people will pay more for cul-de-sacs. they don't want to live on busy streets where their pets and kids are likely to wander into the street and get killed.
lol, you failed to read my first paragraph that specifically said "I get why people (myself even) like the suburbs and cul-de-sacs but they have been taken to an extreme"
btw, sorry my whole shared hosting server crashed, and is still down since yesterday. I can now say, "hacker news crashed my server", so I consider it an achievement unlocked and am very happy about it.
No, I did not fail to read it. Just knowing that people like them doesn't mean you understand that people pay substantially more for them. Or that developers are able to squeeze more houses into a development by using lots of cul-de-sacs.
From reading the comments here, I think in my attempt to bust out this article quickly I failed to emphasize that I do NOT think that ALL cul-de-sac and curvilinear loop neighborhoods are bad.
Many of the comments here are completely For or Against Grid or Cul-De-Sac street layouts. This isn't about that.
I myself live in a very moderate curvilinear loop design, just a block and a half away from a major road. I am against EXTREME and OVERDONE versions of these street designs. I would HATE living in a grid street design (for reasons I'll cover in my next article). This is about isolationist and protectionist culture taken to such extreme levels that they are illogical and add 8 miles a day to your commute.
We all know why people love the suburbs, it's more than just white flight. It's because city planners failed to listen to the needs of people. Better schools, actual lawns, nature, smaller curvier streets to give the feeling that you live far away in a cute little town where everyone knows each other. These are all legitimate emotional needs.
Presumably if the market is working properly this means that more people want to buy these homes and/or value these homes more highly than others. That is, people want to live on cul-de-sacs.
I've lived on a dead-end street (but not a cul-de-sac), and I've lived on a regular traffic street. I definitely preferred the dead-end with the lack of traffic and noise, and ability for kids to play in the street without fear of a car going 50 down it. And people did socialize with neighbors on the dead-end street (although maybe not as much as the regular street).
I've never lived in a cul-de-sac (which btw is french for a dead-end street), but spent my childhood playing outside all the same. Narrow, one-way streets, with plenty of speed bumps. I walked to school.
Currently I reside downtown, overlooking rails (the trains go quite slowly and make a noise far more agreeable than that of cars). There's a market under the rails, fruit vegtables and other foodstuffs at daytime, small quantities of drugs at night. I can buy on credit at both markets if I forget my wallet.
I will never understand the attraction of suburbs. The distances. The architecture. The boredom.
Low taxes. Lower cost of living. Privacy of a detached house. The lack of 'city' noise. Letting my kids play in the yard, on sidewalks. Letting my kids tear around the cul-de-sac.
I've lived in the country, I've lived in the city, I've lived in the 'burbs. I prefer the latter, now.
Maybe it's just me. I live in a smaller town, my commute is a five minute drive. YMMV.
To be fair. I have never lived outside of a city/town (>=200k). But living in suburbs "for the kids" (a big point of yours too) does not convince me. As a kid, I had a great time. With plenty of time outdoors too.
Do you live in North America? In most American metros to live in the city with kids you have to make enough money to easily afford expensive private school tuition. If your kid goes to the public school he will be beat up by black or hispanic gang members. This is probably 80% of the reason families rarely choose cities in America.
This is completely ridiculous. I went to a 60% black city public school in the midst of a ghetto. So did most of my friends. None of us ever had any issue. I'm glad I was exposed to a diverse group of people early on in life, so that there isn't any risk of embarrassing myself by making a comment as ignorant as yours.
On top of that, my friends who went to the expensive private schools (whether in the city or suburbs) had easy access to cocaine, which was not a feature of the public schools.
If your kid goes to the public school he will be beat up by black or hispanic gang members
That's a very alarmist statement that I'm afraid has no relationship with the experience of my friends who went to inner city schools with diverse populations (and yes, a number of gang members).
It's true that many inner city schools were defunded by capital flight to the suburbs. But the notion that they're all active warzones that only James Belushi or Michelle Pfeiffer can bring law and order to is a stereotype that needs to be put to rest.
Bad schools have unmotivated teachers. They operate more on discipline than inspiration. They have poor infrastructure and outdated books. They're understaffed, poorly managed, and some even have lead paint in the walls. There are a good amount of schools that have these problems, and since school funding is tied to property values, then we have an idea why housing costs around the good schools are high.
Bad schools are not a high school zombie apocalypse of having to fight for your life against "black and hispanic gang members". That's the stereotype that needs to end already.
I think I disagree with pretty much everything you've written here. For one thing, the problem isn't money. Some of the worst school districts have the highest per-pupil spending. The DC school district may be the worst in the entire country, and yet it's right up at the top of list in outlays per student.
And the problem isn't unmotivated teachers. Young, idealistic teachers are made prematurely cynical by the thousands in bad urban school districts every year.
The problem is too many of the students and (more importantly) their families don't care. That's why charter schools work. That's why private schools work. And that's why suburban schools work. Because the students in those schools belong to families that consider education important and have made sacrifices to get their kids in a good school.
All the things schools used to do to maintain order are either illegal or carry a big financial penalty for the district. When I was in school our district had a reform school, and everyone knew if you acted out too much that's where you would end up. Kids got suspended and eventually expelled for too much disruptive behavior. That just doesn't happen today to any meaningful degree.
It's all well and good to rail about the unfairness of it all, but when the future of your own kids is on the line you make the sacrifices you have to make in order to keep them out of bad schools. Even the president, who is under a lot of political pressure to put his kids in DC public schools decided to send them to a private school instead.
Pure utter malarky. My urban high school in Miami was 40% white/non-hispanic, 40% hispanic, and 20% black (minus a smidgeon for the few percent Asian). It was also one of the best high schools in the county - public or private - and many of my friends' parents could not afford private school tuition. Mine sure couldn't.
Are taxes lower in the suburbs of most American cities?
I thought they'd be higher due to lower densities (more roads, sewer pipes, etc per capita to maintain). At least that's the case here in the Greater Toronto area ...
Property taxes in my suburb are around three quarters compared to the nearby city (Atlanta, GA - millage rate 44.435; Gwinnett, GA - millage rate 32.10). Couple that with the fact that houses are much much cheaper, and in practice I pay ~$2000/year property taxes on my house while my friend pays over $5000/year in property taxes for his condo in the city. Then my mortgage and insurance are also cheaper, and it works out to be much cheaper. But I have to drive more.
Part of the reason is more government - cities will tack on their own taxes to pay for the city government. I have no idea what benefit this extra level of government actually provides, though.
It's a bit more complicated than that. Yes, you need to run the sewer pipes farther, for instance, but the land occupied by utilities is much cheaper, labor is cheaper, and it isn't a major catastrophe if you have to close a suburban street while you're burying the sewer pipe.
I live in the country now and it's even more remote, but when I lived in the 'burbs it was on a 1/2 acre lot behind a nature preserve. I could look out my living room windows and not see anything but trees -- not a neighbor in sight. My kid could climb trees, look for frogs, go "treasure hunting" all day long. The dogs could go outside without needing to be leashed, or walked. And we could have sex on the grass at night.
> "but when I lived in the 'burbs it was on a 1/2 acre lot behind a nature preserve"
If this was a typical American suburb, I'd be inclined to agree, but you have to realize that your suburb is a statistical anomaly compared to the much more urban suburb that most Americans live in.
For most Americans, a suburb still means being miles from nature, it also means being jammed into row after row of houses butting shoulders with your neighbors. The "true suburb" (i.e., a suburb as it was originally envisioned) is a rare thing.
For these "urban 'burbs" there is really no benefit to the current layout of meandering streets and cul de sacs - it just forces people to drive more, disconnects neighborhoods, and makes transit impossible to provision. There would be very little lost converting these to neighborhoods with a stronger retail presence and sanely laid out streets.
Original suburbs are generally now just called "the city". They are built on the city grid and generally have relatively high densities. The prototypical "street car suburbs" that surround the urban core of most cities where the first true suburbs.
Most of what we're building today are really "exurbs".
This is indeed why I live in the country. I don't have kids, so I guess I should focus more on yard sex :p
Me and my wife love the quiet, the the privacy. I grew up on the farm next door so I guess that isn't all that suprising though...
It's easy. I love the city, but I currently live in suburban hell because:
- My kids can go to a better school. A much, much better school.
- I can't fit my family in the size apartment I could afford if we lived downtown.
- Letting my kids play in the backyard is infinitely easier than packing up and heading to the park (admit it, there's not a ton of parks downtown), especially when you have a baby.
And that's not even including the benefits of the cul-de-sac, which means they can ride their bikes safely without traffic, lack of noise (and our noise won't bother neighbors), etc.
I can't tell you how much we want to get out of the burbs, but I'll be damned if I'm going to shortchange my kids' future, or make us all miserable by going three to a room. My boys are already sharing a room as it is.
>I will never understand the attraction of suburbs. The distances. The architecture. The boredom.
Affordable family formation. It's far cheaper to start a family in the 'burbs. Housing is cheaper, daycare is cheaper, and the housing premium on good public schools is far lower. The cost of driving doesn't scale with the size of your family, but the cost of public transportation does.
If you're not interested in a family you don't care, but having one is a much bigger sacrifice in a high-density area.
The other aspect is that the jobs left the cities. The two factors here were: 1) corrupt city machine politics and high taxes and fees, union problems, etc. 2) William Whyte's discovery that companies moved headquarters out closer to CEOs' estates so the CEO would have a shorter commute.
I grew up on a cul-de-sac. I knew all of my neighbors and it was a great environment for a kid to grow up in. We had a nearby woods, too. We often walked and rode bikes.
Problem is, as the article points out, cul-de-sacs impose substantial externalities on everyone else. It would be "a great environment" for me if everyone else rode bicycles and I drove—after all, I'd be very safe!—but it wouldn't be so great for everyone else.
That's an extreme example, but the principle remains.
The cul-de-sac suburbia is probably pretty good for kids until they're 8-10 years old and want to do something else than ride a bike along their neighbours' yards.
Because of the cul-de-sac layout, it's nearly impossible to walk or take your bike and go somewhere, namely because: a) it's a long way because you practically have to detour towards your destination all the time; b) there's nowhere to go because it's just houses and other culs-de-sac; c) if you manage the gymnastics to find yourself out of the neighbourhood you're likely to bump into a large junction leading to an arterial road where there's no place to ride a bike; d) and if there was, you'd have to pedal for miles until you ever reached some place to go, like a mall, another suburban feature.
Same here. One thing I've noticed is living on a road or in an apartment you don't really talk to your neighbors all that much. On a cul-de-sac you do get to know them.
I've lived in both cul-de-sac hell (even pizza delivery drove there for years, it was a nightmare), and I've lived in straight grid systems, and I know where my loyalties lie.
If electric cars and alternate fuels can't deliver, then public transportation is our only way out of fossil fuel dependence. And I don't envy the city planners who will have to figure out how to make a bus and train system work with a layout that looks like a small child closed his eyes and took a crayon to a piece of paper.
I like the sentiment of this article, but I don't like the wording of his survey.
> Maps show that your neighborhood only has 1 entrance (through Radio Dr) creating a bottleneck and completely seperating [sic] you from your neighbors to the West, East, and South and adding extra miles to your commute.
This is a really biased question, and will throw his survey results into question.
You are of course correct to point this out but maybe, just maybe, it is still a good proxy for gauging reaction to a positively-portrayed campaign along similar lines.
My prior community did this... 50 to 60 years ago. I happened to meet one of the long-retired city council members who was part of that planning, and they chose the street layout -- a modified grid -- deliberately to prevent traffic / cars racing down the sidestreets. A few strategically placed walkways let people move between sections in pretty much a a straight line. It keeps kids off of the main thoroughfares, and it makes walking downtown (these days, more often a commuter heading to the train station, but also trips to the library, theatre, and restaurants) a very pleasant experience. It's also a community where kids can still walk to school (though it's wealthy enough that many nonetheless get rides -- lazy little buggers ;-).
(It's also nice to not be incessantly driving over the uncomfortable alternative that is speed bumps. An annoyance in the nearby city, these days.)
That sounds a lot like how Vancouver's West End is laid out. Unfortunately I couldn't read the article but having experienced the situation both in a typical cul-de-sac neighbourhood and a traffic calmed neighbourhood I definitely prefer the latter.
It does seem a bit insane, but the solution is not always so simple. Many of these neighborhoods are built on hilly terrain, and there are many laws and regulations about building roads, particularly building at a particular incline and building on stable and erosion-resistant areas. Most of these cul-de-sac layouts are aimed to maximize views and minimize construction costs, hence you have a sort of minimum-spanning tree configuration. Also, many of the streets are forced to follow isolines in the terrain.
Myth 1: Who is he to say how people feel about their neighborhood is nonsense? There are plenty where the neighbors know each other, their kids play, they have block parties and BBQs, and there's a strong fabric of trust. To pitch them all as "nonsense" is to sweep away all pretense of objectivity.
Myth 2: How much traffic someone gets varies widely with the street. In his red zone, I'd bet traffic is next-to-none on E. Radiom, Amona, E. Lemona, and Hallock; light on Nemo and Damson; medium on W. Radiom and W. Lemona; and "heavy" on the rest. But consider even Erie and Avila: no car would take both, and many will take neither; their realistic exposure is maybe 50-75 households? Compare that to a giant grid, where every street is a route to every other, and I don't think the outcome is clear at all. But it'd be dumb to get a house on N. Radio or N. Hale to avoid traffic, sure.
An added question is whether people speed more in a closed community or in a grid. Daily I see lots of people on main roads tear off onto residential streets to circumvent red lights, and the last thing they want to see when they meet back up with the artery is the people who waited, passing them by.
Myth 3: For the reasons above, less traffic traveling by my house -- which is clearly possible in these neighborhoods -- means less pollution in the form of noise, smoke, and gas fumes.
...
Not to say the grid system doesn't have its merits, and I agree on some of them. But I don't think I'd want to see either system entirely eliminated... much less with the presumption that there are just millions of closed-minded people out there who are dead wrong about where they want to live, because they're simply not as enlightened as your humble author.
Mass residential here tends to spawn more and more speed-bumps over time as community action groups and similar demand "safer roads". Even considering that, they're very common routes for taxis and private vehicles that want to avoid blockages or traffic-lights. About the only thing they reduce is non-essential trucking.
To the other point, regardless of average traffic, it's perfectly possible there'll be a bit of a queue during peak commuting hour(s), and secondly, it seems quite odd that a whole neighbourhood could be disconnected by something like essential road-works or a fallen tree.
I'm with you on the somewhere-inbetween approach. Balancing accessibility, traffic density, noise, and fault resilience is tricky, but much moreso is the cost of alterations to existing neighbourhoods built on one style or the other.
> An added question is whether people speed more in a closed community or in a grid.
I live on a cul de sac and not a day goes by that I don't see someone speeding through the stop sign a few houses down. The cul de sac is not what appealed to me about where I'm living, and I would gladly give it up so I could ride my bicycle unimpeded to the subway station that's nearby without being forced out to the major highway that runs through the area.
Sure, and I've seen it, too; but for both of us, it's just anecdotal. It'll obviously depend on a lot of geo- and demo- and chronographic factors which one is worse.
The density in cul-de-sac neighborhoods is still too low to make it possible for residents to get to any of the basic services they need (school, grocery, etc) without driving. Adding a few roads to shave a mile or two off a commute or trip the store isn't going to make much of a difference.
Our (american) cities desperately need urban growth boundaries to force density.
Why are you/we trying to force density when it's so obvious that most people want the exact opposite?
[edit] I had in a house in a great neighborhood in the city within walking distance of grocery, restaurants, buses, etc., and I still moved to the suburbs. Obviously density's not the only thing people want.
Is it obvious? Do the majority of the public understand the value of a well planned community or have the option to participate in one? Being walking distance to a grocery store is not the same thing as living in a transit-oriented region and living your entire life without dependence on a car. Suburbs were born from industry, not out of the realization of American's idealized community.
I live in downtown Portland, OR and have done so for the last eight years without ever owning a car. I can walk or bike to literally everything in the city, or alternatively take a streetcar, light rail train, or technologically advanced bus system. There's a reason people move here – there's value in Urban Growth Boundaries (UGBs) that make more livable, walkable, awesome places to live your life.
And because of the UGB, it's even faster to escape the city's limits and find yourself in real green space. On Tuesday after work, I drove 45 minutes (using a car-sharing program) out of the city to a national wilderness where I slept under the stars, caught a few trout, and still made it back into the city for work the next morning. Something like that might be difficult in LA or in a large suburb.
As you can see, I really really disagree with you. :)
And the thing is, Portland isn't even that dense of a city. As far as urban environments go, it's hardly Blade Runner. Plenty of detached homes with yards, parks, etc.
The idea that people have that we have to live like sardines in some anime-inspired megalopolis is simply inaccurate.
If everyone lived in cities as dense as portland, the current human population would only be living on about 2.7% of the world's land mass. Obviously, in terms of resources, it's more complicated than that, but it's clear that sprawling out is terrible for the environment, and that for true nature-lovers, it's much more advantageous to live in a city that has no suburbs, where the world of people truly ends at the city limits.
> If everyone lived in cities as dense as portland, the current human population would only be living on about 2.7% of the world's land mass.
What is the human population's current footprint? Wikipedia says humans' average population density worldwide (excluding Antarctica and oceans) is about 50 people/km^2.
Portland is a poor example. I love Portland, by the way, but we're essentially talking about economics here, and Portland is skewed. In Portland, you have people that want to live this lifestyle. They don't want the burden of the car, they are environmentally conscious, they work in the city, and they don't have kids. Sure, for them, it's doable (and you sound like one of them). This isn't usually the case. Industrial areas, where many people work, aren't dense enough to support frequent bus stops, and most families would have a hard time getting kids places without being able to drive them hither and thither.
I've lived in some of the densest cities in Europe, and families still had a hard time getting around without a car. At one point, I did get a car, and not having to deal with the scheduling hassles of public transportation made my life instantly easier.
You have to have an enormous population density for public transportation to be a break-even affair. Your Portland public transportation isn't self-sufficient, it's a net loss, and it's subsidized by taxes. Sure, it's more efficient than cars, but it still doesn't solve all the problems that cars do, as noted above (primarily for families). By the time you get the density required for public transportation to be self-sustaining, you're looking at a cost of living that is unacceptable for most families (eg, NYC).
Sure, public transportation is great for young single people. Try going to the grocery store with young kids on the bus. It's virtually impossible.
It's amazing how we had any sort of industry before the car. I live in a relatively small (500,000) city, though Sweden's second largest. One of my clients is in an industrial area. The city has extra lines for the morning and evening commute, but only about 20% of the people use them, and I think another 5% cycle. I don't know how many walk into work, but clearly over 50% do drive in.
This in a city and country which is pro-mass transit, pro-bicycles and pro-high fuel tax. The turning point is often, as you say, when children are born. People do take their babies, in strollers, on the trams and busses, but it's much easier if you can leave spare diapers and such in the car and not lug them with you all day.
(Your comment about taking the bus with young kids to get groceries is specious. If density is high enough then it's easy to walk to a grocery store. In town there's three grocery stores within a few blocks of me, and a corner store .. on the corner. Surely that was the same in the dense European city you lived in?)
On the other hand, kids and people up to 20 ride free or at reduced price. This means greatly increased mobility for anyone over about 8 or so. I've read autobiographies of people raised in New York City during the 1950s or so, who describe the sense of freedom of being able to go to Coney Island, or Central Park. That's not possible without a car in the standard suburbia we're talking about.
That said, I really don't understand why a public transportation system needs "to be a break-even affair." The road system definitely is not. Gas taxes even in Sweden isn't enough to pay for the road network, snow cleaning, and so on. Public transit should properly be seen, like the roads, as having a multiplier effect. It means you can have areas of town with higher density, which support those people and families you are talking about, which have higher numbers of clubs and restaurants and shops, and have areas for families with cars.
Yes, the corner market thing you said is true. But, they were limiting. Us Americans are used to our bigger stores, specialty stores, and more choices. It'd be hard for most Americans to adapt to that.
But, it's still not easy handling small children with groceries, whether walking nearby or taking the bus. I know because I've done it. Driving is much, much easier.
Fair point about roads not being break-even, but elsewhere in the thread I did argue for higher taxes on gas and automobiles, to internalize the costs more. I don't know what break-even would look like in America, but the idealist in me says both roads and public transportation should be break-even, if not profitable.
It's true - I like going to the "Maxi" store because it's huge and they have everything, including some American foods I can't find elsewhere. I also like going to the small specialty stores because where else are you going to find 50 different types of Hungarian sausages? The local grocery stores end up being more homogenous.
But my experience is that the bigger shock is the lack of expected items, like lack of Crisco for making pie crust, or vanilla extract, or chocolate chips, or American-style bratwurst, or August when corn goes for 8 cobs for a dollar. Not the lack of diversity.
By counter-example, I don't know what to do with all of the types of flours and sugars sold in most Swedish stores, and am only slowly beginning to understand the differences in herring sauces.
Regarding break-even, the problem is in where you define the boundaries. If roads cost 1% of the GDP to develop and maintain, but raise the economy so the overall tax revenue increases by enough to pay for the roads, then it's likely a good choice. Is it cost efficient to only charge those who use the roads directly (perhaps with some sort of GPS system)? Would that include, say, bicyclists and horse-drawn wagons? I think the current system, being a mix of gas tax and public revenue, is reasonable.
Of course revenue growth is not the only factor in deciding what happens. For example, good public transport may mean that people can visit with friends and drink a couple of glasses of wine, expecting to take the bus home instead of risking possible impaired driving. Or a scenic walking path next to a river may not be revenue generating but does serve as a place for people to interact and enjoy the city.
I was thinking the same thing. NYC was the main US harbor, steel in Pittsburgh, slaughterhouses in Chicago. All were industry close enough that people could walk or take public transit - back when cars were too expensive.
But containerized shipping has replaced stevedores, and other industries have moved as well to their own areas of town. I think this move has partially been enabled by people moving to the suburbs, so that a commute into the city or a commute to somewhere else doesn't make a large difference.
Why are you/we trying to force density when it's so obvious that most people want the exact opposite?
The problem is that the playing field isn't level: as Edward Glaeser points out in his book, The Triumph of the City (highly recommended; http://www.amazon.com/Triumph-City-Greatest-Invention-Health...), there are numerous institutional barriers to urban living, including, in no particular order:
1) Mortgage interest tax deduction; since urban life favors multi-unit dwellings but condos have externalities single-family houses don't (it's hard to deal with a noisy upstairs neighbor when you both own), this favors suburbs.
2) Substantial car-based infrastructure investment that means car owners pay around half of the "total" or social cost of their driving.
3) Barriers to entry in urban areas, especially in the form of zoning height limits.
4) Tying education and education funding to geographic location.
I believe there are a couple others I've forgotten.
It's pretty obvious that a lot of people want density—if they didn't, housing prices in NYC, DC, Seattle, San Francisco, and others wouldn't be so high. Hold supply relatively constant while demand increases, and you get prices that zoom up. I would, in many ways, draw the opposite conclusion from yours.
> It's pretty obvious that a lot of people want density
Yes, but folks living in suburbs don't stop folks who like density from having it.
It's interesting that suburb dwellers never complain about other people's living choices. It's always the city fans who can't tolerate folks who want something else.
BTW - If you want high-density housing, you're going to have shared walls. It's unclear why you blame suburbs for that.
> 4) Tying education and education funding to geographic location.
That's actually less of an issue in densely populated areas, for somewhat obvious reasons.
As to the "car subsidy" argument, every time I've checked the numbers presented by folks who claim it exists, I've found that their accounting is borderline fraudulent. Of course, they're typically just passing along numbers from someone else, but ....
There is maybe one mass-transit system in the world that pays its operating costs and they all receive massive subsidies for capital expenditures, often from the gas tax....
It's interesting that suburb dwellers never complain about other people's living choices.
No, they just vote against spending any public money on things like public transit, or against raising car and gas taxes. If suburbians paid their own way I wouldn't mind them either.
Why would anyone want to vote to spend money on anything that will be a net loss?
Subsidizing public transportation is an economic drain on society. The correct answer is to have self-sustaining, profitable public transportation. This can only happen in cities with sufficient population density, such as NYC.
Car and gas taxes? Tax the hell out of them, since the costs right now are so over-externalized. Eventually, that will start to force more population density, and then we can talk about sustainable public transportation.
It's strange to argue against government spending on infrastructure on the premise that infrastructure should be profitable. Unless you have similar feelings about tolling the city street or privatizing the sidewalk, this isn't a consistent argument.
Subsidizing alternatives to car usage reduces the externalities of car usage. You can't effectively disincent car usage in the absence of alternatives.
It's certainly not strange to argue in favor of the most efficient system. If something cannot be made to be more profitable compared to its alternatives, assuming they are all priced fairly in order to to cover external costs equally, then it is not the most efficient. What economist would argue in favor of that?
It's quite a consistent argument when I say that I am in favor of taxing gas and automobiles. In fact, I think they should be taxed at much higher rates, to internalize the costs that are currently being externalized. Ideally, the costs of roads and bridges are covered by those taxes. Thus they're usage-based and not subsidized by those not using them.
I'm not sure why you think the best way to internalize the costs of car usage is to subsidize public transportation. That's just backwards thinking.
As car usage becomes more expensive due to taxation, cities will become more dense. This is the point where we can start talking about building infrastructure for public transportation, that will then make economic sense thanks to population density. It makes no sense to have a bus meander around the suburbs for hours to pick up a few riders, all traveling to different parts of town. It's an impossible idea. You have to have density first. Tax cars and gas so that they pay for their own infrastructure and environmental consequences, and density will be a natural outgrowth, at which point public transportation will be more viable.
Maybe it makes sense for public transit to be profitable in the long run, but it takes investment to get to that point, and to some extent you have to have public transit, at least in the cities, in order for people to move to the cities and give up their cars in the first place.
Since the gas taxes are often diverted to non-road purposes....
I'll make you a deal. Let the cities pay for the mass transit systems (capital and running costs) and let the urbs pay for their highways. Both pay for their streets.
If you implemented that completely, I think you'd see a pretty massive correction and living in the suburbs would become much more expensive. State and even federal taxes fundamentally redistribute wealth out of cities and into sparsely populated regions--correcting for that alone is probably more than the realistic urbanist can ever hope for.
All things are not created equal. The single most environmentally friendly place to live in the US is downtown New York City. Yet we still feel the need to subsidize single family dwellings though a wide range of tax breaks and subsidies.
> The single most environmentally friendly place to live in the US is downtown New York City.
Not even close.
Also, the vast majority of city dwellers go out of their way/pay extra to not live as environmentally efficiently as possible, so it's absurd to claim that environmental efficiency is the most important criteria.
Suburbs provide some things far more efficiently than cities do. And, cities provide other things more efficiently. The fact that you value one set of things more than the other does not imply that your choice is correct.
It's interesting that suburb dwellers never complain about other people's living choices. It's always the city fans who can't tolerate folks who want something else.
In a nutshell, this is what I find so frustrating about these discussions and really the only reason I got drawn in in the first place!
I live in the country on a small farm. I have a long, expensive drive into work. I can only get relatively slow broadband (lucky to get any at all) and it's expensive; I have no city services, so I'm responsible for maintaining my own water treatment and sewage equipment; everything takes a long time; if I run out of something critical, the closest grocery store is 8 miles away and charges an arm and a leg; more reasonably priced ones are about 13 miles away. And I consider myself lucky they are that close.
I don't bitch about this because I made the decision to incur these costs so my family can have the lifestyle we like.
If people want to live in a dense city, on top of each other (and I lived in NYC for 8 years), fine. That's their choice; I don't have to like it. The reality is that people will do what's in their own self interest regardless of what others want them to do. So work for cheaper, cleaner energy; work for lower-impact building processes and improved street layout; work for smaller, more energy efficient houses; work for more public transit (the bus 12 miles from my house can get me into the city in 1/3 the time it would take me to drive there).
"My city would be sparkling and new if we didn't have to subsidize the standard of living of all the deadbeats in the burbs."
That is a silly notion. Are you assuming those out in the burbs don't pay property tax, vehicle related taxes, tax on purchases and every other tax in existence?
I'm positive we'd all learn quite a bit if we actually dug into the numbers.
He's generalizing, of course, but it's because in the US, the suburbs incorporate into their own cities, and keep the taxes for themselves. Meanwhile, they commute into a city on a freeway paid for by the urbanites and enjoy all the benefits of city infrastructure, without paying for it.
Not sure how cities incorporate in Canada but that's how it usually is here.
Certainly no disagreement that suburbanites commute. And once they arrive they spend bucketloads of money on a daily basis & tend to work for companies that spend bucketloads of money locally for office space & all the goods held therein.
Communters do tend to also help support public transportation systems that are made available, in effect subsidizing them. Afterwards they leave & cost the city absolutely nothing beyond some infrastructure.
I can name ten(s) of cities in the United States that absolutely die the moment 5-6pm strike, but were couriered money in by suburbanites during the day and would have zero infrastructure otherwise.
I too am generalizing, of course.. I couldn't imagine seeing suburbanites as vultures.
> I can name ten(s) of cities in the United States that absolutely die the moment 5-6pm strike, but were couriered money in by suburbanites during the day and would have zero infrastructure otherwise.
>He's generalizing, of course, but it's because in the US, the suburbs incorporate into their own cities, and keep the taxes for themselves.
Well, sure, and they provide services to residents with those taxes, just like the cities do. Cities don't have any claim on that money. If the cities really think they're getting a raw deal tax-wise, then they can institute a municipal income tax the way NYC does. I suspect New York is the only city that can actually get away with it over the long run, though.
>Meanwhile, they commute into a city on a freeway paid for by the urbanites and enjoy all the benefits of city infrastructure, without paying for it.
They pay for the freeways with gas and income taxes. At least in my state cities don't maintain freeways, that's done at the state level. Their employers pay taxes to the city, they pay taxes on everything they buy on their lunch break. On Friday night they come into the city and drop more money in bars and restaurants, and part of that money makes its way into city coffers. Shouldn't the cities be returning some of that money to the suburbs?
In any event, it's not the suburbs that come out ahead tax-wise. It's the rural areas. Rural America is heavily subsidized at both the state and national level and most of those studies don't make any distinction.
One other point... the highway system, which city people always count as a "subsidy" of other areas is most heavily used to move goods from one population center to another. The rural areas would never have built the highway system because they don't need it.
> Well, sure, and they provide services to residents with those taxes, just like the cities do.
So their taxes go to pay for services only they use, and my taxes go to services that we all use. How is that fair?
> They pay for the freeways with gas and income taxes.
That's just an example. They spend half of their day in the city every weekday, they are going to end up utilizing some services that are paid for by municipal taxes sooner or later. It's simply ludicrous to suggest otherwise. Unless of course suburbanites aren't allowed to walk on the sidewalk or visit city parks where you live.
> On Friday night they come into the city and drop more money in bars and restaurants, and part of that money makes its way into city coffers.
Ahh, the old boost the economy/trickle down theory. I would rather they just pay taxes to the city, frankly. The money that possibly makes its way into city coffers is much less than it would be if they just paid taxes directly to the city.
> In any event, it's not the suburbs that come out ahead tax-wise. It's the rural areas.
This simply serves to demonstrate our point. Nobody is arguing otherwise, rural areas are definitely subsidized more than urban or suburban areas.
However, the same issues that cause rural areas to be so unequally subsidized apply to urban areas vs suburban areas too. It's just exacerbated in the case of rural areas.
The vast majority of the so-called subsidy is welfare, which has been pushed by urban politicians.
If you don't like the costs of the programs that you push, look in the mirror.
I've no objection to making welfare a county-level thing, so cities can pay what they want (and are willing to fund) and suburbs can pay what they want (and are willing to fund).
>It's pretty obvious that a lot of people want density—if they didn't, housing prices in NYC, DC, Seattle, San Francisco, and others wouldn't be so high.
You're making the assumption people want to live there because of the density and not because there are certain types of jobs that pay more in big cities. I could make twenty or thirty percent more if I moved to NYC, but that's something I'll never do.
Not necessarily -- people may want to live there in spite of the density, since not everybody is like you in turning down a 30% salary bump to avoid the big city. But it's definitely true that dense expensive places are dense and expensive because people want to live there. The regulatory problem being pointed out is that it's borderline-illegal to increase densities almost everywhere, despite increasing prices. It is all but certain that if there were no regulatory incentives for one level of density over another that there would be a lot more density than there is now.
>But it's definitely true that dense expensive places are dense and expensive because people want to live there.
It's just as likely for every person who wants to live in a dense city there's someone else who lives there for career reasons but would rather live somewhere else. The second person drives up the cost of housing just as much as the first.
You're making the assumption people want to live there because of the density and not because there are certain types of jobs that pay more in big cities.
Glaeser's book and a lot of the other work on economic geography make it clear that the two are inherently related and evolve together; density promotes knowledge spillover effects, dense markets, and various other Good Things. See also some of Richard Florida's work (though it can be frothy at times).
Well, we're not in disagreement, then. But saying you want to do such and such a job doesn't necessarily imply you're interested in living on top of ten million other people. Everyone makes tradeoffs - for a lot of people the density is a big negative, but it's outweighed by employment opportunities.
People respond to incentives. Urban misgovernment and subsidies for suburbs (chiefly the freeways) create a particular set of circumstances that force sparsity.
The fact is, the rising cost of energy, especially petroleum, makes large scale suburbia unsustainable. Public policy needs to reflect this.
Hey, if you're willing to shoulder the true costs of that style of living -- environmentally, that's at least air pollution, and runoff from increased paving and lawns replacing woods and fields; then there's the cost of building out utilities, which you'll share with far fewer people in the exurbs -- then I guess you can. I suspect that far fewer people can truly afford suburban density than our current setup has allowed.
I'm failing to see where some of these conclusions are coming from. I grew up in a cul de sac and it honestly made me closer to my neighbors because we could play in the street more often, and adults have block parties and stuff in cul de sacs. I also disagree with the whole miles and miles to see neighbors a few blocks over point. In almost every neighborhood in my town there's tons of bike/jogging trails everywhere that makes this a nonissue.
As an aside I was a little turned off by the overly hostile tone taken by the article.
I live without a car. The "put in connector sidewalks" solution is one that has occurred to me. My thought is that it would let people keep the same situation they seem to prefer in terms of car traffic but would connect neighbors like he is talking about, where teenagers could go see each other without needing a driver's license and car to have a social life.
I see what he's saying, but don't necessarily agree. I grew up in India and I'm not sure how the culture here is in the US, but most of my friends came from houses that were a maximum of 2 blocks away. Not how much of a difference you'd make by connecting houses that are as far apart as 2.5 miles.
The link is great though, It seems obvious on hindsight, but I didn't realize cities were explicitly planned this way.
The point is not to connect you with houses 2.5 miles away--it's to connect you with houses 50 meters away that are completely inaccessible thanks to the street layout.
i lived on a variety of cu-de-sacs until i was 30. cutting thru neighbors' yards was never considered "trespassing" in those neighborhoods, especially for kids/teens.
Most suburbs have fences, no? The one where I grew up it'd be impossible for me to get to a house 100 feet away without hopping fences, and that's generally seen as poor form.
So (1) almost all fences have gates. (2) most houses do not have fences unless they have an animal or need extra privacy for some reason. (3) jumping fences is fun when you are a kid/teen. Otherwise, yes, the fence will get in the way.
It depends. There may be fences and other obstacles in the way and it may involve trespassing. I sometimes find pedestrian-friendly paths cut through and sometimes not.
But some subdivisions still have good access to the surrounding streets, and some are hard to get in and out of, both seem to have about the same number of cul-de-sacs.
What you need is not less cul-de-sacs, it is more pedestrian ways meshing your neighbourhood and small parks to connect people together. Do not focus on the roads, focus on the people.
- cars begin to take space in the city, cause local pollution, and also kill people walking or biking
- don't blame the cars but blame the dangers of city, and thus proceed to build suburbs which are perceived safe, and move there
- build miles and miles of wide and car-friendly culs-de-sac because everybody knows if cars stay on their runway and people stay inside their yards or homes, they can't hit each other
- automobile accidents soar because everybody needs to drive around
- thus, build and sell more cars because suburbanites require a couple in each house, continue blaming cities and leave it to poor people who can't buy a house and maintain a couple of vehicles
- build malls and office parks to avoid going to the downtown at all, but only if you can afford to drive there because there's no other way there
- suburbia is becomes dead during the daytime and conversely office parks die off after the workday, and malls get their share of visits before people go to sleep and this is all glued together by huge traffic congestion during commute hours
- to battle congestion, build more roads and make them even wider: there's more congestion that spreads even wider
- oil prices soar and living gets really expensive in the suburbs: continue to build new suburbs while leaving older suburbs to become McGhettos
