The data piece is almost a no-brainer (provided they can get the data). The more data we can collect about the way people and cars move in a city, the more they’ll be able to optimize and manage the flows. The possibilities are endless.
But what I found really interesting is their incentives based approach. Typical road pricing methods are, one could argue, a punitive approach. As traffic increases so does the price of the road. (I like to look at it as efficient pricing.)
With Urban Engines, their approach is the opposite: it’s to reward people–through money and lotteries–for driving during off peak times. It’s smart because selling a reward program to cities will be a lot easier than selling a new charge.
Overall, this a great example of how startups are stepping up to solve some of our most important societal problems. For more information on Urban Engines, check out their website and this writeup on CityLab.
This blog post is a submission to a group blogging event being put on by Meeting of the Minds and Living Cities. The focus is on urban opportunity. Click here for more information about the event.
Since the beginning of time, the purpose of cities has been to bring people together to socialize with one another and to generate wealth. And, today, more than ever, the potential returns of being smart and being in a global city are huge. Cities are our economic unit. They are what’s driving the global economy.
But as the world continues to urbanize at an unprecedented rate and as the global economy becomes increasingly concentrated in select urban centers, how do we ensure that all city dwellers are connected to the economic opportunities being made available by this new information age?
Here are 3 suggestions.
First, we need broad and equitable access to education. I was deliberate in talking about the “returns of being smart.” Education and the right skills are even more critical today, because the labour market is not what it used to be. In Edward Glaeser’s book, Triumph of the City, he talks a lot about Detroit and how the greatest thing the city–and the car industry–did in its history was create lots of high paying jobs for people with little or no education. However it was also possibly the worst thing Detroit did because, today, the city is now stuck with that legacy. And those same high paying jobs for people with little or no education aren’t coming back. The labour market has changed.
Second, we need to ensure that people living in cities have the opportunity to be physically connected. That our cities offer strong transportation and mobility options and that our cities are designed to be inclusive. When I was visiting a friend in Los Angeles a few years ago and lamenting about the traffic, he responded by telling me that LA traffic is merely a socioeconomic problem. If you have the means, you get to live in desirable central neighborhoods where your commute is entirely reasonable. And if you don’t have the means, well, then you get stuck with a horrible 2-hour commute. We know that the rich will always outbid the poor for housing in any city, but as much as possible, we need to give people physical mobility so that they can then achieve economic mobility.
At the same time, the design of individual neighborhoods and buildings matters a great deal. If you’ve ever watched The Human Scale, you’ll likely remember the line:
“First we shape our cities and then our cities shape us.”
As one example, the documentary talks about how masterfully modernist architecture from the 60s and 70s achieved extreme forms of social isolation. It cleansed the urban environment of any sort of public life and brought it all up into disconnected towers. The problem was that it was far too rational. The power of cities lies in their organic and evolving nature. And when you constrain them with mechanisms such as single use zoning and other restrictions, you stifle their potential to generate economic opportunities for their residents–which, as we’ve said, is one of the main reasons people choose to live in cities in the first place.
Finally–and this is a bit of a tie in for everything we’ve been talking about–we need to be proactive about inequality. Research shows that there’s a direct correlation between income inequality and social mobility. The more income inequality a city or country has, the less intergenerational social mobility it has–not to mention that it also leads to more crime and other negative externalities. This is a complex issue though, and I won’t pretend that it can be easily solved with a better public transit and more bike lines. It’s something much deeper and more broad. This one is about a belief that cities should be designed to enhance everybody’s quality of life and to make everybody richer, not just a few.
cost of a suburban home is usually less than one in the center of a city, many people often neglect to factor in the
indirect
costs of a home purchase – the biggest of which is usually transportation costs.
As you move out from the center of a city and home prices start to fall, I like to think of it as transfer from housing costs to transportation costs. In other words, what you save on the price of your home, simply gets used to pay for a car (or perhaps a second car), as well as the additional time you’re going to spend traveling.
So how much is an hour of your time worth? Have you ever attached a value to it and added it to the price of your home? Because if you factor in transportation costs and your time, you might find that your suburban home is actually more expensive.
3. Opposing new development and advocating for affordable housing is a responsible way to build cities
Community opposition is a big part of the development game. But what a lot of people don't think about is that when you oppose or stop new development (let’s say it’s residential), the demand for that housing doesn’t go away.
In fact, all it does is create more pressure on the housing stock that does exist and foster an environment where the rich will starting outbidding the poor for housing. More simply, you end up creating a supply constrained market and that drives up home prices. Demand > supply. So in reality, opposing new development and, at the same time, advocating for more affordable housing is a contradiction.
As a comparative example, let’s think about another basic human need: water.
Imagine that you could only buy water from stores (it didn’t come out of taps). But that every time the delivery people were trying to bring more water to these stores, that there was a group of people who fought and opposed them. These opposers already had enough water for themselves and they didn’t want additional water being sold as it would bring new customers into their local grocery store and disrupt their way of life.
This, of course, caused the price of water to rise as the rich people started offering more for the water. This in turn made it difficult for the poorer folk to afford any water at all. But instead of allowing the delivery people to simply deliver more water, it was decided that out of the water that they have, that some of it should be earmarked as “affordable water” and priced accordingly. That would guarantee that the poorer folk could still have some.
Does that sound like a sensible solution to you?
4. Developers don’t want to build big apartments
Here in Toronto there’s a somewhat pervasive belief that developers don’t want to build big condo and apartment units. The thought is that small units are more profitable and so developers are doing everything they can to squeeze people into small units. But I’ve argued before that this isn’t the case. It’s far more nuanced than that.
To illustrate this point, imagine you’re a developer debating between building two 500 square foot condo units or one 1,000 square foot condo unit. If you build the two 500 square foot condo units you’ll need 2 x kitchens, 2 x entry doors, 2 x separate color selection appointments, 2 x separate PDI appointments, and you’ll have to pay development charges on two 1 bedroom units (to name only a few things).
On the other hand, if you build one 1,000 square foot condo unit you’re only going to need 1 of each of the items listed above and you’ll be paying development charges on only one 2 bedroom condo unit (which currently works out to be less than what you’d be paying for the two 1 bedroom units – it’s not quite double).
Which one do you think would be cheaper to build?
5. Technology is going to make cities irrelevant
Lastly, during the dot com era there was a growing belief that technology and the internet were going to make cities and real estate irrelevant. Capital was flowing out of real estate and into tech companies, because that was seen as the future. Bricks and mortar were passé.
But since then we’ve learned that it’s actually the opposite. Paradoxically, technology has made cities even more important. The returns to being smart and talented are huge in the right place. So much so that our biggest concern shouldn’t be whether cities are going to become irrelevant, but whether we’re concentrating too much wealth and talent in only a select few.
So there you have it, 5 misconceptions about cities. I’m sure there are many others, so I’d love to hear from you in the comment section below.
If you’re a regular reader of Architect This City, you’ll know that I’m a supporter of congestion and road pricing. Any valuable good or service, such as a road, that’s offered for all intents and purposes as free, will never be able to keep up with demand. You need to price it.
However, the political risk associated with implementing something like this has made it such that few cities around the world have done it. London and Singapore are the two most common examples.
The more populist solution is to simply build more roads and highways, even though study after study shows that this doesn’t work. If it did, we would have already solved the problem of traffic congestion. And we most certainly haven’t.
Which is why I’m excited about a new startup that recently launched called Urban Engines. Their solution is twofold. It’s based on incentives and on treating people and cars in cities as sensors that feed back data into their network. Here’s a brief video. If you can’t see it below, click here.
The data piece is almost a no-brainer (provided they can get the data). The more data we can collect about the way people and cars move in a city, the more they’ll be able to optimize and manage the flows. The possibilities are endless.
But what I found really interesting is their incentives based approach. Typical road pricing methods are, one could argue, a punitive approach. As traffic increases so does the price of the road. (I like to look at it as efficient pricing.)
With Urban Engines, their approach is the opposite: it’s to reward people–through money and lotteries–for driving during off peak times. It’s smart because selling a reward program to cities will be a lot easier than selling a new charge.
Overall, this a great example of how startups are stepping up to solve some of our most important societal problems. For more information on Urban Engines, check out their website and this writeup on CityLab.
This blog post is a submission to a group blogging event being put on by Meeting of the Minds and Living Cities. The focus is on urban opportunity. Click here for more information about the event.
Since the beginning of time, the purpose of cities has been to bring people together to socialize with one another and to generate wealth. And, today, more than ever, the potential returns of being smart and being in a global city are huge. Cities are our economic unit. They are what’s driving the global economy.
But as the world continues to urbanize at an unprecedented rate and as the global economy becomes increasingly concentrated in select urban centers, how do we ensure that all city dwellers are connected to the economic opportunities being made available by this new information age?
Here are 3 suggestions.
First, we need broad and equitable access to education. I was deliberate in talking about the “returns of being smart.” Education and the right skills are even more critical today, because the labour market is not what it used to be. In Edward Glaeser’s book, Triumph of the City, he talks a lot about Detroit and how the greatest thing the city–and the car industry–did in its history was create lots of high paying jobs for people with little or no education. However it was also possibly the worst thing Detroit did because, today, the city is now stuck with that legacy. And those same high paying jobs for people with little or no education aren’t coming back. The labour market has changed.
Second, we need to ensure that people living in cities have the opportunity to be physically connected. That our cities offer strong transportation and mobility options and that our cities are designed to be inclusive. When I was visiting a friend in Los Angeles a few years ago and lamenting about the traffic, he responded by telling me that LA traffic is merely a socioeconomic problem. If you have the means, you get to live in desirable central neighborhoods where your commute is entirely reasonable. And if you don’t have the means, well, then you get stuck with a horrible 2-hour commute. We know that the rich will always outbid the poor for housing in any city, but as much as possible, we need to give people physical mobility so that they can then achieve economic mobility.
At the same time, the design of individual neighborhoods and buildings matters a great deal. If you’ve ever watched The Human Scale, you’ll likely remember the line:
“First we shape our cities and then our cities shape us.”
As one example, the documentary talks about how masterfully modernist architecture from the 60s and 70s achieved extreme forms of social isolation. It cleansed the urban environment of any sort of public life and brought it all up into disconnected towers. The problem was that it was far too rational. The power of cities lies in their organic and evolving nature. And when you constrain them with mechanisms such as single use zoning and other restrictions, you stifle their potential to generate economic opportunities for their residents–which, as we’ve said, is one of the main reasons people choose to live in cities in the first place.
Finally–and this is a bit of a tie in for everything we’ve been talking about–we need to be proactive about inequality. Research shows that there’s a direct correlation between income inequality and social mobility. The more income inequality a city or country has, the less intergenerational social mobility it has–not to mention that it also leads to more crime and other negative externalities. This is a complex issue though, and I won’t pretend that it can be easily solved with a better public transit and more bike lines. It’s something much deeper and more broad. This one is about a belief that cities should be designed to enhance everybody’s quality of life and to make everybody richer, not just a few.
