Urban vs. Suburban Lifestyle

[Nick]

Finding them all over the U.S... Read Up!

http://www.realtor.org/articles/how-mil ... ess-trends

http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/the-aven ... leinberger

http://www.hreonline.com/HRE/story.jsp? ... =533339701

http://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/2011/ ... its-charm/

http://www.good.is/post/don-t-call-it-r ... o-detroit/

http://www.cnunext.org/icharrette/docum ... rative.pdf

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/2 ... de=1416016

google it sometime, fascinating stuff, being we're larger than the baby boomers, it might behoove some of you older guys to pay attention to what us young folk like, we'll fight for it

Well, for one thing, I'm 21. For another, I wrapped up a degree in Urban Studies from the U a year ago, and I got to read lots of articles from the 00s and even 90s that were trendy then but kind of humorously dated now about the "new urban lifestyle", etc. Some types of people have always favored the city, even through white flight, disinvestment, the crack epidemic, and so on. But don't get too insulated from what people outside your circle are doing.

[Nathan]

Finding them all over the U.S... Read Up!

http://www.realtor.org/articles/how-mil ... ess-trends

http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/the-aven ... leinberger

http://www.hreonline.com/HRE/story.jsp? ... =533339701

http://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/2011/ ... its-charm/

http://www.good.is/post/don-t-call-it-r ... o-detroit/

http://www.cnunext.org/icharrette/docum ... rative.pdf

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/2 ... de=1416016

google it sometime, fascinating stuff, being we're larger than the baby boomers, it might behoove some of you older guys to pay attention to what us young folk like, we'll fight for it

Well, for one thing, I'm 21. For another, I wrapped up a degree in Urban Studies from the U a year ago, and I got to read lots of articles from the 00s and even 90s that were trendy then but kind of humorously dated now about the "new urban lifestyle", etc. Some types of people have always favored the city, even through white flight, disinvestment, the crack epidemic, and so on. But don't get too insulated from what people outside your circle are doing.

Let's also not forget that the last 6* years has been completely stagnant because of a struggling economy. It wasn't a beggars and choosers market. But as things rebound people are going to start asking for what they want from their company. Let's not forget what has worked around the world in other cities for hundreds of years longer than the US has even existed. practicality will eventually prevail... It hasn't always been the U.S.'s need to develop out of practicality, but leaner meaner times may be ahead.

Edit: I'm also the only one in my circle who is interested in Urban Planning as I went to ASU to school for Housing and Urban Development. When I came back 4 years later I found most of my friends had done as predicted on their own.

[Tyler]

Well, for one thing, I'm 21. For another, I wrapped up a degree in Urban Studies from the U a year ago, and I got to read lots of articles from the 00s and even 90s that were trendy then but kind of humorously dated now about the "new urban lifestyle", etc. Some types of people have always favored the city, even through white flight, disinvestment, the crack epidemic, and so on. But don't get too insulated from what people outside your circle are doing.

Well, ok. Some people love the burbs. I'm sure nasa's friends are real and buses and panhandlers really were huge negatives to them working downtown (but remember, they don't have an ounce of snobbery). The point is not that those people don't exist. It's that the culture is slowly changing. I definitely believe this to be true, especially for the demographics Target seems to hire.

[woofner]

Try driving to the city during rush hour. Enlarge the road system and that woud make sense.

Try driving to Chanhassen during rush hour. Enlarge the road system and it gets worse.

[nasa35]

Try driving to the city during rush hour. Enlarge the road system and that woud make sense.

Try driving to Chanhassen during rush hour. Enlarge the road system and it gets worse.

That makes no sense and it never will. There absolutely no logic attached to that.

[Nick]

Try driving to the city during rush hour. Enlarge the road system and that woud make sense.

Try driving to Chanhassen during rush hour. Enlarge the road system and it gets worse.

That makes no sense and it never will. There absolutely no logic attached to that.

It's pretty well established that you can't build your way out of congestion, but that might fall in that department of knowledge we've acquired since 1960 so...

[spearson]

That makes no sense and it never will. There absolutely no logic attached to that.

Look up "Braess's Paradox". Adding additional lanes really has no affect on congestion, and can make it worse. Not to mention that additional capacity allows people to sprawl further out, thus creating longer travel times and more chance for car accidents, which ultimately creates more traffic. There are plenty of studies (which I'm going to be purposely too lazy to link to) which also show this.

For example, they added an additional lane on Hwy 10 from Foley Blvd to Hanson Blvd in Coon Rapids. Traffic is now 10x worse than what it was for the evening rush hour, and absolutely no different for the morning rush hour.

[ECtransplant]

You don't understand mulad. It less than 20 minutes by freeway to ANYTHING YOU WANT!

Again, it would do you guys well to actually get out. There's anything you'd want within 5 minutes. And my friends are a great barometer since thay're actually real and they work and can think outside of 3 mile square area. Plus they're down to earth with not one ounce of snobbery.

You do realize the irony in proudly claiming your lack of affiliation with snobbery, I hope.

Personally, I'd rather have everything I want within a 10 minute walk than a 5 minute drive.

[FISHMANPET]

I heard that Ameriprise was planning on moving into the Northern Suburbs to be closer to the execs homes, and when the staff found they might be moving out of Downtown had a conniption, putting an end to that plan.

Furthermore, just look at rents for office and residential and commercial in the city vs the suburbs. Prices are higher in the city because demand relative to supply is higher. At the very least, the market has taken into account the higher non real estate costs associated with suburban homes and jobs.

[Minneapolisite]

The urban vs. suburban lifestyle divide makes much more sense in really dense cities, but in the Midwest it's just perplexing. Lots of people say they need their own single-family home and a yard, so living in the city is out since they don't want to be packed like sardines into a tiny apartment in a 30 story building and be squeezed in by the masses on sidewalk when they step out. These people obviously don't get out much: the majority of Midwestern cities consist of single-family homes with a yard. And why is there so much sprawl in the Midwest? Because people want a single-family home with a yard. I've known suburbanites and lived in a suburb for a good chunk of my life and I can say that no matter how good they may be as people overall there is something off about them, something askew. Before you call me out on making a blanket statement on a huge population, just hit up some strip-mall bars and you'll agree: there's something wrong with these people.

[Rich]

So you hereby declare that each and every person in the suburbs has something wrong with them, and you base this conclusion on some customers you observed at a strip-mall bar?

[MSPtoMKE]

Sounds fair to me! And I can tell you from working in the vicinity of Franklin and Nicollet, none of the city folk I come in contact seem at all "off". Just totally normal in every way. Clearly all the crazies live in the suburbs.

[helsinki]

I think the debate is missing a huge element: incentives. I honestly don't dislike the suburbs. I grew up in the Hale neighborhood of south Minneapolis, and I always thought it was very suburban - everyone has a nice house, a yard, a garage, it is very green, safe, it is overwhelmingly Scandinavian-German, middle class, and rather dull. In a word, very comfortable, and I think this is what is attractive to many people about the suburbs also. Actually, I think a lot of suburbs don't even pull off suburbia as well as Minneapolis - go to these newer suburbs and they've got no trees and the intersections are disasters (why are red lights so long in suburbia?) compared to 48th and Chicago (shameless plug: go see movies at the Parkway Theater, it's super cool).

Concerning incentives, what bothers me about suburbia is not that people want to live there (see above), but that it is, despite the laughable libertarian rhetoric oftentimes heard from suburbia-apologists, entirely a government creation.

Three federal policies in particular are important:

1. The obvious - the construction of the interstate highway system.

2. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. These government institutions are the only reason most people have 30-year mortgages. Douglass Elliot of Brookings:

“The politicians would like something that provides a deep and wide subsidy for housing that doesn’t show up on the budget as costing anything. That’s what we had” with Fannie and Freddie, Mr. Elliott said. “But going forward there is going to be more honest accounting.” (See: http://www.cnbc.com/id/41903458/Without ... _Fade_Away)

3. Finally, the least widely understood: the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). Planetizen says it better than I can:

"In addition to increasing home ownership nationwide, the FHA also impacted the physical form of residential development through design guidelines that were used to qualify subdivisions for financing, explains Oliver.

'Since states began following the FHA's design guidelines when crafting their own mortgage-support programs, and since commercial lenders tended to keep the same guidelines once private dollars started flowing again, post Great Depression, what began as voluntary aims became the defacto nationwide design standard," notes Rosenberg.

"And that standard, that shaping, resulted in nothing less than the nationwide rise of suburbs, subdivisions, single-family homes, cul-de-sacs, curvilinear streets, homes set far back from streets, grass lawns in lieu of other planting, the decline of pedestrianism and just about every other archetypical suburban hallmark."

(See: http://www.planetizen.com/node/58690)

In other words, the Federal Government has constructed an elaborate edifice of incentives to create suburbia. Indeed, if you throw in countless bailouts of the auto industry over the years, starving transit of funding, and relentless efforts to secure cheap energy supplies (seriously: relentless. Saudi Aramco - the Saudi national oil company - is a successor of Standard Oil, now called Chevron in the US. The relationship goes back a long way), the conclusion is inescapable that the government really really wanted suburbia. It is not the free market, it is the artificial creation of those hated bureaucrats in Washington.

Why? What was the point? Order. The 1930s were a very tumultuous time in America. Rioting in cities, radical political movements, protests with the ability to influence policy - these were all seen as resulting from the concentration of disaffected people in small areas. Density was politically de-stabilizing.

There is a theory of property (not based on labor, or improvement, or exclusive possession) that holds that societies are more conservative, more obedient, and more stable, when there are more stakeholders in the status quo. This is the genesis of the idea of suburbia: you give people a stake in the status quo - principally a small plot of land and a house. This makes people less inclined to take action against the authorities; if you have a stake in the system, you don't want to upset it. It is a very simple idea really and makes intuitive sense; people worried about their credit rating are going to pay their bills and be quiet. The political turmoil of the 1930s made this a priority for the government.

The problem is that now, what was once benign, has become malign. The politics motivating actors in the 1930s are long gone. The legacy of their choices is an environmental disaster, that also comes with seriously debilitating social side effects (isolation, obesity, for example).

So I'm all for people living in the suburbs if they want. If you want a big yard and a big house, great. What I don't want is the government relentlessly clearing the path for you to make that decision, and erecting hurdles in the way of deciding to live in the city. End the mortgage interest deduction (subsidized housing). End perennial highway construction and enlargement; end foreign policy designed to secure oil concessions for the majors (subsidized transportation). Above all, end the railing against 'big government', and then using gigantic government as a tool to promote a certain community structure above all others.

The only really compelling argument for suburbia that still remains valid is economic growth. Structuring transportation around automobiles stimulated a huge market for cars and made American auto manufacturers into world leaders (for a while). The same holds true for housing construction - many suppliers, unionized workers (plumbers, electricians, etc), and professionals (architects, landscape designers, etc.) were guaranteed market demand for their goods and services. And, of course, suburban living is a life of consumption - markets were stimulated for a vast array of products. This was, of course, a good thing. But these skills and products can be put to use re-building our cities also. Indeed, re-building our cities may actually generate more employment than new starts in the exurbs (See: http://www.theatlanticcities.com/housin ... -jobs/447/). This will require a mental shift; as already mentioned - the new generation is more urban in this regard. For the boomers, it might never happen.

[mattaudio]

Very educational post. I keep running into the problem where people THINK that suburbia is the default, the normal, and the natural outcome of the free market. I understand why they think that, but it's tough to enlighten them. I come at it from more of the Strong Towns approach but this is a good approach as well.

[mplsjaromir]

What was really crazy about the FHA was that any neighborhood that was in any way integrated was immediately red lined (given a D grade). D grades were also given to neighborhoods dense, mixed or aging. This policy lasted until 1966! Only a completely white neighborhood or a completely black neighborhood was eligible for FHA loans. The FHA along with its precursor the HOLC (Home Owners Loan Corporation) made it nearly impossible for large swaths of American cities to qualify for a mortgage.

The FHA housing manual openly recommend "subdivision regulation and suitable restrictive covenants", meaning that loans should only be underwritten if there was strict segregation. Few realize that the FHA has made a bigger impact on Americans than any other government entity in the last 60 years.

[Nick]

Quick note: Pretty sure the Supreme Court outlawed restrictive covenants in the late 40s, or at least the ones targeting minorities. Rest of your point stands though.

[mplsjaromir]

Quick note: Pretty sure the Supreme Court outlawed restrictive covenants in the late 40s, or at least the ones targeting minorities. Rest of your point stands though.

You are correct I should have been more clear. The Supreme Court (Shelley v. Krarmer) ruling of 1948 did outlaw covenants. Red lining continued into the 1960s. For example, as late as 1966 there was not a single FHA mortgage in Camden or Patterson New Jersey.

[Minneapolisite]

So you hereby declare that each and every person in the suburbs has something wrong with them, and you base this conclusion on some customers you observed at a strip-mall bar?

Hey, I lived in the sprawling burbs most of my life and yes there is something wrong with people who choose to live an existence among strip-malls and big-box stores. But that's only from living in that setting for years and interacting with the people there: not like I have any 1st hand experience. The horror that is strip-mall bars are born of this particular deviant lifestyle.

[helsinki]

I can't believe I forgot one of the major government drivers of Suburbia: mandatory minimum parking requirements.

The NYTimes review of Donald Shoup's "The High Cost of Free Parking" says it best:

"Many suburbanites take free parking for granted, whether it’s in the lot of a big-box store or at home in the driveway. Yet the presence of so many parking spaces is an artifact of regulation and serves as a powerful subsidy to cars and car trips. Legally mandated parking lowers the market price of parking spaces, often to zero. Zoning and development restrictions often require a large number of parking spaces attached to a store or a smaller number of spaces attached to a house or apartment block.

If developers were allowed to face directly the high land costs of providing so much parking, the number of spaces would be a result of a careful economic calculation rather than a matter of satisfying a legal requirement. Parking would be scarcer, and more likely to have a price — or a higher one than it does now — and people would be more careful about when and where they drove.

The subsidies are largely invisible to drivers who park their cars — and thus free or cheap parking spaces feel like natural outcomes of the market, or perhaps even an entitlement. Yet the law is allocating this land rather than letting market prices adjudicate whether we need more parking, and whether that parking should be free. We end up overusing land for cars — and overusing cars too. You don’t have to hate sprawl, or automobiles, to want to stop subsidizing that way of life."

See http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/15/busin ... 5view.html

[mattaudio]

Right on. I have the book if anyone wants to borrow it. We could start an UrbanMSP book exchange.