The Mixed Legacy of Jane Jacobs
MacDougal Street, New York City (cc photo by Jim Linwood)
Ed Glaeser, taking a break from writing things about high-speed rail that make me mad, has a pretty great book review in the New Republic that expresses ambivalent feelings about Jane Jacobs and her legacy that I share:
Jacobs did help to make public decisions more accountable, which is an incontrovertibly good thing. There is little to like in arbitrary public power—but at this point the pendulum has swung too far. Today it often feels as if every neighbor has veto rights over every new project, public or private. When Jacobs’s heirs argue for limits on eminent domain and expensive boondoggle projects, I stand with them. When they impose more and more restrictions on private owners building on their own land, I shake my head. Jacobs herself did not oppose only highways and urban renewal, but also far more benign private projects such as NYU’s library. Education is crucial to urban success. Surely a twelve-story university library would not have hurt Greenwich Village. [...]
The Death and Life of Great American Cities argues that at least one hundred homes per acre are necessary to support exciting stores and restaurants, but that two hundred homes per acre is a “danger mark.” After that point of roughly six-story buildings, Jacobs thought that neighborhoods risked sterile standardization. (The one public housing project that Jacobs blessed, at least initially, had only five stories.) But keeping great cities low means that far too few people can enjoy the benefits of city life. Jacobs herself had the strange idea that preventing new construction would keep cities affordable, but a single course in economics would have taught her the fallacy of that view. If booming demand collides against restricted supply, then prices will rise.
The best way to keep cities affordable is to allow private developers to build up and deliver space. Jacobs was right that high-rise public housing is a problem, as street crime is much more prevalent in high-rise, high-poverty neighborhoods. But in more prosperous, privately managed buildings, height is not a problem. If you love cities, as Jacobs certainly did, then presumably you should want the master builders to make them accessible to more people.
The key fact here (interestingly, a fact Glaeser seemed determined to ignore during his HSR analysis) is that the overall rate at which a metro area’s population grows has relatively little to do with land use decisions in any one neighborhood or municipality. If existing cities in a growing metro area don’t get denser, then the metro area just winds up getting sprawlier and the existing good neighborhoods wind up getting increasingly unaffordable. It’s understandable that incumbent homeowners in an already great neighborhood often take an “I’ve already got mine” attitude toward further development, but it’s also regrettable and not something to be encouraged.
70 Responses to “The Mixed Legacy of Jane Jacobs”
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September 4th, 2009 at 1:49 pm
Shorter Post: there are downsides to putting 7 billion people on the planet.
September 4th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
Agreed. Urban dwellers seem to collectively, instinctively oppose tallness in construction. They’ve been brainwashed into equating tallness with badness or ugliness.
I’m all for a little planning, but bad planning is just bad planning. If I see one more faux red brick newly constructed building obviously designed to “fit in” with the surroundings here in Boston my head is going to explode. How about a little unnerving, jarring diversity in the types of structures we build? I like living here, but 90% of what’s been built in the last ten years is absolutely heinous in its bland uglitude.
September 4th, 2009 at 1:55 pm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearst_Tower_(New_York_City)
This is one option I find interesting. You keep the look and feel of the ground level area but you build something new above.
September 4th, 2009 at 1:57 pm
A better view:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hearst_Tower_Base.JPG
September 4th, 2009 at 1:57 pm
>> But keeping great cities low means that far too
>> few people can enjoy the benefits of city life.
>> Jacobs herself had the strange idea that preventing
>> new construction would keep cities affordable, but a
>> single course in economics would have taught her the
>> fallacy of that view. If booming demand collides
>> against restricted supply, then prices will rise.
Um, well, you know, you could just build MORE 2-6 story neighborhoods instead of a core of 50 story skyscrapers surrounded by 75 miles of exurbia. That’s how Chicago grew for almost 100 years, and much of New York too. Instead of everyone who likes city life trying to live in Greenwich Village how about building MORE Greenwich villages?
Cranky
September 4th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
While individual blocks do exceed Jacobs’ recommended density limit, virtually no neighborhoods (let alone cities) reach that level. You can have plenty of density with buildings under six stories. Washington, D.C., could still fit the 750,000 it had 40 years ago with short buildings.
Aside from height restrictions, Jacobs was always for more and denser uses. Unless you are going to link all neighborhood activism, you shouldn’t tie Jacobs to today’s Nimbyism.
September 4th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
It’s understandable that incumbent homeowners in an already great neighborhood often take an “I’ve already got mine” attitude toward further development, but it’s also regrettable and not something to be encouraged
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Shorter Yglesias – how dare people have opinions and speak up for themselves. They should just shut up and let us smart people decide what’s good for them
September 4th, 2009 at 2:03 pm
Like the prison-like monstrosity that is the new Boston Public Library? No thanks, I lived through the ‘unnerving, jarring’ architecture of the 70s. Most of it was butt-ugly and non-functional.
September 4th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
Density and height are not the same thing.
Paris as a whole is almost as dense as Manhattan (and more dense than NYC as a whole) and not much in Paris is taller than Jacobs’ height limit.
Basically, you can meet that upper limit of Jacobs’ density with nothing taller than 6 stories or so – so long as that density is carried out almost uniformly across a wide area, as is the case in Paris. For the same reasons, DC is quite dense (though not Paris-dense, obviously) without any real tall buildings.
September 4th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
Like the prison-like monstrosity that is the new Boston Public Library? No thanks, I lived through the ‘unnerving, jarring’ architecture of the 70s.
What an utterly ludicrous attempt at a rebuttal. If the new “prison-like” BPL isn’t an example of trying to blandly fit it, or mindless ape the surroundings (almost identical shape and color to the older building), I don’t know what is. I mean, they literally extended the old BPL via an identical shape, color and dimensions. At least we both agree it’s a monstrosity. This is the mindlessly hyper-conservative design by committee approach that Boston takes with respect to architecture. It just sucks.
Contrast this with the infinitely more graceful, interesting and fun approach taken in Paris.
September 4th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
That…was…interesting.
quite sophisticated concern trolling based on a willful misunderstanding of a “liberal”.
If MattY or anyone else really wants to contest Jacob’s point, then I would just point you to Chongqing, China, or any of a number of cities primarily built up during the 70s and early 80’s.
Ah, and Jane Jacobs was primarily focused on directing utility to people and people culture. It’s pretty difficult to make super-tall buildings safe and accessible to all sorts of people, with permittive access to external resources like parks and retail and incidental street culture without overwhelming the services.
The 5 story thing wasn’t for no reason, peeps. Unless you need to warehouse people with impaired rights.
September 4th, 2009 at 2:20 pm
If you stacked Matt Yglesias on top of Ed Glaeser, their combined stature wouldn’t reach Jane Jacobs’s ankle.
September 4th, 2009 at 2:21 pm
It’s not hard, actually, to have good modern architecture that isn’t unnerving and jarring. Boston’s done a largely lousy job so far, but it doesn’t have to be that way and recent developments (the W tower going up in the Theatre District, the approved 101 Clarendon building on top of the Mass Pike, and the just-finished tower on Clarendon, kitty-corner from the not-too-bad-itself Hancock Center) give cause for optimism.
But yeah, if we could have skipped the architecture of the 70s, cities would be a lot better off.
September 4th, 2009 at 2:30 pm
I agree, that stone building in the background definitely looks graceful, interesting, and fun. The glass pyramid in the foreground just looks like a paperweight. I have no idea how I.M. Pei gets so much love.
September 4th, 2009 at 2:35 pm
Jane Jacobs was against density? If anything, she was too much for it, which might help fuel the stereotype that new urbanists want to turn every town into Manhattan. Her ideal city neighborhoods are Greenwich Village and Boston’s North End; she seems to think that urban neighborhoods of single-family homes were doomed to failure, as they were too dense to compete with the suburbs and not dense enough to have any vibrancy. But there are lots of successful urban neighborhoods (east of Midtown Atlanta, for instance) that are far below Jacobs’ ideal density. Most of these neighborhoods were decaying when The Death and Life of Great American Cities was written but now a lot of them have experienced gentrification.
September 4th, 2009 at 2:38 pm
But keeping great cities low means that far too few people can enjoy the benefits of city life.
As others are pointing out, that is pretty much poppycock. Most of the amenities of city life (e.g., walkable commercial districts, parks, and so on) can be reduplicated over and over, neighborhood by neighborhood, as long as you keep the densities in the relevant zone. For the few amenities which require city-scale population bases (stadiums, major museums, and so forth), you can use rapid public transportation, which is also expandable as long as densities stay in the relevant range. And if at some point those transit routes are getting too long, you just go through a process of urban mitosis and have two or more sets of stadiums, museums, and so forth (hence Wrigley and Comiskey).
In general, Matt really needs to get over this notion that Manhattan is the only possible end point to urban development.
September 4th, 2009 at 2:39 pm
Jacobs herself had the strange idea that preventing new construction would keep cities affordable, but a single course in economics would have taught her the fallacy of that view. If booming demand collides against restricted supply, then prices will rise.
I dunno if the knowledge gained from that single course in economics would really be sufficient to analyze how height restrictions would affect the cost of living in a city. Indeed, we liberal types typically poke fun of those who think they understand all economic behavior because they’ve passed Econs 101.
Certainly, height restrictions would increase the price of residential real estate and office-tower real estate. But the amount of money you have to pay in rent/mortgage payments to live in a city is not the only cost of living in a city. Nor is the amount of money you have to pay toward services that employ people who work in office towers.
Food is a cost of living. Most of the time food comes from grocery stores or other places on the first or second floor of a building. Height restrictions do nothing to decrease the availability of space for food. Hence the absence of height restrictions does nothing to increase the availability of space for grocery stores and many other services. However, the absence of height restrictions certainly increases the number of people demanding food, etc. — so couldn’t you argue based on supply and demand that food and similar costs will increase as a city gets denser (e.g. by waiving height restrictions)?
In general, the reason why cities are so expensive is that you have a lot of people crowded into a small area, and hence competing more directly for limited resources (also *) — even though you can always build more of certain things (housing, office space) to keep supply up with demand, not everything scales in the same way. Thus, the denser the city, the more competition and hence, arguably, the more things cost.
I’m not saying that density necessarily increases cost, but the idea that allowing for greater density by easing height restrictions necessarily decreases costs — because Econs 101 says so — is just another example of the same silly pseudo-economic analysis that usually gets (correctly so, IMHO) nothing but jeers and laughs from us liberals!
*FWIW, IMHO, this is also why cities are more environmentally friendly … the libertarians are to a degree right here … competition does help the environment … it’s just that the free market for businesses isn’t helpful, it’s competition for space … e.g., my family is far more efficient about water usage with regards to doing the laundry — having to compete for washing machines in the laundry room makes us do laundry less often and with fuller loads than we would be doing if we were in the ‘burbs and had our own washing machine!
September 4th, 2009 at 2:43 pm
Steve LaBonne Says:
September 4th, 2009 at 2:20 pm
If you stacked Matt Yglesias on top of Ed Glaeser, their combined stature wouldn’t reach Jane Jacobs’s ankle.
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Bu..bu..but she didn’t have a degree from Harvard! (Or anywhere, actually)
September 4th, 2009 at 2:45 pm
In an attempt to start an anti-I.M. Pei bandwagon, let me just point out that the Boston City Hall is a failure of epic proportions. The uneven space around it, which managed to do just fine as Scollay Square, is now a barren badland that no one spends any time in unless there’s a protest or a concert or a festival or something.
Also, Pei sucks on a technical level too. The Hancock Center in Boston created pretty severe wind tunnels right next to it that make walking around there when it’s raining or snowing really unpleasant. It also damaged the foundation of the adjacent Trinity Church, which I’m told is one of the first buildings in the U.S. to have provided inspiration for architecture in Europe rather than the other way around.
The Christian Science Center is also jarring, and not in a provoking way–it’s just totally disparate styles cobbled together unorganically.
This is also ugly.
September 4th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
NYU’s Bobst Library is a Philip-Johnson-designed Brutalist behemoth modeled after a prison. It, like some of NYU’s 1970s-era attempts to clad their buildings in copper brick, is ugly and hostile to the neighborhood aesthetic.
September 4th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
Jason, how could you mention all of that and not include One Western Avenue?
September 4th, 2009 at 3:36 pm
Yeah, I’m calling bullshit too.
Alex @9 has it exactly right. You can have a very dense city that is at the same time liveable with buildings generally limited to 5 stories, so long as they take up most of a block.
The difficulty with high rises is that they *don’t* take up the block, and they have set-backs, and when too many are crowded together you destroy the sense of community because – in part – you don’t ever get the sun shining at street level.
September 4th, 2009 at 3:39 pm
In general, Matt really needs to get over this notion that Manhattan is the only possible end point to urban development.
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DTM wins the thread
September 4th, 2009 at 5:46 pm
Oh, sweet Jesus. A post quoting approvingly some ninny advocating that the rest of us stand back and let the “master builders” carve up our cities to suit their greed-addled whims.
The picture you’re looking at, at the top of this post, is the Cafe Wha, where Dylan performed literally within days of landing in NYC in 1961. I love that it’s still there, and I promise you that if the “master builders” of NYU had had their way, it would have been bulldozed for yet another in NYU’s parade of massively grotesque architectural assaults on the neighborhood and its quality of life. The only thing that has stopped NYU from turning the Village into block after block of squat, hideous monoliths (thereby displacing historic buildings, small-scale neighborhood ambience, and thousands of regular folks) is that the community has risen up and said “No” just loud enough for the zoning board to kind of listen (sometimes). NYU has just finished demolishing the Provincetown Playhouse (where O’Neill’s plays were first performed) after having promised to maintain the facade; their rapacity clearly knows no bounds (or scruples).
All I can say is, thank God for “…incumbent homeowners in an already great neighborhood…” who “take an ‘I’ve already got mine” attitude toward further development’ (although it’s not homeowners per se here, but regular people who are tired of getting bulldozed out to the far boroughs by “master builders”).
September 4th, 2009 at 5:46 pm
Yes, you can get the requisite level of density by having large areas that are consistently 6 stories, but it’s much easier logistically to get there by putting in a few very tall buildings amid short ones than it is to replace most of the buildings in a neighborhood. You see this on Boylston Street in Boston, Peachtree Street in Atlanta, Wilshire Blvd. in LA, and Bloor Street (to a lesser extent) in Toronto. In some cases, like Wilshire Blvd., the development is car-oriented, but it doesn’t have to be.
And I’m actually indifferent to One Western Ave., but I’ll agree to dislike it if you agree to dislike the other buildings on my list, as well as the WTF pyramid at the Louvre.
September 4th, 2009 at 6:10 pm
dougR Says:
September 4th, 2009 at 5:46 pm
Oh, sweet Jesus. A post quoting approvingly some ninny advocating that the rest of us stand back and let the “master builders” carve up our cities to suit their
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
M. Yglesias = Robert Moses (wannabee????????)
September 4th, 2009 at 6:17 pm
The problem with high rises is that if they are built along regular city streets those streets will not get enough sunlight. If you pull them away from the streets so you can get more sunlights, you get all the problems of inadequate public spaces that Jacobs talked about.
The solution, as several people on this thread said, is building a dense city with buildings restricted to 5-6 floors.
September 4th, 2009 at 7:53 pm
The solution, as several people on this thread said, is building a dense city with buildings restricted to 5-6 floors.
That works for new developments. How do you turn, say, a six-by-six block area from two-storey buildings to six-storey buildings? It’s much easier to replace six of those thirty six blocks with twenty-six storey buildings than it is to replace all thirty six blocks.
36 x (6-2) = 6 x (26-2).
September 4th, 2009 at 8:54 pm
Yes, you can get the requisite level of density by having large areas that are consistently 6 stories
Few people want to live in large areas that are consistently 6 stories. That’s why such areas are so rare. The building patterns in the city of Paris are the legacy of decisions made hundreds of years ago. New development in the Paris suburbs doesn’t look like development in the city. It looks like new development in suburbs in America and other wealthy democracies. Which is to say, low-density and car-oriented.
September 4th, 2009 at 9:13 pm
As others are pointing out, that is pretty much poppycock. Most of the amenities of city life (e.g., walkable commercial districts, parks, and so on) can be reduplicated over and over, neighborhood by neighborhood, as long as you keep the densities in the relevant zone. For the few amenities which require city-scale population bases (stadiums, major museums, and so forth), you can use rapid public transportation, which is also expandable as long as densities stay in the relevant range. And if at some point those transit routes are getting too long, you just go through a process of urban mitosis and have two or more sets of stadiums, museums, and so forth (hence Wrigley and Comiskey).
Who is this “you,” kemosabe? “You can” do this. “You can” do that. No, YOU can’t do those things. Fortunately, we live in a market-based democracy. Land use and transportation patterns aren’t imposed on an unwilling population by an elite band of urban planners who control how money is spent and where people live. They emerge from the collective voting and purchasing decisions of millions of families and individuals deciding for themselves what kind of policies to support, what kind of home to buy, and how to get around. I know you are terribly disappointed that the collective choices of the people depart so dramatically from the “new urbanism” model you prefer, but you’ll just have to get used to that.
September 4th, 2009 at 9:56 pm
That works for new developments. How do you turn, say, a six-by-six block area from two-storey buildings to six-storey buildings?
Well, my suggestion would be to leave the two-storey buildings alone, and go for the new development. Recall the six-storey scenario was on the upper end of the desirable density range, and I would personally suggest we can be a bit more flexible on the lower end than some might claim (for example, I think the streetcar suburb model turned out to work fine as part of an urban mix). And of course you could combine new development with a little redevelopment of this two-storey neighborhood, without trying to redevelop the whole thing.
September 4th, 2009 at 10:01 pm
Mixner –
You guys can design your exurbs however you want (though I would like for us to stop subsidizing them and underwriting them with the tax and zoning codes, not to mention a host of other government programs and regulations, to the extent we have been). Seriously, have at it. I don’t want to take them away. We want to make our cities, towns, and walkable urban, small town, and suburban neighborhoods more pleasant and more accessible to those who live in them and those who would if they could only afford them. I think if we can make those places safe, affordable, and served by good schools, people will want to live there. Houses in my neighborhood in my close-in suburb in a walkable neighborhood go for a lot more than those out in the exurbs, and mass transit access is a major attractive factor there. The neighborhood prices remain extremely high and have weathered the housing market downturn ridiculously well. So that “decision of the market” says something too.
September 4th, 2009 at 10:19 pm
hugo,
If “walkable neighborhoods” are as attractive to people and as popular as you seem to think, why are there so few of them? Why is sprawl the overwhelmingly dominant form of urban development? If zoning codes and subsidies favoring sprawl are so unpopular, why haven’t they been changed through the political process? It’s not as if low-density, car-oriented development is new or isolated. It’s been going for decades, all over the country. And it’s become the dominant form of development in Europe, too.
You’ll get some “walkable communities.” But only to the extent that there is demand for them. There isn’t much demand. It’s a niche market.
September 4th, 2009 at 10:34 pm
You’ll get some “walkable communities.” But only to the extent that there is demand for them.
That’s true. And I don’t think people should be coerced into a lifestyle or housing choice they don’t want, of course. Even if one were accept the proposition that many people would prefer not to be driving to and from work in traffic and rush hour (some certainly would use mass transit if it were available and efficient – a number I guess would be more than you would think and less than many progressives would think – most people, especially those with families, would certainly and understandably want to keep their cars.
But you are overestimating the extent to which people value the exurban “lifestyle” and underestimating the extent to which the schools drive their choice. I grew up in NYC in the ’80s and had the advantage of a (somewhat barely) functioning public school system. But in many American cities public school are simply not an option for parents. Most parents would drive 75 miles a day if it meant a better education for their children. I would. If the choice that parents had to ride a train for an hour each way in order for their kids to have a better education, most parents would make that choice, too.
September 4th, 2009 at 10:36 pm
sorry about the atrocious typos. long, long workweek and workday
September 4th, 2009 at 10:54 pm
> Why is sprawl the overwhelmingly dominant form
> of urban development? If zoning codes and
> subsidies favoring sprawl are so unpopular,
> why haven’t they been changed through the
> political process?
There are subsidies, and then there are the externalities not currently (or ever) priced in the cost of a barrel of oil/gallon of gasoline. IMHO those exernalities are going to come home to roost fairly soon.
Cranky
September 4th, 2009 at 11:06 pm
There are subsidies, and then there are the externalities not currently (or ever) priced in the cost of a barrel of oil/gallon of gasoline. IMHO those exernalities are going to come home to roost fairly soon.
Most transit buses run on diesel, and would also be subject to that externality pricing. Electric rail transit would be subject to pricing of the externalities from burning coal, generating nuclear waste, destroying ecosystems with hydroelectric dams, etc.
But before we get to indirect subsidies from unpriced externalities, we should eliminate the direct subsidies from public funding. That alone would cause transit ticket prices to quadruple. Transit users have a lot to more to worry about from efficient pricing than drivers.
September 4th, 2009 at 11:07 pm
Good lord, are we really going to go through the same dumb conversations with Mixner again?
Count me out.
September 4th, 2009 at 11:17 pm
But in many American cities public school are simply not an option for parents.
So what’s stopping those parents from using the political process to improve those schools (better school board members, higher pay for teachers, more funding for facilities, etc.)? Other than that there aren’t enough parents who feel the way you describe for them to get their way, that is.
September 4th, 2009 at 11:25 pm
We will, DTM. By the way, how’s your campaign to bring Dick Cheney to justice going?
September 4th, 2009 at 11:41 pm
Wow. Mixner posting here without posing under a different pseudonym. Wonders never cease. As someone who’s actually shopping for real estate, I and many others can tell you how in the metro DC area, the real estate bust has meant that the distant exurbs have plenty of great opportunities to buy homes at cheap prices while the inner ring, dense suburbs and dense rowhome neighborhoods of DC have their real estate prices staying firm.
September 5th, 2009 at 12:00 am
Population growth in DC metro area, 2000-2008:
Arlington County (inner suburb, current poster child of the “new urbanism” movement): 10%
Loudon County (outer suburb, low density, car-oriented): 71%
In 2000, Arlington County had 20,000 more people than Loudon County. By 2008, Loudon County had 80,000 more people than Arlington County.
September 5th, 2009 at 12:03 am
Mixner, places fill. Arlington got full. Loudon county was empty. When the bust hit, the house of cards came down, while the people in Arlington kept their equity. But you already knew that. What made you decide to show your face here using your original pseudonym instead of any of your sockpuppets?
September 5th, 2009 at 12:29 am
Mixner, places fill. Arlington got full. Loudon county was empty
Huh? How is 8,000 people per square mile “full?” The District is denser than that. New York is way denser than that. Paris and Manhattan are way, way, way denser than that. If 8,000 is “full,” those other places are terribly overcrowded.
And if people want Arlington-like development, but can’t get it in Arlington because Arlington is “full,” why aren’t they building more Arlingtons in other places, like Loudon County?
September 5th, 2009 at 1:26 am
Most transit buses run on diesel, and would also be subject to that externality pricing.
It depends on where you are. L.A. County’s Metro system converted the vast majority of its buses to compressed natural gas several years ago.
September 5th, 2009 at 2:25 am
Well, NYU’s Bobst Library is a goddamn horror of a building, both inside and out. Terrible to look at, terrible to work in. So, score one for Jane in my book.
September 5th, 2009 at 9:57 am
Oh my gosh – Mixmaster is back! I didn’t even notice I was replying to him.
Hey Mixmaster, have you visited the north side of Chicago yet? Or do you still claim that neighborhoods of that form physically cannot exist?
Cranky
September 5th, 2009 at 11:26 am
But in many American cities public school are simply not an option for parents.
So what’s stopping those parents from using the political process to improve those schools (better school board members, higher pay for teachers, more funding for facilities, etc.)? Other than that there aren’t enough parents who feel the way you describe for them to get their way, that is.
Seriously? Ummm…because, unless you think parents could turn, say, the DC public school system around by sheer willpower instantaneously, by the time the systems improve, their kids will have spent years in a lousy situation, if not be completely grown up and out of school. So while it might be a nice thing to do, it would make little if any difference in their specific situation.
Also, on a broader level, there are substantial institutional obstacles to doing so that are difficult to change at all, let alone overnight. Are you really suggesting that the world as it is necessarily and perfectly expresses the preferences of its inhabitants? Really?
September 5th, 2009 at 11:29 am
it’s much easier logistically to get there by putting in a few very tall buildings amid short ones than it is to replace most of the buildings in a neighborhood. You see this on Boylston Street in Boston, Peachtree Street in Atlanta,
Please don’t tell me you are citing Peachtree Street, which is a deserted, forsaken hellhole, as an example of what to do.
September 5th, 2009 at 12:34 pm
Is anybody really this fucking stupid? To believe that the abandonment of traditional urban design after World War 2, and the establishment of the automobile-dependent sprawl pattern, wasn’t the result of urban planners imposing a vision via zoning regulations, but rather, an organic development?
I don’t think anybody is actually this stupid; I think they just play dumb for effect.
September 5th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
Hi, I’m Mixner, and I pretend I’ve never heard of public choice theory when it’s convenient to do so.
September 5th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
People don’t want to live in walkable communities. Housing prices are too expensive there.
Ummmmmmm……………
September 5th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
There are many possible reasons why population growth is higher in sprawl-burbs than in walkable suburbs.
The vastly higher prices in the inner-ring, walkable suburbs definitively disprove the theory that the different growth rates demonstrate a revealed preference for sprawl.
Schools, and crime. (Or, rather, the perception of those two things).
Urban- or traditional-style communities that are perceived as being comparable to sprawl-burbs on those two measures have considerably higher home prices. Now, this dynamic can be attributed to that style of development being in higher demand, all else being equal, or it can be attributed to the artificial constraint on supply produced by exlusionary sprawl zoning.
Either way, Mixner doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
September 5th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
Here is a map of the counties in Virginia. Look at Arlington. Look at Loudon.
Keep in mind that Arlington County was much more built-out at the beginning of the decade.
It is not possible for someone to be acting in good faith while making the argument that their different growth rates are the result of revealed preference.
September 5th, 2009 at 6:20 pm
hugo,
Ummm…because, unless you think parents could turn, say, the DC public school system around by sheer willpower instantaneously, by the time the systems improve, their kids will have spent years in a lousy situation, if not be completely grown up and out of school. So while it might be a nice thing to do, it would make little if any difference in their specific situation.
So your hypothesis is that many parents would like to live in the city but choose to live in the suburbs instead because of the better schools. And that these parents have no incentive to use the political process to improve the city schools. Then I guess the superiority of suburban schools is a permanent situation, and you’d better resign yourself to it.
Also, on a broader level, there are substantial institutional obstacles to doing so that are difficult to change at all, let alone overnight. Are you really suggesting that the world as it is necessarily and perfectly expresses the preferences of its inhabitants? Really?
Why do you keep going on about “instantaneous” or “overnight” change and “perfect” expression of preferences? No one said the political process and markets work “instantaneously.” No one said they “perfectly” express the will of the people. The trend of increasing sprawl and suburbanization in America has been going on for AT LEAST 50 YEARS. And it’s been going on ALL OVER THE COUNTRY. And in Europe and Canada and Australia, too. In fact, sprawl seems to be the virtually inevitable outcome when a democratic country becomes rich enough for mass ownership of private automobiles. The only exceptions I am aware of are countries in which sprawl is precluded or severely limited by geographic barriers, such as Singapore and Japan.
September 5th, 2009 at 6:26 pm
The vastly higher prices in the inner-ring, walkable suburbs definitively disprove the theory that the different growth rates demonstrate a revealed preference for sprawl.
joe from lowell is too stupid to live.
If people want Arlington-like development, but can’t get it in Arlington because Arlington is “full,” why aren’t they building more Arlingtons in other places, like Loudon County?
September 5th, 2009 at 7:43 pm
Because it’s illegal to do so.
Good lord, you start out your comment by calling me stupid, and you follow it up by making an argument about the built environment in newly-built suburbs while allowing the existence of zoning to slip your mind?
Amazing.
September 5th, 2009 at 9:08 pm
> Good lord, you start out your comment by calling me
> stupid, and you follow it up by making an argument
> about the built environment in newly-built suburbs while
> allowing the existence of zoning to slip your mind?
>
> Amazing.
Remember, Mixmaster is the person who claims that it is architecturally impossible to design a neighborhood of (primarily) single family detached homes with backyards, garages, and walkable distance to stores and transit. Can’t fit all that in, he claims, despite that fact that at least 1 million people in the City of Chicago (just to take one example) live in such neighborhoods.
Cranky
September 6th, 2009 at 12:18 am
Because it’s illegal to do so.
If people want Arlington-like development, but Arlington-like development is illegal, why haven’t they used the political process to make it legal? How did Arlington-like development become illegal in the first place if people want it?
And where, exactly, is Arlington-like development illegal? All places in America that don’t already have such development? Most places in America? A few places in America? Or what? Substantiate your answer.
You’re truly hilarious, joe. You make the 9/11 conspiracy theorists look rational.
September 6th, 2009 at 12:33 am
The vastly higher prices in the inner-ring, walkable suburbs definitively disprove the theory that the different growth rates demonstrate a revealed preference for sprawl.
This statement is yet another illustration of your stupidity. Housing prices tend to rise with density because denser housing costs more to supply. As density increases, land price and construction costs tend to rise. It has nothing to do with an undersupply of denser housing. The market clearing price is simply higher, because of higher supply costs.
September 6th, 2009 at 2:00 am
Why do you keep going on about “instantaneous” or “overnight” change and “perfect” expression of preferences? No one said the political process and markets work “instantaneously.” No one said they “perfectly” express the will of the people. The trend of increasing sprawl and suburbanization in America has been going on for AT LEAST 50 YEARS. And it’s been going on ALL OVER THE COUNTRY. And in Europe and Canada and Australia, too. In fact, sprawl seems to be the virtually inevitable outcome when a democratic country becomes rich enough for mass ownership of private automobiles. The only exceptions I am aware of are countries in which sprawl is precluded or severely limited by geographic barriers, such as Singapore and Japan.
Private automobiles are well and good. They make people’s lives better. But even assuming that everyone wants a private automobile, a detached house, and a yard, there’s still far better ways to design neighborhoods and those things in no way precludes walkability (indeed, they all exist, as does walkability in my neighborhood). Better, as in better for everyone. I know, I know, if they are better, why isn’t aren’t they already being built this way? Well, things take time, especially when you’re talking about long-term investments and real property. We went from an urban/suburban model to a suburban/exurban model very quickly, and it’s really not very surprising that everything isn’t perfect and there are ways we can improve. People’s preferences change over time and we learn from our mistakes. Your argument essentially takes things that have been done in the past and assumes that they express the present and future preferences of people, and there’s a fairly substantial fallacy there.
September 6th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
Well, things take time, especially when you’re talking about long-term investments and real property.
You’ve been losing this fight for at least 50 years, DTM. All over the country. All over the world. You have no evidence of any kind of fundamental shift in people’s preferences regarding housing and transportation. You have no evidence that most people agree with you about how to design neighborhoods. This isn’t terribly surprising. The advantages of cars and low density development that attracted people to them 50 years ago are still advantages today.
But keep hope alive. At least your prediction isn’t logically impossible. But that’s all you’ve got.
September 6th, 2009 at 1:54 pm
You’ve been losing this fight for at least 50 years, DTM.
I haven’t posted in this thread since #38.
September 6th, 2009 at 2:21 pm
Sure you haven’t. You’re just obsessively monitoring it.
September 6th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
> Sure you haven’t. You’re just
> obsessively monitoring it.
So Mixmaster, since you yourself are obsessively monitoring this thread, do you still think that the type of neighborhood where over 1 million people live in the City of Chicago is physically impossible to build, as you claimed many times before your sabbatical[1]?
Cranky
[1] My guess would be that the Radical Right counter-blogging service that Mixmaster works for (in the evening, after his day job at the National Association of Reeel-Tours(tm)) was mostly funded with Madoff money.
September 8th, 2009 at 9:11 am
[...] Matt Yglesias Questions the Legacy of Jane Jacobs [...]
September 8th, 2009 at 11:58 am
[...] Matt Yglesias Questions the Legacy of Jane Jacobs [...]
September 8th, 2009 at 2:33 pm
Land use and transportation patterns aren’t imposed on an unwilling population by an elite band of urban planners who control how money is spent and where people live.
If you are talking about the United States, that actually IS the way it’s done…Not sure what country (or planet) you are from…
As for “why aren’t people changing it if they are unhappy with it”, that has to do with the fact that sprawl incentives started out at the federal level (highway funding and cheap mortgages for suburban homes) and promoted the creation of incentives at the local level (zoning laws, general taxes going to roads). Reversing this trend is very hard politically, because sprawl is good for the individual but bad for the country as a whole. It becomes a vicious cycle where a vote against sprawl locally implies less federal support, and a vote against sprawl federally implies a decrease in the voter’s quality of life in his/her own suburb. This is why NIMBYs don’t want higher gas taxes, even though that would assure less development.
September 8th, 2009 at 9:04 pm
I first saw a link to Glaesner’s “New Republic” review of “Wresting With Moses” two days ago on the “City Comforts” blog. Since I couldn’t find a way to post comments on the “New Republic” website (I suppose you have to be a subscriber), I submitted my own (long!) mini-review of Glaesner’s essay, to the “City Comforts” website, and they kindly posted it there.
I hope those who are interested in the topic (Cities, Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses, etc.) will visit that thread, which is dated September 5, 2009 and entitled, “Edward Glaesner on Jacobs and Moses.” Although I generally admire Glaesner, I believe this particular essay contains a number of very substantial errors (which I discuss).
Here’s a link:
http://citycomfortsblog.typepad.com/cities/2009/09/edward-glaeser-on-jacobs-and-moses.html#comments
If the link doesn’t work, the “City Comforts” website and blog can easily be found by entering “City Comforts” into a search engine.
Tues., Sept. 8, 2009 — 9:03 pm.
September 8th, 2009 at 9:23 pm
By the way, one aspect of the Robert Moses approach that has been surprisingly overlooked relates to the photograph used to illustrate your thread.
People seem to either not know or seem to gloss over (as the curators of the Robert Moses exhibit in 2007 did) the fact that in the early 1950s Robert Moses actually proposed to level what could be considered the very heart of Greenwich Village (MacDougal St., Bleecker St., etc.) for a large “tower-in-the-park” housing development. Only a few years later, these very streets became the epicenter of off-Broadway, art house moviesin New York, music and comedy cabarets and — perhaps most importantly — the emerging folk music scene.
An entire area was to demolished and to be seen never more for yet another, bland, sterile and culturally and ECONOMICALLY UNPRODUCTIVE “tower-in-the-park” housing development. Yet another reason (along with such useless boondoggles as the proposed Lower Manhattan Expressway, Cadman Plaza, etc.) to be skeptical of the broad assertion that Robert Moses was reconstructing New York for the 20th and 21st centuries. (Yes some of his projects were useful — but generally speaking these were not the targets of critics like Jacobs.)