Current Settlement Patterns

Excellent excerpt from Ezra Klein - American Prospect on density and How We Live Now:

There's often a tendency to assume that the status quo is the most "natural" way for things to be, and that rejiggering the relevant subsidies is somehow more artificial and presumptuous. But the current system was built atop a massive structure of subsidies and tax breaks. The mortgage tax deduction advantaged bigger homes; funding schools through inequitable property taxes encouraged families to move out of cities where the property taxes were low and into richer suburbs where the schools would be wealthy; putting billions into costly and little-used roads made far-flung developments appear cheap to those who only saw the finished product; underfunding public transportation heavily influenced development patterns, and so on and so forth. And that doesn't even get into the racial unrest, social dysfunction, and crime levels that helped drive white flight -- and thus sprawl -- in the 60s and 70s.

Indeed, there's nothing natural about our current settlement patterns, and no reason preserving them should be seen as a nod to expressed preference rather than, as it actually is, a status quo bias in favor of the current subsidies and their associated winners. Nobody's saying we should make suburbs illegal. But we don't have to abide by public policy that makes them look far cheaper and more economical than they are.

After this nail-head hitting, a chorus of whining erupts in the comments.  The predictable responses include how density kills, planning sucks and New Urbanism will never work because there is no space for the Hummers.    

My favorite is the Bad Neighbor argument for sprawl.  "Ezra, you've never had a really bad neighbor, have you? One that drove you from your residence?"      I can't help but picture this unhappy critic in his college dorm room.

Comments

[Michelle Meaders]

Yes, how many Americans know about the subsidized suburban housing for whites only after WWII, red-lining neighborhoods where people wanted to buy or improve, and starving the inner cities of Federal Funding starting in the 80's? The original deed from the 1940's for my old neighborhood in Albuquerque (near Carlisle and Lomas) was whites-only. (These clauses were all overturned by the Federal Fair Housing law decades ago.)

[Jimbo]

An interesting thing happened to me a few years ago: I got stranded at the Albuquerque Sunport for the better part of half a day, so I thought I'd just "take a walk" and get something to eat and see part of the city. I was struck shortly after beginning my little misadventure with just how pedestrian-unfriendly Albuquerque is.

The current paradigm for city planning is to design around individual car use. It's insane.

"Nobody's saying we should make suburbs illegal" is right. However, the New Urbanism movement was onto something—even though very little of it actually got built.

The elephant in the room that nobody seems to want to seriously talk about is the fact that unless the population of the world (including us here in the Good Old US of A who use 133 times the resources as individuals in developing nations) ceases growing—and in fact goes toward negative growth—all of this discussion about sprawl will be moot and much of the problem will be solved for us when we asphyxiate in our own waste.

Talk about a housing bust!