A Spectrum of Places
I’ve been meaning to link to Ben Adler’s piece on the contrast between two different kinds of suburbs in the Washington, DC area. One’s built along new urbanist lines, the other a very 2000s-style exurb in Virgina.
You should just read the piece and assimilate the arguments it makes. But as a broader theme, it illustrates the fact that our ways of talking about kinds of places—urban vs suburban, dense or sprawling—elide huge diversity in how places can be organized. A lot of times conversations about these kind of things get distorted by focusing on the idea of shifting people from one ideal-type to another. So you imagine a family that lives on a cul-de-sac and owns two cars and their oldest kid is hoping to get a car as soon as she turns 16 because without a car you can’t get anywhere at all and wonder what it would take to get them to start living like a carless twentysomething on the Lower East Side. Well, it’s very hard to say. But in reality there’s a huge spectrum of kinds of places that people can live and a much more realistic vision of a more sustainable America involves a systematic shift along that spectrum rather than anyone wanting to make huge discontinuous leaps.
43 Responses to “A Spectrum of Places”
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May 6th, 2009 at 11:34 am
can’t make the “send Matt a message” thing work; you or your readers might find this bit from Forbes of interest: “State of the City”
http://www.forbes.com/2009/05/05/state-of-the-city-opinions-contributors-urban-future_land.html?partner=daily_newsletter
May 6th, 2009 at 11:39 am
These are points people in Matt’s comment section have long been making, but it is nice to see Matt echoing them.
One criticism of Adler’s piece: he ends with the argument that new urbanist communities must be zoned and otherwise regulated into existence. But if he is right that the demand for such communities is currently undersupplied–and I believe he is right about that–then I don’t think we should need such a heavy-handed regulatory approach.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:45 am
There isn’t a spectrum of choices, that was the insight from Krugman on agglomeration, and Keynes on demand shocks. Each of your spectra contain many variables, housing is one, transportation, education, and shopping. The economy can only find discrete solutions that achieve economies of scale and still delivers the smooth distribution of supply across necessities.
The lack of spectra, or more mathematically, the finite dimensional basis of the economy, are what causes sudden restructurings like we have.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:49 am
In a perfect free-market world, where people have good information and react swiftly to it, what DTM says would be true. But the reality, as Jefferson pointed out long ago, is that people will generally keep doing what they’re used to doing until the consequences of doing so get pretty steep.
I’m sure that holds as true for suburban developers as for everyone else.
Makes me think of baseball, where, courtesy of Bill James, better statistical tools for evaluating players were widely available since about 1982, but decision-makers inside baseball basically ignored those tools for nearly two decades.
Quite often, people have to be pushed into doing the very things that the market will reward them for doing, if one wants it done quickly.
If we’re talking about a new kind of microwave oven, the world can afford to wait. But when it comes to producing better configurations of where people live, work, shop, and spend their leisure time, we can’t wait for the market to catch up, because if we do, we’re locking in energy use patterns that will drag us down for decades to come.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:52 am
What market failure keeps this demand for new urbanist living “undersupplied?” The same one as that keeping the demand for HSR rides “undersupplied?” Is this one of those “nudge” things?
May 6th, 2009 at 11:52 am
By the way, I agree that “spectrum” is a misleading metaphor in this case. New Urbanism has certain principles, themes, and so on which can be applied in many different developmental contexts, including what we would call suburbs and exurbs, but by the same token those developments remain alternatives to other sorts of developments which do not incorporate those principles, themes, and so on.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:54 am
Matthew, it seems like the language we use to discuss these issues (urban vs. suburban) is outdated and creates a false dichotomy about the types of places that exist. Perhaps you could use some of your influence to propose a new set of words that we can use to discuss these issues without engaging in a confusing and muddling conversation?
May 6th, 2009 at 11:56 am
What market failure keeps this demand for new urbanist living “undersupplied?”
Not so much a “market failure” as that government action in the form of zoning, other regulations, the way certain subsidies and services are provided, and so on is leading to this undersupply. Some of that is discussed in Adler’s article, in fact.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:58 am
One thing to do in these discussions is stop referring to New York City. NYC is an absolute extreme in human existence, with only Tokyo evening coming close to a similar experience AFAIK. Take any set of random human being on earth to NYC and 1/3 of them will love it, 2/3 hate it.
Much better points of comparison for traditional urban development would be Chicago, Seattle, Portland, or even Boston. But NYC is su generis.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:59 am
Right now, it’s not a market failure that’s keeping them undersupplied, but the fact that such projects are illegal to build in most of the developable land in growing metro areas.
I always advise defenders of sprawl to go down to their local planning office, and ask somebody two questions: “Where would I be allowed to build a single family home on a two acre lot?” and “Where would I be allowed to built a two-family house on 5000 square feet?”
May 6th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
low-tech cyclist,
But I don’t think it is a matter of poor information. Consider things like zoning restrictions and other development regulations designed to prevent mixed-use medium-to-high-density developments. Those regulations would be unnecessary if such developers had no chance of being the highest value bidders for land, but I think the people putting these restrictions in place know that to be false.
That said, I do think there are many areas where public policy can and should be relevant, such as in the provision of various subsidies and services (including public transportation). I just don’t see much case for a heavy-hand on the regulatory side.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
One thing to do in these discussions is stop referring to New York City.
I absolutely agree.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
Rob,
When we rewrote Lowell’s zoning ordinance, we created three types of zoning districts: Urban, Traditional, and Suburban. Traditional neighborhood is probably the best term, because walkable, human-scale places with real blocks, small lots, and mixtures of land uses were the basic building blocks of cities, suburbs, and little rural towns alike, for most of human history.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:10 pm
joe from Lowell, can you give a few examples of places that would qualify under each of those distinctions? I understand where you are coming from, but it would be helpful to put it in context.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
Re Not Really
One has to understand that Mr.Yglesias wants to turn every major American city into New York City. He hates suburbia, single family housing, and automobiles.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
One has to understand that Mr.Yglesias wants to turn every major American city into New York City. He hates suburbia, single family housing, and automobiles.
Not in this post, at least. I mean, I still don’t think he quite gets it (with all the spectrum talk and such), but I think he is coming around.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:39 pm
Why did people move to the ‘burbs in the first place? Lower taxes, better schools, low-cost easy commutes. And no weird people with dark skin or funny last names running around.
Tax fleers who settled in exburbs did so for specific reasons that are not part of the incipient reality. Civic expenses don’t go down when your property values tank, and as the growth cycle in these places stalls, governments are faced with the prospect of raising taxes. Read the Las Vegas Sun on any given day.
Tanking tax rolls also mean big trouble for schools. Read AZ Central on any given day.
Commutes are probably as ridiculous as they are going to get so the slash and burn mentality of previous generations of suburbanites leaving an area when it gets more expensive to maintain isn’t really an option for many folks. Factor in rising energy costs, water rights battles, and other things and its reasonable to expect that demand will shift in some direction; and denser, more walkable places to live seem like a logical thing to build.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
From Matt’s post:
Reading is fundamental.
May 6th, 2009 at 12:58 pm
Well, the cited article suffers from a lot of problems, but here are just a few.
1. Comparing Woodbridge to Adams Morgan in terms of property values is certainly not comparing on ‘along the spectrum’.
2. Arlington hasn’t been the Arlington described for that long. I was an Arlington resident (and loved it), but it didn’t really become as great as it is today until about 5-7 years ago. I agree that the Fairfax orange line seems misguided in terms of development, but give it time. It might come around. I would also note that Georgetown eschewed a Metro stop but is still very walkable and vibrant. Basically the closer a location is to downtown the more desirable it becomes.
3. The Kentlands is a huge anomoly (and closer to DC than Leesburg). I agree that it would be nice for the suburbs to be given more thought, but I guarantee that Kentlands still has a high dependency on cars.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
Not in this post, at least. I mean, I still don’t think he quite gets it (with all the spectrum talk and such), but I think he is coming around.
I’m coming around too as my understanding of these issues becomes more sophisticated, and I was much more strident in my hatred of cars, single family homes, and suburbs than Matt ever was. I’m still very much an advocate for renewing existing communities and housing stock, and I take personal umbrage with anything automotive. At the same time I realize that rehabbing an old house in a dying neighborhood isn’t everybody’s cup of tea; and having a couple decent Thai places within walking distance isn’t everybody’s priority either. I have to credit the realization of some of these hybrid suburbs, noted here and elsewhere, with my shift in opinion. For a long time it seemed like just so much talk.
I read a story the other day (can’t find now of course), about a traditional suburban neighborhood in Illinois where the residents voted to install sidewalks. It made my day.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
Rob,
An urban area would be a city’s downtown. Buildings high enough to require elevators, buildings side-by-side with doors on the sidewalk, only multifamily housing or housing above storefronts, lots of housing alongside business, and plenty of commercial space even in the more residential areas. This could be a highrise district, with residential and office buildings next to each other, but it could also be a Victorian-era downtown, with mercantile buildings and row houses off the main streets. Parking would generally be accommodated in a few multi-level garages, an on the street.
A suburban area would be cul-de-sac developments with lots over 1/4 or so, large setbacks between buildings and the street, housing in the form of single family homes or multi-acre campus-style developments of attached housing, stores behind parking lots, strict separation between commerce and residential. Parking is generally surface lots and driveways.
In between are traditional neighborhoods. Most of the housing is in the form of houses, but those houses might be two-, three-, or six-family apartment houses. They might also be single family homes on 3000-9000 square feet. Mostly smaller front yard setbacks, such that someone on a front porch could have a comfortable conversation with someone on the sidewalk. Commercial districts that might or might not have housing mixed into them, located at certain intersections in the neighborhood, or along the main thoroughfares. Parking is generally on the street or in driveways and the occasional small parking lot.
May 6th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
One thing to do in these discussions is stop referring to New York City.
True. You can look in the vicinity (say, Nassau County) for building patterns, though it has to be with an understanding of the commuter culture. As others have said, local governments feel obliged to kow-tow to developers who want to build single-family houses on big lots with no sidewalks and nothing but residential use, and zoning laws end up written to that spec.
(Could a Levittown be built 30 miles outside Atlanta today?)
May 6th, 2009 at 2:07 pm
Have any of you been to some of the heavily Orthodox Jewish Brooklyn neighborhoods like Midwood or Boro Park? I’ve long thought that neighborhoods like those have managed to keep the old-fashioned mix of single-family homes (granted, without much space between them) and kinda-dense two- or three-story shopping streets with subway stops (usually above-ground) nearby, and I’d like to see these sorts of discussions talk more about that sort of neighborhood. It’s pretty different from the super-dense Manhattan feeling that most people think of when they think “New York City” although it is nicely proximal to those services and cultural outlets. But I’m not sure that many people who post in threads like this are familiar with those neighborhoods.
May 6th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
I’d like to see these sorts of discussions talk more about that sort of neighborhood. It’s pretty different from the super-dense Manhattan feeling that most people think of when they think “New York City” although it is nicely proximal to those services and cultural outlets. But I’m not sure that many people who post in threads like this are familiar with those neighborhoods.
We frequently discuss neighborhoods somewhat like that under the heading “streetcar suburbs”. But even then, my recollection is that that part of Brooklyn still tends to be a bit denser than what people have in mind when they are using that term.
May 6th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
Just a couple of thoughts:
1. The author could get to Leesburg without a car via the W&OD bike trail.
2. He complained about the Leesburg sidewalks not being well lit, but a lot of people don’t like light pollution. He always could just carry a flashlight. I saw a neat bumper sticker the other day that said something like “Lights off, Stars on”
May 6th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
Georgetown eschewed a Metro stop but is still very walkable and vibrant.
Yes, Georgetown is still walkable, but it has become in some respects an intown outpost of the suburban car culture. Before Metro was built, Georgetown was the place that went with good restaurants in peoples’ minds. Now that place is Bethesda. One of the most effective arguments for the Purple Line in Bethesda is that Georgetown didn’t get Metro and we don’t want Bethesda to become another Georgetown.
May 6th, 2009 at 3:48 pm
The author could get to Leesburg without a car via the W&OD bike trail.
He could hitch-hike, as well, but I think that kind of misses the point. (I say this as someone who’s ridden out to Leesburg from DC on the W&OD…)
May 6th, 2009 at 4:03 pm
@ Ben,
I don’t really disagree with you, but I guess the point is that if you live in Georgetown, you can do pretty much anything you need to without leaving that area. There are parts of DC that are much worse. Palisades? Chevy Chase? All of SW? My point is that thought can be given, but what really matters is what types of building there is. SW is great if you’re a Federal worker with a job that way, but I guarantee one still would like a car (even if a zipcar) for a lot of basic trips.
Ultimately, water seeks its own level, people will seek what appeals to them. Planning might help, but sometimes no amount of planning can change the underlying market fundamentals of the neighborhood.
May 6th, 2009 at 4:12 pm
Or to Pittsburgh on the C&O Canal path, though I don’t know what the point is.
May 6th, 2009 at 4:18 pm
This is the kind of post that makes you realize Matt has never really been out of the city. Occasionally he makes a trip and peers from a car window, just as you and I did when we were four years old, and with about as much comprehension or learning ability as we had then.
What a Battle of Titans in the referenced article! In one corner, New Urbanism, a faux Disneyification your town is probably lucky enough to find unaffordable. In the other, the last of the dinosaurs, the town mayor bought and paid for by land developers converting farmland. In this Godzilla landscape it seems only natural to read that “Ideally, trains should be built in advance of, not after, residential and commercial development.” How exactly you do this without the zoning and regulation that Matt thinks cause housing shortages is left to the imagination of the reader.
Somehow Matt and Ben, the most modern of young people, seem to think the 21st century could maybe be a do-over of the 20th century, but this time- let’s get it right! The rest of us are so over this that there will be no remake of Futuropolis, no second coming of Edward Bellamy. We don’t even want a flying car anymore.
Predictions are always hard, especially about the future. But one thing our future will not be is a straight-line projection of the past.
May 6th, 2009 at 5:26 pm
Ideally, trains should be built in advance of, not after, residential and commercial development.” How exactly you do this without the zoning and regulation that Matt thinks cause housing shortages is left to the imagination of the reader.
You don’t need zoning and other development restrictions to build out trains. At most you need eminent domain.
May 6th, 2009 at 5:28 pm
For fun on the bus ride home today I reread “Patio Man and the Sprawl People,” David Brooks’s 2002 celebration of exburbia and the sad lumps of putty that inhabit it referenced in the article above. The money quote:
And those real estate prices! In, say, Henderson, Nevada, you wouldn’t have to spend over $400,000 for a home and carry that murderous mortgage. You could get a home that’s brand new, twice the size of your old one, with an attached garage (no flimsy carport), and three times as beautiful for $299,000. The average price of a single-family home in Loudoun County, one of the pricier of the Sprinkler Cities, was $166,824 in 2001, which was an 11 percent increase over the year before. Imagine that! A mortgage under 200 grand! A great anvil would be lifted from your shoulders. More free money for you to spend on yourself. More free time to enjoy. More Freedom!
Awesome.
May 6th, 2009 at 5:34 pm
The Kentlands is probably an improvement over Leesburg in many ways, but its essence is still that of a bedroom community built on a greenfield an hour outside of DC. To call it “urbanism” is phony, and I’d have a lot more respect for Duany and his ilk if they called it “New Suburbanism” and acknowledged that there are vast differences between their master-planned communities and a real incrementally-built traditional town.
The Red Line station outside of the Kentlands is still surrounded by a load of parking, as it’s beyond typical walking distance (though it is within biking distance) from the residences, and a bus that runs every half hour doesn’t cut the mustard.
Within the Kentlands, sure, there are some businesses integrated with housing, but I seriously doubt many of the people who work in the service and retail operations in the Kentlands make enough money to afford to live there. So while on the micro level if you were at home in the Kentlands and felt like walking to a restaurant you could do it, on the macro level it’s just as full of professionals commuting to DC and service workers commuting in from elsewhere as any other upper-middle class suburb.
That being said, the publicity the New Urbanists have generated has laid a great groundwork for the real progressive planning work, which is high-density infill development. But don’t be fooled by anybody who creates a new suburb out of whole cloth and tells you it’s green, or thinks they’re creating a traditional new town. It’s a better suburbia, but it’s still suburbia.
May 6th, 2009 at 6:32 pm
@serial catowner:
Exclamation marks are no substitute for a well-reasoned argument.
May 6th, 2009 at 7:57 pm
ibc and Njorl, my only point is that Leesburg, Ashburn, Reston, etc. are communities that are fortunately connected by the W&OD trail. The former rail line provides a nice non-auto way to commute. I know people who use it. I think it is safer to use than roadways for cyclists.
The ride all the way from DC would be a bit long for most on a daily commuting basis, but it sounds like the author was on a leisurely visit to his grandmother. He says you can’t get to Leesburg on the weekend without a car, but in fact he probably could’ve ridden his bike there in a couple of hours.
May 6th, 2009 at 8:58 pm
Adam Vanilli,
The New Urbanists understand that perfectly well, and write a great deal about the importance of urban redevelopment and infill in sprawling suburbs.
But the fact is, there is going to be greenfield development. Why do you rob banks, Willie? Because that’s where the money is. Why do you try to make greenfield development mixed, denser, and walkable? Because that’s where the big opportunity for impact is.
May 6th, 2009 at 9:14 pm
Kentlands hasn’t worked out as well as the article suggests. It has the most convenient (but not closest) Lowe’s to me, so I go there from time to time–the pedestrian traffic is largely non-existent and the local merchants that were intended for the shopping centers have not done well. So you get vacancies and the same old chains. The shopping areas are not as bad as most, but not entirely convenient for someone doing a lot of grocery shopping. The development has inspired a couple other, smaller scale developments on the same model, including Traville, which is next to a branch of U of Maryland where I teach part-time. The bus service is infrequent and the stores seem to do rather poorly there. It’s an improvement over “nothing” (i.e., most of the surrounding area) but it pales in comparison to the vital DC neighborhood where I live. A better model for suburbia is in the inner ring suburbs of most Eastern & Midwestern cities and the old redline belts around LA. Places like Shaker Heights (built around transit), Cleveland Heights and Lakewood, Ohio; Oak Park & River Forest, IL, as well as parts of the lower North Shore above Chicago, much of Pasadena, CA; etc. The Clarendon-Wilson Blvd corridor between the Courthouse & Ballston Metro stations is another model–a pre-WWII/early post-WWII developed area that was best known for an old Sears, tired strip malls, and car lots, with good single family and and garden apartment housing stock nearby. The commercial strips have been redone with some mid/high rise-ish condos, and upscaled chain retail development replacing Sears and the car lots–it’s a bit sterile but much better than Kentlands and a big improvement over nearby Rosslyn–a 1960s application of urban renewal stupidities in what once was a red light district.
May 6th, 2009 at 11:52 pm
@serial catowner . . . Exclamation marks are no substitute for a well-reasoned argument.
Yeah, a lot of effort there to communicate nothing other then “I don’t like Matt” and “I don’t like the article.” “Why?” and “Why?” are left to the imagination.
But, the Internet is a funny place. Thousands of blogs out there, and every discussion on this one, tied to a high-end think-tank, includes two or three entries by people with no consistent purpose beyond sneering at Matt. You’d think they could find a blog somewhere written by someone they like and respect, instead of hanging out here.
May 7th, 2009 at 3:18 am
Joe from Lowell — the problem is that even when they do infill, it’s like an entire city block at a time. It’s good that people are doing infill, and it’s good that they’re making development more walkable these days, but I would still rather see development by doing the land division and setting up the development and design standards, and then letting individual parcel owners do the development. The way it’s done now, the New Urbanists develop an entire block and then try to make it look like it was developed more organically. How about actually letting things develop organically?
Again, it’s better than the way most development has been done since WWII. But it’s an attempt to mimic urban form rather than an attempt to actually develop cities along real incrementalist lines.
May 7th, 2009 at 11:05 am
You go to war with the army you have, Adam.
The developer owns a piece of land, he wants to develop that piece of land. Whuttyagonnado?
May 7th, 2009 at 11:10 am
Well, excuse me for not providing a well-reasoned argument like DTM and his assertion that all you need to build a rail commuter system is the power of eminent domain.
Matt linked to an article comparing the worst excesses of suburbanization to the best-practice in building brand new suburbs.
Maybe this is the only choice you have back in the Washington DC metro area.
Happily, there are exty-zillion square miles of the US where we have other choices. In my rural county in Washington state, regarded as one of the more backward counties WRT land-use regulations, we are building walkable concentrated small towns to preserve the environment from the damage of runaway suburbanization.
Matt gives a hat-tip to ‘no discontinuous steps needed’ but linking to Ben’s fatuous article shows he really doesn’t get it. This might also apply to a few commenters here who apparently can’t think about what a comment they read might mean, so I will try to spell it out:
We don’t need any more new suburbs. A ferocious battle of straw men between New Urbanism and Old Corrupt Development is so yesterday.
Yes, more gated communities will be built, with more regulations than have even been imagined since the riots in Pullman’s planned community. If you are so lacking in imagination that you can’t find a walkable place to live, you may have found Ben’s article to be very interesting.
Now, considering that I am responding to flaming by a few commenters, I won’t spend any more time right now. I’ll check the thread later and if anyone wants more discussion I can probably provide it.
May 7th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
Joe from Lowell -
Well, yeah. The problem is deeper than one that can be solved by some architects or even planners working within the current framework. I just feel that New Urbanists are overselling their work.
I once got into an argument with a developer’s lawyer who claimed that developing an entire block as one project was “just good planning,” though nothing in the City’s General Plan indicated as such. I told him that there’s a difference between planning a block as a whole and developing a block as a whole.
May 7th, 2009 at 1:28 pm
Of course you’re right, Adam. It’s all in Jane Jacob’s book. The diversity of building type and price, leading to diversity of occupation and use, that makes cities vibrant is best-served through lot-by-lot development.
Somewhat related, crazy John Derbyshire’s proposal for the WTC center site was as follows: divide up the land into 50′ X 100′ parcels, and sell them off individually, with no one allowed to buy more than one parcel. I think that’s a cramped, crabbed, petty vision – but you know what? It would produce something better than any of the master planned proposals that were under serious consideration.