The Unknown Future Rolls Toward Us
I’m always surprised by the popularity of things like this Freakonomics colloquium on the future of the suburbs. Rising gas prices and various other considerations have prompted this increased round of speculation on whether the suburbanization of America will reverse, but the right answer needs to take into account the fact that what policy choices we make will have a strong impact on the course of the future:
Higher energy costs will, especially if we ever implement carbon pricing, presumably make urban living more attractive than it currently is now. By the same token, the relative desirability of living in an inner-suburb to a far-out exurb will increase. In a totally unregulated market, that would lead central cities and inner suburbs alike to become denser, with the inner suburbs taking on more of the characteristics of urban areas (as parts of Arlington and Montgomery counties already do in the DC area) as more people pack into these increasingly desirable areas. But of course real estate and development are anything but unregulated markets. Even in Houston, which you sometimes hear talked about as a zoning-free area, there are all kinds of regulations about what kinds of structures you can put on what size parcels of land.
It’s totally plausible that we’ll respond to high energy prices by keeping our transportation spending priorities similar, while incumbent homeowners in-or-near walkable places respond to increased demand by enacting tight development restrictions in order to maintain artificial scarcity of housing stock and maximize the value of their homes. A similar overall proportion of the population would live in the suburbs, but the urban/suburban socioeconomic mix would continue shifting (“demographic inversion”) and overall quality of life will be hampered. Alternatively, we could alter our land use rules to facilitate the construction of denser areas and shift transportation spending priorities. That would slow sprawl, encourage inner suburbs to become less “suburban,” and a shift of the population base toward the cities. That would also be the more prosperity-friendly solution (not because cities are awesome, but because it’s more economically efficient to allocate resources in a manner less constrained by arbitrary regulatory barriers) and I hope it’s the solution we adopt, but whether or not we do it is totally uncertain.
But to make a long story short, we have the built environment we have because of policy. The past half century or so has been dominated by rules about maximum lot occupancy and minimum lot size, parking requirements, and floor area ratio caps that were designed to produce something like the suburbs as we know them. Insofar as we keep those rules, the future will resemble the present. Insofar as we change them, things will change.
Photo by Flickr user lindenbaum used under a Creative Commons license
95 Responses to “The Unknown Future Rolls Toward Us”
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August 12th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
Houston substituted historic covenants for zones.
- g
August 12th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
I have always been amazed at the low density neighborhoods surrounding BART stations in the San Francisco area. We are squandering billions in public investment by not allowing more people to live within a few blocks of a great transit system. Local control has to give way at some point to a smarter use of our collective resources.
August 12th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
A couple of things that seem to be happening in the SF Bay Area mostly without added regulation are (1)infill and remodeling existing homes to increase home size in the inner suburbs and (2) transit villages close to BART and the commuter rail lines in inner and outer suburbs. I’ve heard that homebuilders aren’t doing new tracts but are building out land that is already partially developed. Since we have good open space set asides and above average transit, plus walkers’ paradises (if you like hills) in SF and many older suburbs, this is all to the good.
August 12th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
For various reasons I think it will be darn hard for the incumbent property owners to fend off a supply-side response to rising demand for walkable/transit-friendly inner suburbs. For one thing, there is underutilized inner suburb capacity already available in a lot of post-industrial interior cities. For another, with the exurb markets drying up, developers are going to put enormous pressure on regulators to allow infill developments, since that is the only way they will be able to make serious money.
But we shall see.
August 12th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
Common sense and I must live in different parts of the Bay Area.
August 12th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
Matthew,
As has been pointed out before, the evidence indicates that the growth of sprawl and the massive, decades-long shift from high-density urban lifestyles to low-density suburban ones has little to do with zoning laws or other government regulations. It’s fundamentally driven by increasing wealth and in particular the rise of the automobile as the dominant form of transportation. Cars free people from the need to live close to where they work and frees them from the need to rely on public transportation to get around.
Unless travel by car becomes much more costly relative to travel by transit than it is now, this isn’t likely to change. $4/gallon gas isn’t going to do it.
And by promoting the development of cleaner and more fuel-efficient cars, which will tend to make driving more attractive rather than less, and will tend to increase the demand for spending on roads and highways rather than reduce it, you are working against the higher densities and greater use of transit that you claim to be your goals.
August 12th, 2008 at 2:46 pm
Absolutely correct. One need only look at New York to see the effects of unbalanced policies, those of Robert Moses which destroyed much of 18th century New York and left behind the Manhattan we now, and those in reaction to Moses which preserved places like Greenwich Village in name only. Both sets of policies had the effect of destroying the communities they intended to serve, there’s no “beat” in the Village any more, just ultra-wealthy “bourgeois bohemians.”
The challenge in these policies is to allow neighborhoods to mature, to grow up, rather than simply decamping whole populations while raising or fossilizing the architecture in which we live.
August 12th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
but whether or not we do it is totally uncertain.
Sure, if a 99.999% probability that it won’t happen is considered uncertain. Local entrenched interests are too powerful, and there’s little the federal, state or even regional authorities can do about it.
August 12th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
The future will be exactly like the past, except for magic cars that don’t exist yet. But my failure to back up such projections with evidence doesn’t mean I won’t nit-pick you to death over trivialities.
August 12th, 2008 at 3:03 pm
The other thing Matt doesn’t factor in is the crime and school problem. Young families don’t want to live in bad school districts; most urban school districts suck, and a combination of factors (with influences by all players across the political spectrum) will likely keep that situation as-is. regardless of what kinds of zoning you do or don’t have, parents won’t choose to live near schools that will doom their children.
This is why cities like San Francisco and DC consist of aging people on the one hand, and young childless people on the other. Most people in the middle bail when they start moving towards family time.
August 12th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
“But to make a long story short, we have the built environment we have because of policy. The past half century or so has been dominated by rules about maximum lot occupancy and minimum lot size, parking requirements, and floor area ratio caps that were designed to produce something like the suburbs as we know them. Insofar as we keep those rules, the future will resemble the present. Insofar as we change them, things will change.”
You say this in post after post, but just saying it doesn’t make it true. In your adopted city of Washington, DC, for example, the population declined steadily from 802,000 in 1950 to 572,000 in 2000. Precisely zero percent of that 25%decline was caused by the sorts of rules you mention.
Eastern cities are half-empty under current zoning rules. They have room for hundreds of thousands or even millions before they become as crowded as they were in 1950. Their problems in attracting residents have nothing at all, zero, zip, nada, to do with zoning.
Nonetheless, I expect that a week or so we will see yet another post about how your neighborhood of Columbia Heights would have more residents if only the zoning rules would change.
Before you write that post, will you spend even fifteen minutes educating yourself about residential zoning in DC?
August 12th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
Eastern cities are half-empty under current zoning rules. They have room for hundreds of thousands or even millions before they become as crowded as they were in 1950. Their problems in attracting residents have nothing at all, zero, zip, nada, to do with zoning.
Look, this is very simple. If it were easier to build housing units in DC, the supply of housing units in DC would rise. If the supply of housing units in DC rose, the cost of housing units would fall. If the cost of housing units in DC fell, the number of people buying or renting them would rise. What part of that do you disagree with? If there were no demand for housing units in DC, they would be very cheap. They are, in fact, quite expensive.
August 12th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
A combination of factors (with influences by all players across the political spectrum) will likely keep that situation as-is.
Specifics please?
I see the schools improving as the demographics change. In the hilleast neighborhood of DC, young couples with and without kids are displacing impoverished families to the suburbs. The elementary schools are getting richer and whiter.
At the same time, I see schools in the middle suburbs getting worse. My guess is that in 10-15 years’ time, many urban public schools will be the equal of those in the suburbs.
Of course, that’s just a guess. As is your and Mixner’s assertion that nothing will ever, ever change. Heck, why should it? Nothing ever changed in the past.
August 12th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
DTM- For another, with the exurb markets drying up, developers are going to put enormous pressure on regulators to allow infill developments, since that is the only way they will be able to make serious money.
I wouldn’t be so sure, in MA, for example, the average home pays about $3,500 in property taxes, while the school district pays $8,000 per kid in school. You do the math.
Local officials tend to view development largely through the lense of its effect on the city’s balance sheet. If we’re going to encourage cities to do infill development we’re going to need to change the fiscal calculation with more federal funding for education, infrastructure bonus money for density development.
August 12th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
If there were no demand for housing units in DC, they would be very cheap. They are, in fact, quite expensive.
Ah, but Matthew, you’re fighting against an ingrained set of assumptions by folks that simply cannot fathom that people are interested in living anywhere but a sprawling subdivision.
Nobody wants to live in a walkable community; except that they do, but they can’t because the schools are bad; and that will never change because poor people will always live in the inner city dragging down the schools and safety; except for the fact that urban-living is an overpriced truffle-like alien delicacy that only the most elite of the elitists would ever consider, which is why it’s so expensive.
I think I covered most of the bases.
August 12th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
And also (because an integrated public transport system build on a route matrix, supplemented by local transport on the public right of way relieves us from the necessity of “one size fits all solutions” …
… suburban areas can invest in dedicated transport route infrastructure, supported by local zoning easements around the main transport stops to allow the clustered infill development of multi-use suburban villages.
The idea that the “next system” will be another one-size-fits-all system is a bit puzzling. After all, the way that the current one-size-fits-all system works is by throwing energy at the problem to cover the majority while excluding a substantial minority. Design solutions that are more energy efficient will also be more closely tailored to their circumstances, which suggests that they are more likely to be “enough different sizes to fit all”.
August 12th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
With respect to crime and schools, there are already walkable/transit-oriented neighborhoods in the urbanized area within my metro (including some city and some inner surburb neighborhoods) which have relatively low crime rates and relatively good public schools. And as various city and inner suburbs redevelop, residents are using things like charter schools to make sure their local public schools meet their standards. Generally, I have seen no evidence that walkable/transit-oriented neighborhoods are fundamentally incompatible with low crime rates and good public schools, and I expect crime rates and public schools rankings to trail along behind housing trends.
August 12th, 2008 at 3:37 pm
AJ,
Sure, I wasn’t denying that incumbents often have an economic incentive to restrict development in their area, and perhaps their local politicians will support them. But that just means developers will have to go to a higher level of government to get what they want, which could be county, state, or even federal. Of course that was true before as well, but my point was just that with money drying up in the exurbs, the developers are going to have more powerful economic incentives to lobby at the necessary level for redevelopment closer in.
August 12th, 2008 at 3:38 pm
Quoting Mssr Yglesias:
Bloix Says: August 12th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
Its one thing to not read the whole of the post. But to not read all the way to the end of a paragraph you choose to quote is a rather brilliant display of only seeing what you want to see.
Setting aside the question of whether the entirety of the issue for smart development in an urban area is the maximum population density under a given zoning system … “disproving” an argument about the role that zoning plays in the settlement structure in new suburban developments by reference to an area that you yourself say has been the source of suburban migration and quite evidently not the destination of suburban migration ….
… brilliant.
August 12th, 2008 at 3:38 pm
Look, this is very simple. If it were easier to build housing units in DC, the supply of housing units in DC would rise. If the supply of housing units in DC rose, the cost of housing units would fall. If the cost of housing units in DC fell, the number of people buying or renting them would rise. What part of that do you disagree with? If there were no demand for housing units in DC, they would be very cheap. They are, in fact, quite expensive.
If the supply of housing units in DC rose and the price fell as a result, the value of housing owned by existing residents of DC (or their landlords) would fall. That gives existing DC residents a strong financial incentive to oppose policies that would increase the housing supply. They might also strongly oppose such policies for other reasons, such as the fear that more housing and lower housing prices would reduce their quality of life by increasing crowding, or attracting lower-income residents more prone to crime and other social problems.
August 12th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
But to make a long story short, we have the built environment we have because of policy.
It it possible that some, if not most, of the impetus behind our built environment is people’s preferences and desires? Suburbanization has happened because millions upon millions of increasingly affluent Americans (and Europeans for that matter), over the course of many decades, wanted it. The precise form of suburbanization was surely molded by zoning policy and transportation policy, but the basic fact is that many many people wanted this new-ish way of living.
It seems to me that you rightly draw attention in your blogging to the subtle ways that zoning policy affects decision-making, but to extrapolate from that the idea that the broad social trend of suburbanization has been a matter of policy rather than preference seems completely mistaken.
August 12th, 2008 at 3:51 pm
Matt,
I’ve read dozens of your posts now on how zoning laws are artificially lowering the density of suburbs and contributing to sprawl without any discussion of the reasons why the people who already live in these communities (and control the relelvant political bodies) support the zoning restrictions.
It seems like you are ignoring half of the equation. Unless you analyze the reasons why current residents resist changes to their zoning regimes, you will always be faced with an imbalance of concern similar to the one you point to between us and Iran vis-a-vis Iraq. For residents of a community, its zoning restrictions are critically important. For interested buyers and other outsiders, changes to the zoning rules in a particular community might be nice but are rarely matters of life and death.
I’d always heard that the driving forces behind maintaining restricitve zoning were (1) costs of educating children of young families versus lower property values from which to extract property taxes, (2) externalities such as strain on community services and additional traffic, and (3) a more “aesthetic” objection of trying to maintain a community’s character.
Are those really the reasons behind many suburban zoning rules? Are there others? What policies should be adopted to neutralize the objections to changing zoning regimes? Consider this a request for a post if you start running “requests” threads again.
August 12th, 2008 at 3:51 pm
DTM,
Sure, I wasn’t denying that incumbents often have an economic incentive to restrict development in their area, and perhaps their local politicians will support them. But that just means developers will have to go to a higher level of government to get what they want, which could be county, state, or even federal.
Developers could try to override local government by appealing to a higher level of government, but that obviously doesn’t mean they would be successful.
I think it’s hilarious that you assert, without any evidence whatsoever, that the reason there isn’t more density in regular suburbs is because a minority has somehow managed to thwart the will of the majority–for decade after decade–through zoning laws and other regulations that limit density. And yet you also assert, without any evidence whatsoever, that this will not work for “walkable communities” or “inner suburbs,” and that the will of the majority (as you imagine it to be) will prevail. Wishful thinking piled upon wishful thinking.
August 12th, 2008 at 4:00 pm
In the late ’70s, energy efficiency began to supplant the notion of energy conservation. It was no longer a matter of doing without — ie Jimmy Carter in a sweater — but doing more with less through improved efficiency. In the ’00s, we are beginning to see the same concept play out again spatially. Not only are we seeking efficiency in the operation of our machines and homes, but in our places. The combination of rising gas prices and growing commute times are sending a market signal that we are entering a new era of location efficiency. Increasingly, we want to live in places that are not so spread across the American landscape that great exenditures of time and money are required to navigate between home, work and play. We want more densely populated neighborhoods that permit us to walk, to bike and to take public transportation to reach our destinations. And none of this shift in attitudes has been accomplished through liberal social engineering. Rather, it is simply a matter of market signals and evolving personal preferences.
August 12th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
James Robertson is correct about schools, in my opinion. Urban school districts, as a whole, tend to suck or are at least perceived to suck and that will scare off families that can’t afford private school. Of course comparing urban and suburban school systems is comparing apples and oranges because suburban school systems usually service a more homogeneous population than urban school systems. Schools in middle and upper class urban neighborhoods with funding and parental involvement analogous to schools serving middle and upper class kids in the suburbs tend to mirror their counterparts in performance but get statistically lumped in with schools in poor areas that underperform. So while schools are not polarized to the extent that they appear to be, the perception still remains that kids are far better off, in terms of formaleducation, out in the ‘burbs. It ain’t really true, but everybody believes it anyways. Smaller families and single people are becoming more prevalent these days, and that might mitigate the matter somewhat, but until the population at large still has a cartoonish idea of what cities are and how they work cities will suffer to the benefit of Stripmallia.
I have to disagree with James when it comes to crime, however. This is one area that drives me batty. Crime, by which we all mean violent crime I assume, is almost a red herring. Almost all violent crimes occur between acquainted parties for discernible reasons. Worrying about truly random violent crime is like worrying about slipping on a banana peel or having a piano fall on your head. It can happen, but with a little common sense it can be avoided for the most part by most people.
August 12th, 2008 at 4:06 pm
Eastern cities are half-empty under current zoning rules. They have room for hundreds of thousands or even millions before they become as crowded as they were in 1950. Their problems in attracting residents have nothing at all, zero, zip, nada, to do with zoning.
Bloix kind of has a point. There are a lot of half dead cities in the northeast and midwest. There are a lot of complex for this. Among other things, certain northeaster and midwester states have lost significant population to Florida, Texas, and California.
However, following up on Matt’s point, federal and state governments have massively subsidized a population shift from urban to low density areas over the past 50 years.
Mixner said:
That gives existing DC residents a strong financial incentive to oppose policies that would increase the housing supply. They might also strongly oppose such policies for other reasons, such as the fear that more housing and lower housing prices would reduce their quality of life by increasing crowding, or attracting lower-income residents more prone to crime and other social problems.
This actually sounds an awful lot like what goes on in many suburban communities. In fact, what Mixner describes is one of the primary reason so many suburbs have minimum lot size and square footage requirements for new construction.
I haven’t generally heard of such things in urban areas. Most prospering urban neighborhoods (outside of NYC and SF) at this point are relatively isolated pockets surrounded by much poorer neighborhoods or by sheer blight. As a former resident of such a neighborhood, I can tell you without hesitation that nearly every resident of such a place is beyond happy when new development and redevelopment start to happen in surrounding neighborhoods.
Now I suppose you could say that residents even of urban neighborhoods often oppose greater density and that this is evidence of Mixner’s point. Still, as far as more housing in urban areas goes–I never thought of this as a drag on my property values. Generally a lot of construction and redevelopment presents evidence of a thriving and prospering community and serves to increase property values further, rather than reducing them.
August 12th, 2008 at 4:11 pm
Wishful thinking piled upon wishful thinking.
Unlike magic cars that go 5000 miles on one tank of bullshit.
August 12th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
No, Ixnermay, I think this is the money quote:
I think it’s hilarious that you assert, without any evidence whatsoever
Priceless. I think it’s hilarious, too!
August 12th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
DTM- My point is that if those higher authorities back up their zoning push with cash and favorable changes in their funding formulas that make infill profitable from the city’s point of view they’ll probably be successful. If not, they won’t be. Bankrupting your constituents’ home town isn’t a great way to get re-elected.
Beyond that the political dynamics/economics is a little more complicated than Matt’s entrenched interest formula, though that is indeed part of it. Paul Peterson’s “City Limits” is a good book for laying out the political/economic policy dynamic at the local level, which is fairly different than the federal or state.
August 12th, 2008 at 8:35 pm
Posts like this always make me feel like Matt just came back from a cocktail party with cute Libertarian women.
Yes, the suburbs were built by policy- but it wasn’t a policy of tight zoning. No, it is not hard to change zoning- in fact, it is absurdly easy. If it feels hard to you, something else is going on (for example, maybe you live in a historically significant capital of your nation).
Absolutely immense areas of suburb were built with one requirement- a perc test. After a while they began requiring you to file building and drainage plans- these were so simple that I’ve drawn them myself.
Eventually, after the shortcomings of this piled up, and lots of people were living there who didn’t want their property value degraded by the next hare-brained development, they incorporated or sought stiffer county regulation.
The policies that shaped the suburbs included road-building, federal aid to schools with ‘defense workers’ children in them, and- really, it’s hard to think of much else. The major ‘policy’ that shaped the suburbs was not to have policies.
And no, it is not “totally plausible” that incumbent homeowners would enact restrictive polices to drive up the value of their homes. Homeowners pay taxes every year on the value of their home, but they only collect the increased value when they sell. For starters you can subtract all the homeowners on fixed incomes from the pool of homeowners who would like to see their property values rise.
Frankly, Matt’s obsession with zoning and his ignorance of history are causing him to miss the actual dynamics here. The burbs were built when cheap gas made it possible for people to develop land outside the regulated zone. It is not “totally plausible” to imagine we might keep our present transportation policies- what we’ve seen instead is that people started changing their behavior at $4.50 a gallon, not the $6-$7 per gallon that economists had predicted would drive us to action.
We’re going around the shoulder of the curve and what we need are policies to encourage and sustain developers during the 5-10 year wait for rail transit (i.e., developers buying land now who know that rail will come, but also know it won’t be for another ten years), and ensure the provision of low income housing in the new development. Any city or county council that can handle those two tasks will be perfectly capable to situate street-level retail and other amenities of denser development.
August 12th, 2008 at 8:47 pm
To Mimikatz: there is NOT a lot of transit village housing in the Bay Area. A handful have been built, and they are OK, but are not large enough, IMO. A proposed transit village in planning around McArthur BART was recently reduced in unit size.
People insanely will fight what they perceive to be overly large transit villages.
So the transit village picture in the Bay Area is mixed.
August 12th, 2008 at 9:00 pm
I really think that Mr. Yglesias should get out more. I don’t know about Montgomery Co., Md. but in the older Virginia suburbs, one sees a phenomenon known as McMansioning where older small houses are torn down and replaced by much larger houses (McMansions). Try taking a tour of Arlington, Co., Falls Church, Town of Vienna, and parts of Fairfax Co. inside the beltway. This is proceeding apace as it increases the values of the properties, and hence the tax revenue without increasing costs as the inhabitants of the new houses do not have more children in the schools then the inhabitants of the old houses they replaced did. For that reason, the local jurisdictions favor the phenomenon. Somehow I don’t think that this is what Mr. Yglesias has in mind.
August 12th, 2008 at 9:55 pm
AJ,
Fair enough–I agree many current funding schemes will likely have to change to permit more infill development. Incidentally, among the things along those lines that I suspect will happen is increased city-county incorporation. That could be forced through at the state level, but I actually think more and more small suburban muncipalities are going to recognize the threat of becoming suburban slums and see the advantage of joining up with the local central city.
August 12th, 2008 at 9:57 pm
I’m sure a lot of the above is quite true, but I think the picture Matt chose illustrates an important trend that everyone is overlooking. Covering suburban lawns with white plastic should significantly reduce ambient temperatures and thus reduce the energy needs for homeowners during the summer months. I’m surprised the roofing is not similarly treated.
August 12th, 2008 at 10:07 pm
Rob Mac,
Still, as far as more housing in urban areas goes–I never thought of this as a drag on my property values.
It’s basic economics. Increase the supply of housing in an area and the average price of housing in that area is likely to fall. That’s why housing prices in general have been falling since the real estate bubble burst–because of a growing inventory of unsold properties on the market. Sure, it’s possible that building lots of new housing in DC would not lower the value of existing housing, but that’s not very likely. And existing property owners in DC know that a large increase in housing supply is likely to reduce the value of their properties, which is one reason why they’re likely to fight it. That, and the other fears I mentioned.
August 12th, 2008 at 10:07 pm
Getting out more is precisely the problem, isn’t it?
Forcing people to drive their cars in order to pick up a pint of milk is policy madness, but much of our zoning and housing policies make that necessary. Enforcing low density means that services get spread further apart, and while you could walk the 1.5 miles to the store along roads built to dissuade pedestrians, or you could ride your bike with drivers who have no intent to “share the road” the probability is that you’re going to get in the car.
Policy then makes the following “practical”: buy in bulk, store excess in the second refrigerator and extra cabinets. then build a larger home to expand storage space, everyone needs a 20×20 kitchen just to have enough cabinets to store all that extra stuff.
Then, because you can’t buy bulk in a VW Bug, you need a bigger car to carry all the stuff that you’re going to store in your bigger house.
Public policy makes that insanity sensible. I’m from SoCal, but I see the same thing in VA and MD outside the beltway, only with worse roads (due to weather, no doubt) and less attentive drivers.
August 12th, 2008 at 10:30 pm
Forcing people to drive their cars in order to pick up a pint of milk is policy madness, but much of our zoning and housing policies make that necessary.
Ah yes, those dark mysterious zoning forces strike again, thwarting the will of the American people for decade after decade and “forcing” them to drive to buy a pint of milk. How much longer must we wait for the oppressed majority to finally rise up and overthrow the evil zoning overlords, dammit!?
August 12th, 2008 at 10:35 pm
Mixner,
Two observations:
1) Your analysis assumes fixed demand. If you build more density at transportation hubs, couple it with services like grocery stores and drug stores and the like, you’re likely to see demand grow.
2) Home prices have been falling because they were artificially high. They were kept high by a combination of artificially low teaser payments and speculation that house prices would continue to rise. The slump in housing prices is not due to supply and demand, but due to the fact that the high prices were unsupportable by real wages.
Remember the golden rule: location, location, location. Building a high-rise apartment building at DuPont Circle is very different from building one at Sleepy Hollow and the 244.
August 12th, 2008 at 10:48 pm
Mixner,
I, like all my neighbors, find ourselves “forced” to drive to services from the grocery store to the laundromat. That’s because the “invisible hand of the market” made the nearby locations of our old grocery store, drug store, laundromat and hardware store more valuable as “loft living” than as services to the local neighborhood.
I see nothing nefarious about this, but it is the result of policy, not accident.
But I see that you can jump on a single word without spending a single moment attempting to understand the meaning of the statement, so congratulations to you: you’re proven you can be a bobble-headed pundit.
August 12th, 2008 at 10:57 pm
west coast,
Your analysis assumes fixed demand. If you build more density at transportation hubs, couple it with services like grocery stores and drug stores and the like, you’re likely to see demand grow.
My analysis does not assume “fixed” demand. If demand grows to match the growth in supply, then prices might remain stable. But there’s no evidence that increasing the supply would increase the demand accordingly. And even in the unlikely event that existing residents could be persuaded that a large increase in supply would not adversely affect their property values, they’d still likely oppose it for the other reasons I mentioned.
2) Home prices have been falling because they were artificially high.
Yes, they’ll probably keep falling until they approach something like the long-term average prices with respect to incomes and interest rates. The mechanism that keeps them falling is an excess of supply over demand. When there are more sellers than buyers, sellers compete with one another and lower their prices to attract buyers. The values of existing housing in DC would likewise fall if lots of new housing were added to the DC real estate market and sellers had to compete with all that new inventory to attract buyers.
August 12th, 2008 at 11:05 pm
west coast,
I, like all my neighbors, find ourselves “forced” to drive to services from the grocery store to the laundromat.
If you don’t like living where you’re living, then move. No one’s forcing you to live there. Your claim is utterly nonsensical. It’s like saying that people who live in Manhattan are “forced” to walk to the grocery store rather than drive a car there. If you don’t like living a car-oriented lifestyle, move somewhere else.
August 12th, 2008 at 11:12 pm
Hey, the predicted cliche response:
Bye.
August 12th, 2008 at 11:35 pm
Just to back up Rob Mac’s point, in my city I have never gotten the sense there is any widespread opposition to new residential developments, and instead the current residents of the relevant neighborhoods tend to support such developments.
I think part of the obvious explanation is that people understand the new residents are helping to attract and support local amenities and employers. Not only is that directly advantageous for current residents (e.g., we also get the benefit of the new restaurants, shops, and so on), but that is likely going to help our property values in the long run.
Of course, all this may be a bit alien to people unaccustomed to the dynamics of mixed-use neighborhoods. But for those of us who live in such areas, it is all pretty obvious.
August 12th, 2008 at 11:40 pm
Just to back up Rob Mac’s point, in my city I have never gotten the sense there is any widespread opposition to new residential developments
Ah yes, DTM’s mythical unnamed city and mystical “sense” yet again, utterly unsupported by a shred of evidence. Otherwise known as wishful thinking.
If the laws of supply and demand do not apply in your mythical land, it must be very strange indeed.
August 13th, 2008 at 2:24 am
Homeowners pay taxes every year on the value of their home, but they only collect the increased value when they sell.
Except in California, where I live. Proposition 13, passed in 1978, prevents property taxes from rising more than 2% a year; I don’t need to remind you that there are many years in which the value of the home rises by more than 2%. This has had a big effect on planning and government in general in California; you can look it up on Wikipedia for a primer.
August 13th, 2008 at 2:30 am
Hey, what happened to all the posts between 4:30 and 8:30? Mixner was holding court with some well-reasoned arguments backed up by plenty of evidence.
August 13th, 2008 at 8:03 am
Matt said:
This is obviously true as far as it goes. But it leaves transportation costs out of the equation, which — next to housing — are the second largest element of an American family’s household budget. This is important because when housing and transportation costs are considered together, it may make sense to pay more for housing in DC or an inner suburb than in Loudon County if you more than make up the difference in reduced transportation costs. This is particularly true if you consider the impact on wealth creation. It makes more sense to spend more on buying a house — an appreciable asset — than your car — a deppreciable asset.
August 13th, 2008 at 8:09 am
> Ah yes, DTM’s mythical unnamed city and
> mystical “sense” yet again, utterly
> unsupported by a shred of evidence.
> Otherwise known as wishful thinking.
That is pretty rich coming from the Mixmaster, who claims that walkable, transit-based 1920s railroad neighborhoods with detached houses, back yard, and garages don’t exist because he has never seen one. And who refuses to go take a walk through any of the 3 dozen Chicago neighborhoods I named for him.
Cranky
August 13th, 2008 at 10:13 am
Obviously public policy has made the suburbs possible. The main cause is the public investment in roads and highways and the starvation of mass transit. Other subsidies - some open, like the building of schools and parks, others hidden, like free school bus service and equal pricing for electricity, water and sewer, even though bringing those services to far-flung neighborhoods is much more expensive than to more urban areas. And once the suburbs are built and everyone has a car, retailers can sell in amounts that used to be wholesale - eight or ten bags of groceries at once - and, by putting the distribution costs on the customer, put the corner market out of business.
But Matt has a fixation on zoning as the cause of his high rent, which is just not the issue.
August 13th, 2008 at 12:27 pm
bloix,
Obviously public policy has made the suburbs possible. The main cause is the public investment in roads and highways and the starvation of mass transit.
Far from being “starved,” transit is massively, massively subsidized. Transit users pay a far smaller share of the cost of providing the transit services they use than drivers pay of the cost of providing roads.
August 13th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
August 13th, 2008 at 12:27 pm
Mixner quotes bloix,
Then Mixner Says:
Thanks once again for the reminder that so much of the subsidy for the semi-private auto transport system involves spending on things other than roads.
August 13th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
Not in Arlington. The County Board, with overwhelming popular support, amended the zoning code in 2005 to decrease the allowed lot coverage in single-family zones — specifically to curb the monster-house phenomenon. These things are widely hated.
August 13th, 2008 at 12:58 pm
The statement “transit is massively, massively subsidized” is the kind of thing that begs for substantial data, not just assertion. What’s the sample size? Your county? Your State? The USA? Worldwide? What’s the basis of the comparison? What do you count as revenue and what do you count as costs? There’s so many questions raised by this facile assertion.
August 13th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
That’s just Mixner in his own little world, where cars and trucks struggle down narrow country lanes while lavishly appointed trains roar down four-track main lines built with the public dime.
Don’t worry if that’s not what you see- that just means you’re sane.
August 13th, 2008 at 1:46 pm
I can easily give Mixner some examples of specific real-world neighborhoods where most development projects have been overwhelmingly supported by local residents: the following neighborhoods in Atlanta: Grant Park, Cabbagetown, East Atlanta, SAND, Virginia-Highland, Candler Park, Home Park, and Castlebury Hill. I’m probably leaving lots out, but you get the idea.
Theory may tell us that more supply reduces prices. In practice this is not always the case. If you have 10 fixed up houses in the middle of a blighted urban neighborhood, you won’t have many takers. If you have 500 fixed-up houses with nearby restaurants and stores, you’ll have a lot more takers. More housing in such a situation does more than simply increase the supply. It changes the quality of the housing, so that even the housing that exists gets more valuable as more housing is introduced.
The homeowners in the neighborhoods I listed all generally realize this and that is why they generally support development projects. I attended many a neighborhood meeting in Grant Park and spoke often with my neighbors on this very subject. If someone was building a new apartment building or “loft” that we thought was aesthetically pleasing and fit with the character of the neighborhood, the consensus was always, “Awesome. This will add another $10,000 to the value of my house!”
Mixner’s idea that DC residents don’t want more housing units in their city because they think it will suppress their property values is a thoroughly baseless theoretical exercise. It certainly strikes me as completely wrong from my own personal experiences.
August 13th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
BruceMcF,
Thanks once again for the reminder that so much of the subsidy for the semi-private auto transport system involves spending on things other than roads.
Whatever “things other than roads” is supposed to mean (you don’t seem to have any idea of what you think those things are), or what share of total spending “so much of the subsidy” is supposed to mean (you don’t seem to have a clue about that either), the evidence clearly indicates that transit is subsidized at a massively higher rate per passenger-mile of travel than travel by car.
August 13th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
rob mac,
I can easily give Mixner some examples of specific real-world neighborhoods where most development projects have been overwhelmingly supported by local residents: the following neighborhoods in Atlanta: Grant Park, Cabbagetown, East Atlanta, SAND, Virginia-Highland, Candler Park, Home Park, and Castlebury Hill. I’m probably leaving lots out, but you get the idea.
We’re not talking about “most development projects,” we’re talking about a large increase in the supply of housing in DC. If you think you have evidence (and yes, I do mean evidence, not more guesses and wishful thinking) that existing DC residents would support such an increase, then produce it.
Theory may tell us that more supply reduces prices. In practice this is not always the case. If you have 10 fixed up houses in the middle of a blighted urban neighborhood, you won’t have many takers. If you have 500 fixed-up houses with nearby restaurants and stores, you’ll have a lot more takers.
But we’re not talking about any such contrived scenario, we’re talking about an increase in the housing supply in urban areas, and specifically in DC. As Matthew correctly pointed out: “If the supply of housing units in DC rose, the cost of housing units would fall.” He’s not talking about contrived situations of gentrifying blighted areas, he’s talking about a broad increase in housing supply. This isn’t rocket science, it’s basic supply and demand.
Mixner’s idea that DC residents don’t want more housing units in their city because they think it will suppress their property values is a thoroughly baseless theoretical exercise.
Since you have produced not one iota of evidence to support the claim that DC residents would welcome a large increase in the DC housing supply, it’s your claim that’s “a thoroughly baseless theoretical exercise.” Do you have any evidence? No, I didn’t think so. Just more of the same old wishful thinking.
August 13th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
west coast,
The statement “transit is massively, massively subsidized” is the kind of thing that begs for substantial data, not just assertion.
Been there, done that. See my posts here: http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/07/externalities.php
My comment dated “July 17, 2008 4:09 PM” specifically addresses the data on public subsidies for highways vs transit.
August 13th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
roac,
Not in Arlington. The County Board, with overwhelming popular support, amended the zoning code in 2005 to decrease the allowed lot coverage in single-family zones — specifically to curb the monster-house phenomenon. These things are widely hated.
What does that mean exactly, “decrease the allowed lot coverage?” Do you mean: decrease the maximum percentage of a lot’s area that can be occupied by buildings? Or: decrease the maximum number of square feet on a lot that can be occupied by buildings? If so, that would tend to reduce density, not increase it. Less building per unit area of land. Or did they do something to reduce lot sizes also? Or what? Please give me a link where I can find a description of these alleged zoning changes.
August 13th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
If the laws of supply and demand do not apply in your mythical land, it must be very strange indeed.
I can’t remember who wrote about conservatives’ misuse of economics, but this is a nice example of it.
The “laws” of supply and demand are only laws in markets with perfect competition, i.e., many buyers, many sellers, and no taxation, regulation, or transaction costs.
But in every actual market, the laws of supply and demand are only the start of economic analysis, not its end.
And specifically in the housing market, increasing the supply of housing often drives demand and price increases. Happens all the time. Indeed, it even happens in the suburbs, where some nice new development is built and suddenly more people want to live there.
August 13th, 2008 at 2:50 pm
Description of the Arlington anti-monster house amendments:
This is a fully built-up community. All the land is platted into lots. The change had very little effect on density one way or another. It obviously made it less attractive economically to subdivide an existing lot, but there aren’t many lots in the county that were large enough to start with.
August 13th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
OK, I obviously don’t know how to work the link function.
If you Google “arlington lot coverage” you will find the text of the amendment and a lot of discussion, including the statement from the Arlington Republican Party opposing it.
August 13th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
Mixner Says: August 13th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
Except in those posts, Mixner explicitly restricts automobile subsidies to highway costs, omitting the third party expense of streets and parking places when comparing public subsidies per thousand passenger miles in support of different modes of local transport.
Your mileage will vary by state, but here in Ohio, state gas tax revenue is restricted to use on the same highways, leaving localities to pick up the entire bill for the street network that the majority of the state population requires in order to access the highway network. And a large portion of parking spaces are provided by unfunded mandates requiring provision of parking places in order to gain development approval … though of course the portion of those involving employee parking are partially funded by tax subsidy.
So, clearly, Mixner was either incapable of or not interested in making the comparison that he claimed to be interested in making.
August 13th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
Rob Mac,
As noted above, I would particularly emphasize the point about restaurants and stores: as residents of these areas well understand, local walkable commercial areas are likely to become a nicer and nicer amenity for any given local resident the more people who are patronizing those areas. And a lot of the recent infill developments in my city are a mix of retail and residential, which makes the connection between more residents and more retail quite obvious to the existing residents of the relevant neighborhoods.
And of course those retail establishments are employers, plus these mixed-used developments sometimes have office space as well. Again, more employers moving into the area is good for the existing property owners as well. And you could add in public transit: more residents in an area could mean more service. And more residents could mean more convenient schools. And so on.
Of course economic theory can easily handle all this–economists have long recognized that in various circumstances increased supply can induce additional demand leading to a positive feedback cycle between supply and demand. In this case, all these non-residential components to mixed-use neighborhoods (retail, employers, transit, schools, etc.) provide potential mechanisms by which this positive feedback can occur.
August 13th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
Concrete example to back up DTM’s point: A nine-story highrise with 400+ high-end rental units is due to open up this fall, three blocks from my single-family-house-with-yard. The first floor will be retail. Two tenants have signed leases. One is a branch of a restaurant popular with my family, which we now drive 5 miles to get to. The other is a gym, conveniently opening just about when my daughter’s contract with a gym two miles away expires. Am I in favor of this? Yes. Do I expect it to increase my property value? You bet. Also to help keep my property taxes the lowest in the metropolitan area.
(I will be negatively affected by this if more trips are not added on my bus route. But I expect that they will be.)
August 13th, 2008 at 3:21 pm
Re roac
Apparently, the zoning laws in Arlington Co. aren’t fully effective. I have seen extensive McMansioning in Arlington.
1. There are a number of McMansions in neighborhoods just north of the Arlington Whole Foods Market.
2. There numerous McMansions on side streets between Wilson Blvd. and the Bluemount bike trail.
I will agree that the phenomenon is more pronounced in Falls Church and Vienna.
August 13th, 2008 at 3:38 pm
There are indeed lots of McMansions in Arlington; they’re everywhere. The 2005 amendments made it harder to build more.
I never understood why anyone would want to live in one of those things, until I saw a quote from an apponent of the amendments, who accused supporters of being driven by envy. Whereupon I said to myself: That’s why this guy wants to build a palace for himself — because he thinks people will envy him. Instead of thinking What kind of jackass lives there?
August 13th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
roac,
While we are on the subject of that sort of development, another thing I have heard people talk about is such condo developments serving as an entry-level point into the neighborhood. So, for example, a young professional just starting out may favor a condo in your nine-story highrise. But a few years down the road, they may be looking to move on to a single-family-house-with-yard, perhaps one like yours. So, that is yet another reason you might expect a positive effect on your home’s value from the introduction of this new development.
Again though, just as the positive feedback mechanism through local retail depends on the local area being mixed-use, this entry-level mechanism only works where people at different stages of life are living in the same area. So, people unaccustomed to such neighborhoods may find some of these concepts a bit alien.
August 13th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
“If the laws of supply and demand do not apply in your mythical land, it must be very strange indeed.”
I can’t remember who wrote about conservatives’ misuse of economics, but this is a nice example of it.
It is, as our president says, Economics 101.
August 13th, 2008 at 5:19 pm
Roac,
Your link is defective but I managed to fix it and get to the document. As I suspected, the new zoning rules “decrease the amount of a residential lot that can be covered by houses, accessory buildings and driveways.” This is referred to as “lot coverage.” Under the old rules, maximum lot coverage was 56%. Under the new rules, if I’m reading them correctly, the maximum lot coverage ranges from 28% to 53%.
So the effect of these new zoning rules, which you say had “overwhelming popular support,” is to reduce density. They reduce the amount of housing that can be built per unit area of land. In some cases, the reduction in density is dramatic (from a previous maximum of 56% of lot area to a new maximum of 28%).
Thank you for providing an example of people “overwhelmingly supporting” a zoning change to reduce housing density.
August 13th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
roac,
Concrete example to back up DTM’s point: A nine-story highrise with 400+ high-end rental units is due to open up this fall, three blocks from my single-family-house-with-yard.
Rental apartments obviously don’t serve the same segment of the housing market as single-family homes, so they’re not in direct competition with you. Nevertheless, unless you’re already surrounded by lots of apartments and few other single-family homes, the new building will probably depress the value of your property, especially if it significantly reduces the income profile of your neighborhood.
August 13th, 2008 at 5:33 pm
Mixner, you can define density however you want, but to me it means population density. As I pointed out, the reduction in allowable lot coverage has minimal effect on population density in a community like Arlington, where there is no vacant buildable land. Support for the amendments was based largely on aesthetics: There is nothing uglier than a 4000-square-foot faux-chateau plopped down on a street of modest bungalows.
This is about single-family neighborhoods. Arlington’s overall population density is increasing as the County continues, as it has for the past 30 years, to encourage mixed-use high-rise development along transportation corridors. The electorate seems to approve, as it keeps electing people who support this policy to the County Board.
August 13th, 2008 at 5:49 pm
BruceMcF,
Except in those posts, Mixner explicitly restricts automobile subsidies to highway costs, omitting the third party expense of streets and parking places
Wrong, wrong, wrong yet again, Bruce. You really are just a constant source of false assertions of fact. As the definitions section of the Government Transportation Financial Statistics report clearly states, public spending on highways includes spending on:
“Maintenance, operation, repair, and construction of regular highways, streets, roads, alleys, sidewalks, bridges, tunnels, ferry boats, viaducts, and related structures.”
And:
“Maintenance, operation, repairs, and construction of highways, roads, bridges, ferries, and tunnels operated on a fee or toll basis.”
And:
“Provision, construction, maintenance, and operation of local government public parking facilities.”
I’m not sure who’s worse, you or DTM. You both routinely pretend that your guesses and wishful thinking constitute facts and evidence.
August 13th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
roac,
Mixner, you can define density however you want, but to me it means population density. As I pointed out, the reduction in allowable lot coverage has minimal effect on population density in a community like Arlington, where there is no vacant buildable land.
You have no idea how big the effect on actual population density will be, but the effect will almost certainly be to reduce density, and possibly to reduce it dramatically. The new zoning regulation reduces maximum allowed lot coverage in all five districts zoned for single-family residences, and in the R20 district it reduces the maximum allowed coverage by almost half. Less housing per unit area of land means less “walkability,” makes an area less conducive to transit, and increases incentives to drive.
August 13th, 2008 at 6:37 pm
roac,
By the way, I just took a look at the Arlington’s Department of Community Planning, Housing and Development profile (http://www.co.arlington.va.us/Departments/CPHD/planning/data_maps/CPHDPlanningDataandMapsProfile.aspx), and it appears that far from becoming a “new urbanist” enclave of hip young singles and families, Arlington is increasingly a staid, tired old bedroom community for middle-aged government workers. Young people and young families appear to be fleeing Arlington in droves. The young adult (20-34) share of the population declined dramatically from 34% in 2000 to 23% in 2008. Children declined too. But the middle-aged-to-retiree age group (35-64) increased from 38% in 2000 to 47% in 2008.
August 13th, 2008 at 7:00 pm
Read my lips:
In single-family neighborhoods in Arlington,
EVERY
LOT
ALREADY
HAS
A
HOUSE
ON
IT.
Not literally true, but substantially.
August 13th, 2008 at 7:13 pm
Actually, Mix, having followed your link (and read all your posts there) and you’ve neither been there nor done that. What you did was an exercise in applying incomplete data to incomplete data. GIGO.
August 13th, 2008 at 7:48 pm
BruceMcF
Mixner Says:
August 13th, 2008 at 5:49 pm
My apologies, local spending on streets are included.
Spending on policing of the car transport system is excluded, public and mandatory private spending on parking is excluded, as are the income multiplier effects of national income diverted to oil imports … but local spending on streets are included.
August 13th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
Roac,
And your point is….? So what if every lot already has a house on it? A dangled half-baked thought is not an argument.
The new regulations reduce the maximum size of new (replacement) or expanded houses on those lots. You just asserted that this will make it harder to build more McMansions. I agree. It will also make it harder to build houses even as large as the current inventory, because the maximum lot coverage for all single-family home zoning districts have been reduced. The likely effect of the new regulations will be to reduce housing density, period.
August 13th, 2008 at 7:54 pm
west coast,
Actually, Mix, having followed your link (and read all your posts there) and you’ve neither been there nor done that.
If you have, you know, an actual argument to offer against the data I cited, then make it.
August 13th, 2008 at 7:57 pm
Since you have produced not one iota of evidence . . .
Mixner, if you produced any evidence to back up your claim about DC property owners opposing increased housing availability to keep their property values up, I missed it. And if you didn’t produce any evidence for your baseless claim, how exactly do you go around shouting at people to produce evidence who actually have produced evidence (albeit evidence you don’t like) when you’ve produced none. I mean, are you just being a jerk?
August 13th, 2008 at 8:04 pm
BruceMcF,
Spending on policing of the car transport system is excluded,
Irrelevant. Transit spending does not include policing, either, except special “transit police employed directly by utility.” And policing costs for both highways and transit are only a tiny fraction of the costs of construction, maintenance and operation anyway, so they would have a negligible effect on the overall subsidy ratio even if transit subsidies included them.
public and mandatory private spending on parking is excluded,
I don’t even know what this means. What is “mandatory private spending on parking” supposed to refer to? And public parking is most definitely included, as I already told you.
as are the income multiplier effects of national income diverted to oil imports
Another unintelligible phrase. What are “income multiplier effects of national income diverted to oil imports” supposed to be?
August 13th, 2008 at 8:40 pm
Mixner, if you produced any evidence to back up your claim about DC property owners opposing increased housing availability to keep their property values up, I missed it.
I didn’t say I had evidence of that. I agreed with Matthew that increasing the DC housing supply would be likely to lower the price of DC housing. Increasing the supply of any commodity generally reduces its price. Not always, but usually. And I said further that existing DC housing owners therefore have an incentive to oppose policies that would increase the DC housing supply, because such policies are likely to reduce the values of their homes.
August 13th, 2008 at 8:47 pm
You have to hand it to Mixner — he’s making like Douglas Fairbanks here, posting so fast that half a dozen opponents can’t keep up with him. But I have to go back and quote this:
Which I translate as follows: Ha, ha! You’re screwed! N*****s are going to move into those apartments!
August 13th, 2008 at 9:19 pm
Sure: Your math is woefully incomplete.
You count as “subsidies” only money spent on “highways” or “transit,” but not the tax breaks given to oil companies, auto manufactures, auto sellers, etc. Your “subsidies” don’t extend to the cleanup of toxics dumped by refiners and service stations, to the replacement of water poisoned by MBTE, or to the costs of relocating schools away from highways, the costs of public heath care to those who suffer from asthma, emphysema or lung cancer from the effects of auto exhaust. Those indirect government costs are every bit as much a “subsidy” as direct costs.
Moreover, it seems that current costs of construction are lumped in with operating costs, rather than separated out and amortized over the life of the asset being built. This, all by itself, would have the effect of distorting the actual costs of things.
The math cited, one figure divided by another, does not give a clear picture of either total costs or total benefits, and so is inadequate to the claim.
August 13th, 2008 at 10:00 pm
west coast,
You count as “subsidies” only money spent on “highways” or “transit,” but not the tax breaks given to oil companies, auto manufactures, auto sellers, etc.
What tax breaks? And why would these alleged tax breaks make a significant difference anyway? Transit runs on oil too (and coal, and nuclear). What “tax breaks” do auto manufacturers get that bus and train vehicle manufacturers don’t also get? Show me your evidence of these alleged one-sided tax breaks.
Your “subsidies” don’t extend to the cleanup of toxics dumped by refiners and service stations, to the replacement of water poisoned by MBTE,
Again, transit runs on oil too. And coal and nuclear, which obviously also have environmental costs.
or to the costs of relocating schools away from highways, the costs of public heath care to those who suffer from asthma, emphysema or lung cancer from the effects of auto exhaust.
There you go again. What about diesel exhaust from buses? Have you noticed how dirty they are? And what about all the pollution produced by burning coal to generate the electricity that powers electric trains? Coal is the dirtiest fossil fuel of all.
You’re not making an argument, you’re waving your hand. If you think there is evidence that there are significant public subsidies not included in the Bureau of Transportation Statistics’ data that apply to highways/cars but not to transit, then produce that evidence. Otherwise it’s just more guesses and wishful thinking on your part.
August 13th, 2008 at 11:45 pm
Oh, good, this thread is still active; I realized something on my walk home from work today: the flaw in the supply-and-demand arguments.
Building more densely will reduce the price of housing. But it will increase the price of land. If I buy up land that currently supports ten single-family homes and build a high-rise with 100 apartments, even if each apartment goes for a quarter of what the original houses cost I’m still making a tidy profit (less construction fees etc). So the price of land goes up, since developers can do more with it. But the price of housing still goes down, since each unit of housing requires less land.
This explains the actual observed pattern: high-density districts have high real estate prices (Manhattan doesn’t have ridiculous land values despite density, it has ridiculous land values because of density). At the same time, higher-density building allows an influx of relatively poorer inhabitants. Many owners of single-family homes prefer a much less dense, richer neighborhood; the zoning is in effect a cartel enforcement mechanism, by which everyone is assured that no one can make a large sum of money by selling the land to developers who will build densely on it.
August 13th, 2008 at 11:57 pm
Mix,
ROLFMAO! “There you go again” What an awesome lack of self-awareness!
Do you really think that transit systems are using 1/2 of all petroleum products in the US? Is it your position that a tax break given to attract a Ford or Chevy plant to a county is shared equally by auto and light rail riders? Do you have a shred of evidence suggesting mass transit systems in any region create as much pollution as personal vehicles in that region? Did you understand the problem with including construction costs in your math?
LOL! “There you go again.” Priceless!
August 14th, 2008 at 1:38 am
west coast,
Do you really think that transit systems are using 1/2 of all petroleum products in the US?
Er, no. I have no idea why you think this question is relevant. Or the other questions you ask. You do realize, don’t you, that highways provide vastly more passenger-miles of transportation than transit? The ratio is something like 90 to 1. So we obviously wouldn’t expect transit systems to consume anything like “1/2 of all petroleum products” or produce anything like “as much pollution as personal vehicles,” would we? The relevant comparison is consumption of oil, or amount of pollution generated, or value of “tax breaks,” or whatever, per passenger-mile, remember?
Still waiting for your evidence that there are significant hidden highway subsidies, not reflected in the government’s transportation revenue and spending figures, that do not also apply to transit. The BTS data indicates that we subsidize transit around $400 per thousand passenger miles, and highways only around $5 per thousand p-m. That is a huge disparity. If you think you have evidence indicating that there are hidden highway subsidies that come even remotely close to the difference between these two numbers, then present it.
Oh, and before I forget: Priceless!
August 14th, 2008 at 4:42 am
I am so full of shit you could fertilize Iowa with me. I demand evidence from others but expect people to treat my assertions as holy writ. I am as sad as pure sadness.
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