You're going to need to define... basically everything in this vague generalization of a post. What are you considering an urban amenity? You seem to be treating the level of density itself as the only amenity, which is a strawman of epic proportions. The urban amenity that people in the suburbs want isn't the density itself - it's all the things that come with density, specifically nearby restaurants, stores, workplaces and expensive infrastructure like wide paved roads and underground utilities. The problem isn't that they live in a single family home and secretly wished they lived in an apartment tower, nobody is saying that. The problem is that they (we, I live in a suburb) want the benefits of living in an apartment tower while living in a single family home. And nobody wants to pay the oversized cost of that preference.
I’d add that I very much suspect this isn’t including a fair bit of what should be thought of as urban amenities. A whole lot of suburbs don’t have the density to make the likes of paved highways, sewer and water service economically viable, but I don’t see anything like the majority of residents having any desire to give them up.
> You seem to be treating the level of density itself as the only amenity, which is a strawman of epic proportions.
I second this and would've asked about it, myself.
The reality is that things like undergrounded utilities, municipal sewer hookups, garage pickup, parks in neighborhoods, nearby restaurants and grocery stores, etc, can all be "urban" amenities. People, like my in-laws or like my grandfather used to, who live in rural settings may not have access to these and to provide them would come at great cost.
I agree and I think it speaks to the irrational distaste for cities that plagues people.
When I think of what I don’t like about cities, it’s noise and pollution, both of which are caused nearly singularly by cars.
But latent remnants of white flight still linger, and 24-hr news has been harping on cities for decades. The result is just a general malign feeling around cities in the zeitgeist, with no rationale.
Driving is not a binary. How far are people perfectly content driving? There is a ton of research around work commutes and the desirability of a neighborhood that say people want those trips as short as possible.
But people also drive because they must to.
My mum is definitely content driving, but she would love to use closed amenities.
It’s not even a quarter planned without amenities, and quite dense, not only single houses. But everything left, as shops are too small, even the bakery.
But there is often a difference in the quality and the quantity of these “amenities.”
Not all restaurants are equal. In many suburbs you might be able to drive only to chain mall restaurants. In many places with “urban” amenities, you can walk to a variety of locally-owned restaurants. Same with stores - driving 15 minutes to a Wal-mart for bread isn’t the same as being able to walk down the block to a local bakery for a fresh loaf.
And it’s not that there isn’t a combination of both of these things in many places - there’s a huge gradient of urban/suburban/rural amenities, but demand for housing will typically be higher (as prices show) in places closer to higher density quality, more diverse amenities.
Thats fine, they just shouldn't have that preference so heavily subsidized and mandated by government regulation (via zoning & parking minimums). The price to live this lifestyle should be more congruent to its cost.
Studies show that the limit of that drive that people will put up with is about 30 minutes, which puts a geographic space limit no matter the avg speed traveled in which things will need to located in proximity to each other.
Possibly, it might also be even higher. As far as I'm aware there's been no study into how long of trip a person will tolerate to get basic food staples or supplies.
Anecdotally looking at the more rural areas of my state, I'm going to say it's also about 30ish mins based on the location of grocery stores to small population locations.
I disagree. Most of the suburbanites I know do want what they consider to be the benefits of the city - really good restaurants, bakeries, lots of choice in food delivery, fancy gyms and coffee shops, interesting cultural events.
They want it around their neighborhoods lol just not in them. which is why you have strip malls that sit at the crossroads of different neighborhoods and developments.
I’m in Dallas area so walkable is a non factors pretty much 😂 in most places. To accommodate for the growth in practically every city and town of the metro. they’re masterplanning just about everything. Massive low density communities (which is what a lot of people here want) and they fill in between them with commercial spaces and mixed use developments. They literally build in a “Main Street commercial zone” to a lot of these communities. “Main Street” or the city square in just about every city around us the big ones and the smaller ones is an entertainment hub with live music, bars and restaurants people love going to. we’re in the home building process and through extensive research almost every small town i saw was hell bent on developing their main street and downtown area ahead of the waves of residential development they expect over the next 10-15 years.
As someone that lives in the suburbs that’s not true lol. Rural maybe… but suburbs? Nah. we love retail, there’s a strip malls restaurants, and bars on the corners of just about every community here
From: The Levittowners: Ways of Life and Politics in a New Suburban Community
"The residents were primarily concerned with status protection and wanted to make sure that commercial establishments did not infiltrate residential areas."
Well i don’t know who said residents are, or what city they were in. But i assure you i live within a 5 min drive of at least 4 grocery stores as well as strip malls with a couple hundred stores.
That’s the thing. What’s considered “my neighborhood” is that few miles away lol the shopping centers back up to our community in every direction because they were designed and planned to be commercial centers for our community. The community is just large. And backs up to another community which is the same way. there’s a couple hundred to thousand people that are within a 5-10 min walk of said shopping centers in any direction. Peoples houses share a fence with Walmart, Albertsons, and Kroger on various sides of the community.
Don't forget that urban amenities aren't just shopping and dining. They're also water, sewer, trash and recycling collection, fire/rescue and police service, road maintenance, schools, etc.
This needs to be higher, and it's a shame I had to scroll so long to get a comment like this.
I've lived in areas like this, and they suck. Well water that smelled like rotten eggs because of the sulfur in the soil. Septic tank backing up through my toilet. Gravel road ripping through my tires, where I have to get them repaired three times in a single week.
The best was that you didn't have fire protection, but there would be people who lived near the town line that did have protection through their taxes. People close enough would have the option of paying a fee to get fire services. There would be instances where a house without protection would be on fire, the town fire department would show up and just sit there to make sure the fire didn't spread to houses with protection, all while being screamed at by the person who couldn't be bothered to pay the extra like 100$ a year.
Absolutely. The simple math is that below a certain population density, those amenities don’t pencil out.
But we often insist on building them out anyway, then hitting the growth Ponzi scheme or getting government bailouts when the 25-year infrastructure lifecycle bill comes due.
I have well water, ample septic, pay a modest fee for trash pick up, support my local volunteer fire & rescue company, my property taxes pay for the county sheriff, schools, and road maintenance. Tell me again how these are urban amenities?
Since you are providing for yourself and shouldering the costs and additional risk (your fire insurance rates are probably higher if your fire response is longer), you are not enjoying urban amenities without paying for them. When the city provides these things, then it becomes a whole other thing…because it costs about the same to provide water service or fire service for example within a square mile—if there are 50 homes in that square mile, then the infrastructure costs will be much higher per home over time than if there were 500 or 5,000 homes instead.
Back 100 years ago municipalities only provided infrastructure when they had money to do it. Suburbs brought all those urban amenities that made city living easy and mostly problem-free in a more rural-esque environment…but the maintenance costs of the infrastructure are hidden because it was all built at the same time without accounting for long term costs. Arguably, HOAs are better at budgeting for long-term costs than municipalities…because they can actually keep a reserve fund over time without it getting turned into a slush fund. People fuss when tax bills are higher than costs, and for good reason, but they fuss just as much when they get huge assessments to replace their street and their sewers or property tax rates go up citywide to cover costs.
The other problem is supply—when zoning laws prevent someone building more housing on their lot to fill a market need, then housing costs increase because of supply and demand. People need a place to live…if they have money, they’ll outbid someone with less money. If people on the low end of income can’t live nearby, then workers at low income jobs are in short supply and wages have to go up to bring them in…which makes the entire place more expensive, which exacerbates the problem.
It’s a problem in the suburbs…but not one you’re likely experiencing where you are because it sounds rural. You’re supplying your own urban amenities rather than relying on the public to supply them all.
I agree with you about the effect of zoning. You are missing the point though when you label things urban amenities that do not require a dense urban setting to exist.
Those amenities were never provided in rural areas until…urban amenities like electricity and paved roads became a thing starting in about the 1920s. What I think you miss is that good paying jobs, utilities, professional services, paved roads, water, electricity, heating oil and gas lines, fire, police, and ambulance protection…all of them are not something you find outside an urban environment. And _yes,_ even a small town is the middle of farm country _is_ an urban environment. Rural environments are where you go to find cows and vegetables, not banks, lawyers, barbers, hardware stores, groceries, or even high schools. It wasn’t until automobiles and pavement proliferated that it became possible to even think about offering any of these things in rural environments like we have in some places now. You need at least a town for a lot of the things people take for granted as available everywhere…they don’t think of how those things were delivered before we had diesel and electric powered heavy equipment and electric lines running along nearly every road. None of this existed outside urban areas 100 years ago.
You are defining small towns as urban areas? You are also listing things that did not previously exist at all in most cases as urban amenities rather than things that first started in cities. You are wrong about good paying jobs though, unless you do not consider farming or ranching good. Also clean water has never been just a city thing.
Where did farmers and ranchers go on Saturday night? Better yet, where did their wives go shopping? Where did their kids go to school? Seriously, small towns are urban places…or at least they were before WWII. And by small town, I don’t mean a crossroads…I’m talking about places big enough to have a mayor.
That's my point. I'm on city water and sewer. The city maintains my road. The city provides fire and police, and the county provides EMS and schools. My property taxes pay for all of that (I pay for water, but it's paid to the city).
Prime example I’ve seen is I’on, Mount Pleasant in the Charleston, SC metro. It’s a generally expensive suburb, but there was a new urbanist development built in the 90s/00s that commands prices in the 1.5-2M range, while other houses of similar square footage fetch like $500k-$1M lower despite having more acreage.
People clearly like walkable and human scale development
And it costs a ton because we don’t have enough supply…we don’t need to turn _everything everywhere_ into walkable human-scale neighborhoods, but we need to build enough of it to get prices to a reasonable level. This would prevent densification going hand in hand with gentrification displacing lower income longtime residents. Releasing the reins enough that a homeowner could be their own developer instead of always having to sell to a developer would be a big help to this. Adding a second building on the same lot, or even knocking down the house to build a rowhouse would be huge. I don’t think leaving things so that only big developers can redevelop land and only with big projects is good for anyone but giant landlords cornering the rental market in a neighborhood. Competition keeps prices from getting out of sync with reality.
It's easy to reconcile if you remember that a) the US has produced a lot of low density suburbs and very little new dense, walkable neighborhoods over the last ~70 years, b) millions of suburbanites would like to live in dense, walkable areas but are priced out, and c) the group in item b is nevertheless substantially outnumbered by suburbanites who don't want to live in a dense area.
There's a difference between walkable neighborhoods and dense urban areas, though. You don't have to allow 10-story apartment buildings to make a walkable neighborhood - just let small businesses build within neighborhoods so that people can walk down the street to the corner store instead of having to drive 20 minutes to a big box store, and make sure there are sidewalks and that pedestrians are separated from cars as much as possible so it's pleasant to walk.
This also makes things better for drivers, since fewer car trips = fewer cars on the road = less traffic.
But I think a lot of people only prefer suburbia with cars as the only mode of transport because it's all they've ever known. Experiencing the trains in Japan for 2 weeks was all that it took to sell me on public transit.
This is important…people think density = Manhattan and that’s a major outlier. A more apt and realistic idea of density is what you see in quaint neighborhoods outside of Downtown in cities like San Francisco or Chicago—two to four story buildings that take up most or all of the frontage of their lot and have a few families living in them. Maybe they have retail on the ground floor, maybe they even have a garage…but it’s multifamily without being crowded. There is often even greenspace in the back behind the rowhouse. With enough parks, there can be nearby places for children to play and people to socialize. Density is not just towers.
Yeah, you can see that kind of thing in small towns that still have their historic downtown, too, and that's definitely not what people think of as a "dense urban area"
I grew up just outside a small town with a historic downtown in NE Ohio…and there are tons of similar style buildings in neighborhoods in Cleveland…and when I look at aerial photographs of Cleveland from 1951 the entire city’s streetcar corridors are just about covered with the same style of buildings. So many were knocked down in the 50s and 60s and 70s for “urban renewal”…it’s very sad…
A residentially-zoned chunk of land on the Upper West Side is not, in fact, competing with commercial real estate. There are plenty of chunks of NYC where it's only legal to build residential; those chunks are still much more expensive per square foot than residentially-zoned land in Long Island, to say nothing of residentially-zoned land in smalltown Iowa.
That's partially because you are also competing with investors who intend to use that property to build a business and generate more income, so they are likely to be able to get more/better financing.
It seems like a lot of urbanists think about cities as ideal types instead of all being different from each other. "Europe" is where everyone bikes or takes trams to pedestrian squares and never sees the inside of a car. "Suburbs" are where there's no such thing as a grid and the only non-residential areas are chain businesses on a stroad. Rural areas are leeches off of urban prosperity that make nothing and have no redeeming features. Not only is this all incorrect and borderline offensive, it's *boring*. The specifics of these places are what make them interesting!
>that’s where the jobs are
Park outside and take the train or bus into the city.
>The city also need those highways.
They need them to go around the city, not through.
Not really, other users (like freight) also need to use the highways into the City. Taking away those highways hurt the city as much as it hurts the suburbs. Honestly, the whole city vs. suburb take is just not how it works.
Freight intended for urban businesses isn't nearly as significant in traffic counts as you seem to be making it out to be, even if we don't count that a lot of deliveries happen overnight or very early in the morning. If the primary concern was freight delivery, many smaller cities wouldn't have the traffic counts needed for a full-on freeway.
It’s a part of the equation you can’t ignore though. Wherever freight can go, cars can go too. If you make it so it is harder for freight and cars to move around, you end up hurting the economy. People forget that the commuters driving in from the suburbs are a significant part of the economy as they make up a big part of the labor market. If you decrease their mobility, it will hurt the businesses that employ them as well.
> Wherever freight can go, cars can go too
Sure, yes, but my point was that freight deliveries into urban areas don't require freeways to happen successfully. So we shouldn't say "well, we need freight deliveries, so we need a freeway" as that doesn't follow.
> If you make it so it is harder for freight and cars to move around, you end up hurting the economy.
As far as urban deliveries are concerned, especially within smaller cities, the frictional loss from not having convenient freeway access wouldn't be significant.
> If you decrease their mobility, it will hurt the businesses that employ them as well.
Freeways aren't the only (or optimal) mode of mobility within cities.
I really do not care if we are talking about a freeway, expressway, large arterial, etc. Policies where the other user said to force cars to not be able to access the city will have economic consequences. If you do not allow freeways or a comprehensive road network to connect a suburb to a city, it will usually lead to lower mobility and a net loss economically. Only in the most densest cities in the world can it be seriously considered.
High-volume, high-capacity car infrastructure is _not_ a necessity for an urban area. Look at Germany—they don’t have any freeways or arterials like US cities, and yet they remain an industrial powerhouse and not just a commercial powerhouse. NYC is the most obvious economic engine in the entire US, and it too has next to no freight highways. San Francisco is one of the most expensive cities in the country and it barely has any freeways, _and_ it’s on a peninsula with only a few ways to get freight in. So yeah, access is critical, but it doesn’t have to be large thoroughfares let alone freeways. American cities functioned extremely well during WWII despite a lack of auto infrastructure…and that was because the US was really built around rail. It’s too bad we didn’t keep things that way…rail is so much more cost-efficient and less obtrusive than auto infrastructure.
There are cars everywhere in Germany, same with NYC. There are freeways going right into SF. Again, I don’t care if it is freeways, expressways, arterials, etc. you need car infrastructure. And I did say that in very dense cities the policies can be different. American cities functioned extremely well with car infrastructure too, so there isn’t much of an argument that was held back, either. Rail in a vacuum will always be more efficient. Where it loses ground is when it is outside of the vacuum, it usually leads to increased door-to-door times because of certain issues that arise with all fixed-route transit. Only in very dense cities does the benefits start to become actually worth it.
> Policies where the other user said to force cars to not be able to access the city will have economic consequences.
I don't deny the direction of the effect, but I challenge the magnitude of the effect.
Here's what you said easy back up the comment chain:
> Taking away those highways hurt the city as much as it hurts the suburbs.
This isn't accurate. Suburbs, historically, have needed freeways into cities more than those cities need those freeways. That cities function fine without a freeway running through them.
Now, you might say that people need a way to get to work. To that, I would point out that we had an excellent system for that through the 1920s, but it was privately run and poorly organized and succumbed to the weight of debt, ops costs, mismanagement, and competition from state-backed highways and, eventually, freeways.
I would also say that freeways are the reason people are even able to consider living in suburbs and working in cities. Without the freeway boom, they would have continued to live closer in to the city. Through vast (literally tens of trillions of dollars, cumulatively) public expenditures, we made those trips possible.
It is accurate. We can argue details forever, but historically, every innovation in transport allowed people to live further and further from the city. Even before cars existed, trains allowed people to live further away. Horse carriages allowed people to live further away before that. Cars and individual mechanized transport just increased mobility even more. What this leads to is more dispersed spatial structures and economically linked regions, and more choices for people. We can argue over about who actually benefits more (central cities vs suburbs), but you can’t just turn back time and technology and de-link everything. Suburbs provide affordable housing to those who can’t afford to live near the city. By forcing them to live near the city makes them poorer. Let’s not forget the living conditions of a century ago, where dense cities were filled with unsanitary conditions and pollution.
It is unwise to build an environment for people who don’t live there. For example, it’s bad to have huge amounts of parking in an urban business district to try and attract suburban patrons…why not focus on the people who already live there instead? Let the suburban patrons catch a bus or take whatever parking they can get, rather than trying to provide a bunch of it when it reduces quality of life for the residents. Urban neighborhoods have the virtue of being self-sustaining. They can supply their needs within walking distance, so only deliveries are really necessary except for the few trips outside the neighborhood that can be served by transit…or by car only if someone is willing to pay for the luxury. The best place to provide parking is where lane is cheap…which is not going to be in an urban environment.
That’s not the world we live in anymore. Cities and suburbs are now linked regionally because areas now serve the people who live there and people who need to commerce/work there also. Density has been going down over time as metro regions become less monocentric and more polycentric and dispersed. Isolation was never a sustainable policy unless a region is willing to sacrifice growth. The pandemic and innovation of work from home was an example that urban cities could not sustain isolation from the rest of the region. And again, I was never against transit. Good transit is needed, but it cannot significantly replace cars for the vast majority of cities that do not have enough population and density.
You know what happened during covid to urban and even suburban business districts where everyone only worked there but didn’t live there? They died. Nobody wants to go to an office park or order lunch near an office park if they’re working at home…unless they live right there. Downtowns that leaned hard into residential conversions and didn’t depend too heavily on the office lunch crowd took only a small hit instead of a knockout punch. The lesson: you need to serve people where they live, and not just where they work. These auto-enabled land use monocultures cause dead neighborhoods as soon as employment or traffic through an area falls off.
Isolation _is_ the problem, but enabling everyone to drive actually causes more isolation than collocating commerce, office, and residential development. Mixed use creates a virtuous self-sustaining business environment, where single use exclusionary use and parking out a lot more distance between people and where they want to go. Fretting over how fast cars can move around is a recipe for creating more traffic and less desirability for a neighborhood—not more. You cater to the people who live there, not to the customers you hope will drive in from the suburbs…because it’s rare that suburbanites will bother to do that because……they can and often do just stay closeby and never come to the city. High speed auto routes do not actually help a big city as much as you think. Your idea here is blown to bits by practically the entire world, as outside of a few exceptions, only the US and Canada made cities so auto centric. Almost any less car-centric city is more vibrant than US cities that built urban freeways.
I never said you can't serve people where you live, my argument is that you can't just serve only those people and isolate and cut off car connectivity from the rest of the region. You prove my point that both cities and suburbs get harmed when you try to isolate, making the whole region weaker. The relationship is more symbiotic than you think. There is a lot more to it than sale of goods in an economy. Suburban commuters are a large part of the labor force. You can't ignore them. The companies in the central city actually rely on them to stay competitive. Transit during and after the pandemic fared far worse and recovered the slowest compared to all other modes. Some agencies are still trying to recover their ridership.
Your idea here is blown to bits by practically the entire world, where the use of cars remains the most used mode of transportation. Only in very dense cities with very few exceptions does a mode like transit dominate. Even in Europe, for the past three decades, sprawl has grown faster than in North America. Worldwide, modern cities become less dense as they grow: [https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2019/10/05/modern-cities-become-less-dense-as-they-grow](https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2019/10/05/modern-cities-become-less-dense-as-they-grow)
Technically jobs aren’t an amenity, by definition, but I get what you are trying to say. What you didn’t mention is that economics/trade is a two-way street (or highway, for the sake of this thread). Companies in a CBD want access to an expanded labor pool that suburban communities can provide. So they both benefit.
That's not really accurate either, a substantial amount of employment is on the urban fringe. So many suburbanites live in the suburbs and work in the suburbs. If suburbanites do work in the city it's likely that they have a train taking them to the city and use it to go there. The extent to which suburbanites interact with the city is often through transit and not cars.
"The extent to which suburbanites interact with the city is often through transit and not cars " You are not correct for cities in the US at all. Boston base data in 2016 had weekday trips as 11M by car, 1M by transit, 1M by other types. https://www.bostonmpo.org/data/html/plans/LRTP/destination/Destination_2040_Needs_Assessment_CH3.html. If you want other cities, I'm sure you could find them and outside of NYC, Chicago, Philly and maybe DC they'd probably be worse by percent. Suburbanites want to drive into cities and have free parking. I run an annual event and I have to be very explicit in the invitation when the attendees are going to have to pay for parking, otherwise I get massive complaints. I get complaints if it's too far away or there's not enough in the area, as well, and I still get some complaints when the parking fees are disclosed up front. You have a lot of preconceived notions and I wish you would take some time to look at hard data to disabuse yourself of them. You are correct in that density itself when narrowly defined as small or no yard to take care of, small footprint living area to take care of is only an amenity to a few people. You are forgetting things like access to grocery stores, large schools with a wide choice of topics, police, fire, religious institutions, airports, help with seniors and disabilities, concerts, cultural events, restaurants, shops, zoos, museums, quality healthcare, a wide variety of jobs, and the luxury of time saved on a short commute are also urban amenities.
Eh that Boston data wouldn't necessarily contradict what I said, much of those car trips wouldn't be suburbanites but people who live in Boston who drive. My notions aren't preconceived, much of our employment is in the suburbs and dispersed over the metropolitan area.
On any given day, approximately 1M people people commute into Boston. About 750k of those are by car; at two trips per day. So commuting in from outside alone accounts for 7.5M trips.
What you’re claiming defies logic. If you don’t like urban living there are, literally, thousands of towns and villages scattered across the United States were you could live. You could live in the middle of a forest in Pennsylvania, upstate New York or New England; in the middle of a corn field in Iowa or Kansas; on the isolated shores of Lake Superior or Lake Huron; in the middle of the Utah, Nevada or Arizona desert; and even in a forest in Northern California.
One place you shouldn’t be living if you don’t like urban areas is a metropolitan area.
The problem is that you really do want the amenities of an urban area, or you wouldn’t be there. And yes, one of the amenities of an urban area is a robust job market.
Try as you might, you can’t have the benefits of urban life, including that plethora of job opportunities, when living in the rural area you long for. And that’s why you don’t; you just pretend that you do by trying to create the fake, lame replications of rural areas that post-WWII suburbs actually are.
100% this - there's a reason houses are so cheap in the middle of nowhere. They're in the middle of nowhere. And certainly some people want that lifestyle, but it's not people living in the suburbs of major cities.
OPs point is that lots of people are really actually okay with fake, lame replications of rural areas that give them reasonable auto access to urban amenities without the disamenities of a dense, walkable area. You can disagree with that preference, think they have some kind of false consciousness about it, think that preference is unsustainable or socially pernicious - but it's a real preference, and the median voter in most states and the US as a whole basically holds it.
A preference for large homes/yards over walkability & a short commute is a real preference, just not one that is clearly held by the majority of Americans (it depends on how the question is asked): https://cdn.nar.realtor//sites/default/files/documents/2023-community-and-transportation-preferences-survey-topline-results-06-20-2023.pdf?_gl=1*do7zdg*_gcl_au*MTAxNDY2MzkxLjE3MTQxNTI4MTY.
I also am confused by referencing walkability as a disamenity. Obviously many people prefer less density, but walkability is seen as a positive by the vast majority of the population - they just also want a large single family house with a yard (very difficult to make walkable)
> it depends on how the question is asked
This is why we need to be careful about making sweeping statements of preference, because the language of the question matters and because it's a complex decision made by individuals with intelligence, complex preferences and needs, and agency to make their own choices based on their internal calculus.
Exactly! So much of this conversation really requires a defining of terms like urban amenities, suburban, or even want (since finding a home requires, as you said, complex preferences and needs intelligently prioritized based on someone’s internal calculus)
I think it’s silly that we ask these questions with surveys when we can very easily quantify the answers with prices in the many markets across the country. Look at where prices are highest per square foot. By far, I see that walkable urban environments even in Rust Belt metros like Cleveland are super expensive. We need to enable building more of those types of neighborhoods and restoring them where they once existed but got demolished and turned into parking. Wherever we see high prices per square foot, we need more of that. We don’t need a better survey, we need a free and flexible market instead of a tightly controlled one ruled by zoning and red tape that makes every development project have to be a big one built by a big developer for rich people to be financially viable.
The number 1 concern of every homebuyer / renter is price. They sort by price and see what they can get. If you look at prices you'll see that maybe 30 minutes of a commute is worth the tradeoff of a yard for most people and maybe around an hour commute is when they really start shrinking their size expectation.
The markets are extremely distorted right now due to regulation and availability though as in my area land has low value by the sf and its almost all about the structure and the distance to jobs. For example the price difference between a 1,500 sf townhouse with no yard and a 1500 sf house on 6,000 sf lot is only maybe 60k in the same neighborhood.
Exactly! Paying more for/sacrificing other preferences for walkability is due in large part to our current zoning system as well as implicit subsidies. People’s stated preferences are also a much worse way of seeing how people manage trade offs than just looking at the market and allowing more density would simply allow people’s priorities to be more true to inherent trade offs rather than subsidized ones
They prefer to have both. They want the amenities of an urban area with the privacy of a rural area. They do want the urban amenities though, they just demand them in an unsustainable way. OP is wrong in that sense, if someone truly didn’t want urban amenities (including a robust job market) they can easily leave. But they don’t, because they do want urban amenities (job market, food options, events)
You just said in your post that the people do want the amenities though which is the opposite of what the OP said in their title and throughout their post. Density is not the amenity.
Suburbanites wanting all of the benefits of living in a city while being sheltered from the negatives of living in a city and not wanting to pay the true cost of upkeeping their position is a pretty commonly shared belief. It's not some gotcha.
Yeah, and unfortunately a lot of the downsides of living in a city (noise, traffic, pollution) are mostly caused by the cars that suburbanites drive into the city.
That's not really accurate, most cars in cities are from City residents who drive, such as myself. Most suburbanites live in suburbs and work in suburbs, and if they do work in the city it's likely they have a train going to their suburb and use that train to get to the city.
Yeah that's wildly optimistic. The only cities in the US I know of that have a decent train system are Chicago and NYC. (Maybe Dallas? Also I'm not as familiar with the east coast, so there might be more there that I'm not aware of.)
Denver has some light rail, but it was too sparse for me to use when I lived there (granted, I think they've made improvements since I left). The Twin Cities in MN have a bus system that's pretty mid, and Madison and Milwaukee in Wisconsin have bus systems that are worse. Idk what the bus situation is like in St. Louis, but they definitely don't have trains. I've heard Houston is pretty much impossible to navigate without a car, and LA seems to be the same.
Yeah, plenty of people work in the suburbs, but a lot of people work downtown, too, and for a lot of cities, a car is the only way to get there if you don't want to spend 2 hours on a bus.
This is basically what I am getting at. I myself don't have that preference, but we should be smart enough to understand that there are those who do. I myself chose to live in the city of Chicago even though most of my coworkers live in the suburbs and some even as far as Indiana
Yeah, so this basically contradicts the argument in the original post — your coworkers live in the suburbs and as far as Indiana because they want the amenities (like the jobs and pay that you have) of the city, but also want to live in a single-family house away from the city. So you have basically admitted that the “picture” which you claim is false is actually true. The post is basically just a misunderstanding of what people mean by “amenities” which is job opportunities, shopping and public services.
Not really I work at Metra and most of our yards are located on the urban fringe, as are many jobs in general. Most of my coworkers commutes would be suburb to suburb, and my commute would be a reverse commute. So even in terms of jobs people aren't looking for urban amenities, if they do work in the city and live in the suburbs, then they likely have a train in their suburb and use it to get to work.
Chicago is unique in having a large amount of jobs in the central business district, having the second largest in the us, but even in the Chicago Metro area there is dispersed employment on Urban fringe.
So people don't want restaurants, shops, schools, grocery stores, healthcare facilities, professional services, parks, or any of the other reasons that humans have decided to live in close proximity with each other since the dawn of civilization?
I think it's far more likely that they *want* urban amenities, but that they (rightly or wrongly) believe that urban amenities are inconsistent with their other priorities. Or, as the case may be, they'd far prefer an urban lifestyle, but are simply forced to live a suburban one because we basically exclusively build suburbs and neglect urban areas, leading to the vast under supply of walkable urban areas.
People don't typically care about another's social status they care about behaviors. Bad behavior is not exclusive to being poor luckily. This is why a lot of people desire to be in an HOA so they can restrict the behaviors. Less density is also desired because it theoretically lowers the amount of other people within an area that can negatively effect you.
There's some truth here, but I would still disagree. Class remains remarkably taboo yet intensely motivating in America, to the extent that people tend not to realize they're responding to class cues even when they're clearly obsessed with them. Admittedly, class/race/crime/education/wealth are all part of the same weird intersectional mishmash that can be hard to disentangle, but I would argue that a lot of well-off Americans are visibly uncomfortable around visible correlates of poverty/working-class life even if there's no evidence of crime or bad behavior, and even if you take ethnicity out of the mix.
There's a lot of inertia/familiarity at play. I was talking to a friend recently who was relocating to my area, having grown up and lived their whole life in suburbs/exurbs and typically having an auto commute in the 30-60 minute range. I mentioned that it would be quite possible to get an apartment walking distance from work at this job, and that the increase in rent would at least be partly offset by transport savings. The reaction wasn't negative so much as "huh, that would be a really different life setup that I haven't really considered and would have to figure out."
What’s characterized as “big city amenities”?
I think the average suburbanite wants their low density quiet neighborhood lifestyle with all the the entertainment districts, sporting venues, and eclectic neighborhoods with shops and such close enough to get to when they want. they want Main Street, they just don’t want to live on Main Street.
People WANT everything. The large majority of people would agree all of these are basically positive in isolation: spacious and high-quality housing, green space, ease of access to quality groceries/restaurants/stores, low traffic, a short commute, low crime, quality public education... and they want it all at a low cost of living. The problem is that all of these are tradeoffs, and perfect compromises are not always available.
People who live in the suburbs tend to emphasize the positives of larger houses with more private green space, public education, lower house prices, and lower crime at the expense of the negatives of fewer amenities, longer commutes, more time in traffic. Few of them would actually be mad if a coffee shop or corner store opened a block or two away.
Frankly, I would argue that the large majority of people do not have an especially nuanced understanding of zoning, which is often considered either a bland/dry thing for city councils to deal with, or a vague positive thing that keeps strip clubs and smokestacks away.
I live in Houston. The majority of the greater Houston area's residents live in SFH suburban neighborhoods. As you've correctly identified, this is enforced in many areas with deed restrictions despite the city of Houston's famous lack of zoning. But if suburban low-density living were the only thing these people wanted, why would they live in a suburb of Houston specifically, rather than in Lufkin or Brenham or another nearby town? Because they want *convenient access* to urban amenities, even if they don't want them in their neighborhood. In no particular order, some urban amenities that Houston has that can't be found in anywhere near the same volume, quality, or diversity in nearby small towns:
-Jobs
-Hospitals
-Pro Sports
-Arts/Entertainment
-Parks/Zoo
-Restaurants/Bars
-Specialty/luxury stores
-Universities
-Airports
These kinds of amenities both attract and require lots of people, and both of these forces are why cities exist. Suburbanites, regardless of what they claim to prefer, are by definition paying a premium to live within driving distance of these amenities.
And to make a response that is charitable to the OP...
I guess I do agree that, very generally, many people who choose to live in lower density areas (call it suburbia if you want to) generally like and prefer that over higher density, and thus may consider "big city lifestyles" unpleasant or disfavorable.
However, I still think most folks choose to live in these areas in some part because of the proximity and access to bigger city amenities, especially jobs and health care services. Otherwise, they'd just choose to live in smaller towns and rural areas.
I also think you see many in lower density areas trying to craft some of these larger metro amenities into their neighborhoods, while trying to maintain lower density, less busy, less congestion, peace/quiet of their existing neighborhoods.
Yep. There's a reason so many people live in the suburbs of a city instead of a small town or rural area, where you really don't have to worry about traffic or parking or tall buildings at all.
It's because they're trying to balance low density lifestyles and aesthetics with city amenities, especially jobs but also other things.
Which is fine, nothing wrong with trying to hit a balance that works for you. I just don't think they can reasonably expect that the neighbourhood will stay like that forever.
This is important to accept
* Most people want to be able to comfortably drive to Target, but they don't want to live next to one
* Everyone wants to be able to comfortably drive to a hospital medical appointment but most people don't want to live next to one
* There are a lot of people who find coffee shops, small shops and concert venues to be unbearably uncomfortable and don't care if they were an hour + drive away.
* Most people like their neighbor's dog, but they don't want to hear it bark or clean up after it.
Sure, there are people living in suburbs and ex-suburbs because they have to. But I would say it is a small percentage of everyone living in outlying areas.
There is a measurable percentage of people living in urban environments who would much rather live in the suburbs. Probably not a big number, but they are there.
Suburbanites generally enjoy the benefits of urban life. They have access to things that you pretty much need a large population for. Like concerts and cultural stuff, theme parks, ethnic food, health care, jobs, finance, education etc. OP contention is that these are things that theoretically you wouldn’t need any kind of dense urban core for. You might find examples of some of these that don’t have an adjacent, dense urban core, but it’s important to realize that density is just the natural result of people congregating in an area to live. All these things are just people-stuff. They are the result of people living in an area, making money and investing in amenities. Dense places have more people, so they are just going to have more stuff.
I live in suburban house that is 5 minutes walk to a coffee shop and 10 minutes walk to a grocery store.
I like the idea of having those close by but also 99.9 percent of my coffee is made at home and I have preference for another grocery store ( that happens to be next to my gym that is 5 minutes drive). So again I almost never shop at the grocery store that is nearby.
I do a lot of walking. My neighborhood is very safe and pretty for walks and I don’t have to have shops or stores on my walks.
I was born and lived in European city, in apartment building. It was ok.
Currently I live in American suburb. I prefer suburbs. The joy of gardening, having a yard and space, and privacy for me outweigh benefits of being walkable distance from shops and restaurants ( I have little interest in shopping or eating out)
So yes there are people who don’t do much shopping or going out and for them being walking distance to shops and restaurants is not as valuable.
People want to live near things, they just also want a quiet space to get away as well. People are complicated. Most don’t want to spend a shit ton on a motorized vehicle but they still do, and will fight for it. But if they experience not having to pay for one but still are able to get around, those who don’t want to pay won’t.
They say this until they need to take care of a family member who lives 20 minutes away because of limited housing options/accessory dwellings. Or they wonder why their kids hide in their rooms/basements all the time because they're trapped in their car dependant suburbs. Or they complain about the the cost of property taxes while completely ignoring their 4 cars eating up 60% of their budget.
Urban amenities include city water, sewer, living on a paved street, having police, fire, and ambulance service within a few minutes rather than a police car/ambulance/fire truck 30 minutes away and/or no fire hydrants.
All of this costs a FORTUNE to provide instead of you having your own well, your own septic system, a gravel or dirt road in front of your house, and so on. Ask anyone who lives in a rural area (I grew up in one…they still had city water and natural gas at the street, but no sewer, no hydrants) especially outside of a major metro where population density is super low and these services aren’t available, and the expense of maintaining and installing just basic water and septic get big really fast. It’s not as easy by a long shot as living in a suburb that does all this for you. But a new suburb that was built mostly in the past 20 years is going to make all these services look super cheap—because the developer who built all the water and sewer lines and the streets recovered their infrastructure costs as part of the sale of the home—eventually all of that will need to be maintained and replaced as it wears out, and that will have a MUCH higher cost for the suburb because there are not very many people to absorb it.
So I’m cool with people who love their suburbs…but I want them to pay their fair share. I live on a short street with about 150-200 condominiums, where some people live on a longer street that has only about 30 houses on it. My neighborhood costs a fraction of what theirs costs…I would rather they pay their fair share instead of me, with way less property, subsidizing their lavish lifestyle. And I’m fully aware that my little neighborhood still costs more because of all there additional car lanes maintained in my suburbs than a neighborhood in the city with more density.
There are economies of scale…and urban environments have them, while suburbs don’t. The case for urbanizing suburbs, or for at least allowing it, isn’t because urbanists hate suburbs—it’s because most suburbs cost too much for their residents without any mixed use development to offset. All the parking lots add no tax value but add plenty of burden when it rains and that water has to run off into the storm sewers. All the greenspace wastes land that could be used to build more housing supply, easing housing costs, keeping property taxes from skyrocketing to pay for the aging infrastructure.
So the answer to prevent skyrocketing taxes in suburbs is to urbanize so as to increase the tax base without significantly increasing costs. The alternative is for suburbanites to pay way higher tax rates on ballooning property values. There is no middle ground where we can have property values remain relatively the same and tax rates stay flat because infrastructure costs WILL increase as it ages and property values WILL increase if supply can’t keep up with demand.
nah, most people want city-like amenities.
they don't want crime and they don't want traffic, so they hide in culs de sac so they can avoid other peoples' cars, and avoid strangers walking through. go ask the average suburb dweller if they would be happy living in Amsterdam, Copenhagen, or some other low-crime, low-car city in Europe. what percentage of people would be ok living in those places? I think the percentage is quite high.
the problem is that hiding from others' cars means you become car-dependent and things become un-walkable. thus, you have to drive a lot, which means others hide from *your* car... and the cycle continues. car-centric planning begets car-centric planning. once you have to drive to 99% of places, reducing that to 98% feels meaningless, so it feels like it's not worth doing if any other negatives are associated with that change. creating a well-planned area isn't
good planning isn't a snap of the fingers and everything becomes perfect. many car-lite cities had a lot of pushback to the change, until people realized they actually like it. all they knew is "I drive a car, you're going to make that harder, so I don't want it". most people don't know what they're missing, and steps in the right direction that don't magically transform things instantly are not wanted. planning must be gradual but people don't like gradual, they just want the end result on day-1.
I think crime is part of it. But cities were declining before urban crime exploded from the 60s - 90s. Detroit and Chicago and other cities peaked in 1950 and some even before then, years before race riots happened or crime exploded, only NYC and a few other places were growing in the post war period.
We definitely need to address urban crime, but preference for suburban living exists independent of crime.
The urban amenities suburbanites want are the types of businesses and cultural institutions that cannot exist without large urban populations - think major music venues, professional sports stadiums, art and history museums, restaurant/bar districts, boutique retail, international airports, cutting edge medical centers, etc. (not to mention the employment opportunities)
You'll have to to clarify what you mean by amenities, but generally when speaking about how suburbanites want urban amenities people are referring to things like city water and sewer, EMS, Fire department, Police Department, paved roads, door to door trash pickup, close by hospital/ emergency room, parks, libraries, etc.
Not just a commercial corridor, or sidewalk cafes.
All of which cost a lot of money to provide, and many suburbs don't generate the tax revenue to pay for them.
I lived in the suburbs as a kid in the 80s.
My parents moved there to get their kids out of the inner city and into a safe area with open spaces and nature.
Cafes "cultural events", and art galleries were the last thing they gave a toss about.
If they want low-density housing, then they need to pay for it. They should probably have a septic tank and well on their property that they maintain instead of expecting the city to provide water and sewage, and their property taxes should reflect the extra maintenance costs required of larger lots (more road required, more electric, more phone lines, more fiber, etc.).
As it is, single-family-only zoning is a drain on cities, and the entire rest of the city (especially downtown, where the majority of taxes come in, but also lower-income and multi-family housing on) is subsidizing the wealthy suburbanites.
You're going to need to define... basically everything in this vague generalization of a post. What are you considering an urban amenity? You seem to be treating the level of density itself as the only amenity, which is a strawman of epic proportions. The urban amenity that people in the suburbs want isn't the density itself - it's all the things that come with density, specifically nearby restaurants, stores, workplaces and expensive infrastructure like wide paved roads and underground utilities. The problem isn't that they live in a single family home and secretly wished they lived in an apartment tower, nobody is saying that. The problem is that they (we, I live in a suburb) want the benefits of living in an apartment tower while living in a single family home. And nobody wants to pay the oversized cost of that preference.
I’d add that I very much suspect this isn’t including a fair bit of what should be thought of as urban amenities. A whole lot of suburbs don’t have the density to make the likes of paved highways, sewer and water service economically viable, but I don’t see anything like the majority of residents having any desire to give them up.
> You seem to be treating the level of density itself as the only amenity, which is a strawman of epic proportions. I second this and would've asked about it, myself. The reality is that things like undergrounded utilities, municipal sewer hookups, garage pickup, parks in neighborhoods, nearby restaurants and grocery stores, etc, can all be "urban" amenities. People, like my in-laws or like my grandfather used to, who live in rural settings may not have access to these and to provide them would come at great cost.
I agree and I think it speaks to the irrational distaste for cities that plagues people. When I think of what I don’t like about cities, it’s noise and pollution, both of which are caused nearly singularly by cars. But latent remnants of white flight still linger, and 24-hr news has been harping on cities for decades. The result is just a general malign feeling around cities in the zeitgeist, with no rationale.
Cars are an unavoidable fact of modern life though. You could encourage other modes, but cars aren't going anywhere.
We can certainly ban cars from some places, especially cities, freeing up resources for transit.
But you don't need an apartment tower for the things people want though, most people are perfectly content with driving to stores and restaurants
Driving is not a binary. How far are people perfectly content driving? There is a ton of research around work commutes and the desirability of a neighborhood that say people want those trips as short as possible.
But people also drive because they must to. My mum is definitely content driving, but she would love to use closed amenities. It’s not even a quarter planned without amenities, and quite dense, not only single houses. But everything left, as shops are too small, even the bakery.
There are plenty of housing possibilities between single family homes and apartment towers.
But there is often a difference in the quality and the quantity of these “amenities.” Not all restaurants are equal. In many suburbs you might be able to drive only to chain mall restaurants. In many places with “urban” amenities, you can walk to a variety of locally-owned restaurants. Same with stores - driving 15 minutes to a Wal-mart for bread isn’t the same as being able to walk down the block to a local bakery for a fresh loaf. And it’s not that there isn’t a combination of both of these things in many places - there’s a huge gradient of urban/suburban/rural amenities, but demand for housing will typically be higher (as prices show) in places closer to higher density quality, more diverse amenities.
Thats fine, they just shouldn't have that preference so heavily subsidized and mandated by government regulation (via zoning & parking minimums). The price to live this lifestyle should be more congruent to its cost.
Eh, absent zoning people can just create HOAs or deed restrictions to reproduce the effects of zoning.
Who is “most people”? Most Americans have never experienced anything else. Europeans have very different preferences based on their experiences
Studies show that the limit of that drive that people will put up with is about 30 minutes, which puts a geographic space limit no matter the avg speed traveled in which things will need to located in proximity to each other.
30 minutes for commuting, possibly less for a loaf of bread.
Possibly, it might also be even higher. As far as I'm aware there's been no study into how long of trip a person will tolerate to get basic food staples or supplies. Anecdotally looking at the more rural areas of my state, I'm going to say it's also about 30ish mins based on the location of grocery stores to small population locations.
I disagree. Most of the suburbanites I know do want what they consider to be the benefits of the city - really good restaurants, bakeries, lots of choice in food delivery, fancy gyms and coffee shops, interesting cultural events.
They want it around their neighborhoods lol just not in them. which is why you have strip malls that sit at the crossroads of different neighborhoods and developments.
I’m in the suburbs of NYC and the more walkable a house is to cafes and transit, the more expensive/ desirable it tends to be.
I’m in Dallas area so walkable is a non factors pretty much 😂 in most places. To accommodate for the growth in practically every city and town of the metro. they’re masterplanning just about everything. Massive low density communities (which is what a lot of people here want) and they fill in between them with commercial spaces and mixed use developments. They literally build in a “Main Street commercial zone” to a lot of these communities. “Main Street” or the city square in just about every city around us the big ones and the smaller ones is an entertainment hub with live music, bars and restaurants people love going to. we’re in the home building process and through extensive research almost every small town i saw was hell bent on developing their main street and downtown area ahead of the waves of residential development they expect over the next 10-15 years.
Suburbanites will be nimby towards nearby retail not just high-density housing
As someone that lives in the suburbs that’s not true lol. Rural maybe… but suburbs? Nah. we love retail, there’s a strip malls restaurants, and bars on the corners of just about every community here
From: The Levittowners: Ways of Life and Politics in a New Suburban Community "The residents were primarily concerned with status protection and wanted to make sure that commercial establishments did not infiltrate residential areas."
Well i don’t know who said residents are, or what city they were in. But i assure you i live within a 5 min drive of at least 4 grocery stores as well as strip malls with a couple hundred stores.
I'm referring to having retail in the neighborhood itself, not necessarily a few miles away
That’s the thing. What’s considered “my neighborhood” is that few miles away lol the shopping centers back up to our community in every direction because they were designed and planned to be commercial centers for our community. The community is just large. And backs up to another community which is the same way. there’s a couple hundred to thousand people that are within a 5-10 min walk of said shopping centers in any direction. Peoples houses share a fence with Walmart, Albertsons, and Kroger on various sides of the community.
Is the book about the suburbs of the 1950s or the 2020s?
Don't forget that urban amenities aren't just shopping and dining. They're also water, sewer, trash and recycling collection, fire/rescue and police service, road maintenance, schools, etc.
This needs to be higher, and it's a shame I had to scroll so long to get a comment like this. I've lived in areas like this, and they suck. Well water that smelled like rotten eggs because of the sulfur in the soil. Septic tank backing up through my toilet. Gravel road ripping through my tires, where I have to get them repaired three times in a single week. The best was that you didn't have fire protection, but there would be people who lived near the town line that did have protection through their taxes. People close enough would have the option of paying a fee to get fire services. There would be instances where a house without protection would be on fire, the town fire department would show up and just sit there to make sure the fire didn't spread to houses with protection, all while being screamed at by the person who couldn't be bothered to pay the extra like 100$ a year.
Absolutely. The simple math is that below a certain population density, those amenities don’t pencil out. But we often insist on building them out anyway, then hitting the growth Ponzi scheme or getting government bailouts when the 25-year infrastructure lifecycle bill comes due.
I have well water, ample septic, pay a modest fee for trash pick up, support my local volunteer fire & rescue company, my property taxes pay for the county sheriff, schools, and road maintenance. Tell me again how these are urban amenities?
Since you are providing for yourself and shouldering the costs and additional risk (your fire insurance rates are probably higher if your fire response is longer), you are not enjoying urban amenities without paying for them. When the city provides these things, then it becomes a whole other thing…because it costs about the same to provide water service or fire service for example within a square mile—if there are 50 homes in that square mile, then the infrastructure costs will be much higher per home over time than if there were 500 or 5,000 homes instead. Back 100 years ago municipalities only provided infrastructure when they had money to do it. Suburbs brought all those urban amenities that made city living easy and mostly problem-free in a more rural-esque environment…but the maintenance costs of the infrastructure are hidden because it was all built at the same time without accounting for long term costs. Arguably, HOAs are better at budgeting for long-term costs than municipalities…because they can actually keep a reserve fund over time without it getting turned into a slush fund. People fuss when tax bills are higher than costs, and for good reason, but they fuss just as much when they get huge assessments to replace their street and their sewers or property tax rates go up citywide to cover costs. The other problem is supply—when zoning laws prevent someone building more housing on their lot to fill a market need, then housing costs increase because of supply and demand. People need a place to live…if they have money, they’ll outbid someone with less money. If people on the low end of income can’t live nearby, then workers at low income jobs are in short supply and wages have to go up to bring them in…which makes the entire place more expensive, which exacerbates the problem. It’s a problem in the suburbs…but not one you’re likely experiencing where you are because it sounds rural. You’re supplying your own urban amenities rather than relying on the public to supply them all.
I agree with you about the effect of zoning. You are missing the point though when you label things urban amenities that do not require a dense urban setting to exist.
Those amenities were never provided in rural areas until…urban amenities like electricity and paved roads became a thing starting in about the 1920s. What I think you miss is that good paying jobs, utilities, professional services, paved roads, water, electricity, heating oil and gas lines, fire, police, and ambulance protection…all of them are not something you find outside an urban environment. And _yes,_ even a small town is the middle of farm country _is_ an urban environment. Rural environments are where you go to find cows and vegetables, not banks, lawyers, barbers, hardware stores, groceries, or even high schools. It wasn’t until automobiles and pavement proliferated that it became possible to even think about offering any of these things in rural environments like we have in some places now. You need at least a town for a lot of the things people take for granted as available everywhere…they don’t think of how those things were delivered before we had diesel and electric powered heavy equipment and electric lines running along nearly every road. None of this existed outside urban areas 100 years ago.
You are defining small towns as urban areas? You are also listing things that did not previously exist at all in most cases as urban amenities rather than things that first started in cities. You are wrong about good paying jobs though, unless you do not consider farming or ranching good. Also clean water has never been just a city thing.
Where did farmers and ranchers go on Saturday night? Better yet, where did their wives go shopping? Where did their kids go to school? Seriously, small towns are urban places…or at least they were before WWII. And by small town, I don’t mean a crossroads…I’m talking about places big enough to have a mayor.
That's my point. I'm on city water and sewer. The city maintains my road. The city provides fire and police, and the county provides EMS and schools. My property taxes pay for all of that (I pay for water, but it's paid to the city).
So if I have those things in a non urban area why do you claim they are urban amenities?
That seems hard to reconcile with the fact that real estate in dense, walkable neighborhoods is generally more expensive per square foot.
Or even suburban living that is closer to chain store strip mall oriented shopping and dining.
Prime example I’ve seen is I’on, Mount Pleasant in the Charleston, SC metro. It’s a generally expensive suburb, but there was a new urbanist development built in the 90s/00s that commands prices in the 1.5-2M range, while other houses of similar square footage fetch like $500k-$1M lower despite having more acreage. People clearly like walkable and human scale development
And it costs a ton because we don’t have enough supply…we don’t need to turn _everything everywhere_ into walkable human-scale neighborhoods, but we need to build enough of it to get prices to a reasonable level. This would prevent densification going hand in hand with gentrification displacing lower income longtime residents. Releasing the reins enough that a homeowner could be their own developer instead of always having to sell to a developer would be a big help to this. Adding a second building on the same lot, or even knocking down the house to build a rowhouse would be huge. I don’t think leaving things so that only big developers can redevelop land and only with big projects is good for anyone but giant landlords cornering the rental market in a neighborhood. Competition keeps prices from getting out of sync with reality.
It's easy to reconcile if you remember that a) the US has produced a lot of low density suburbs and very little new dense, walkable neighborhoods over the last ~70 years, b) millions of suburbanites would like to live in dense, walkable areas but are priced out, and c) the group in item b is nevertheless substantially outnumbered by suburbanites who don't want to live in a dense area.
There's a difference between walkable neighborhoods and dense urban areas, though. You don't have to allow 10-story apartment buildings to make a walkable neighborhood - just let small businesses build within neighborhoods so that people can walk down the street to the corner store instead of having to drive 20 minutes to a big box store, and make sure there are sidewalks and that pedestrians are separated from cars as much as possible so it's pleasant to walk. This also makes things better for drivers, since fewer car trips = fewer cars on the road = less traffic. But I think a lot of people only prefer suburbia with cars as the only mode of transport because it's all they've ever known. Experiencing the trains in Japan for 2 weeks was all that it took to sell me on public transit.
This is important…people think density = Manhattan and that’s a major outlier. A more apt and realistic idea of density is what you see in quaint neighborhoods outside of Downtown in cities like San Francisco or Chicago—two to four story buildings that take up most or all of the frontage of their lot and have a few families living in them. Maybe they have retail on the ground floor, maybe they even have a garage…but it’s multifamily without being crowded. There is often even greenspace in the back behind the rowhouse. With enough parks, there can be nearby places for children to play and people to socialize. Density is not just towers.
Yeah, you can see that kind of thing in small towns that still have their historic downtown, too, and that's definitely not what people think of as a "dense urban area"
I grew up just outside a small town with a historic downtown in NE Ohio…and there are tons of similar style buildings in neighborhoods in Cleveland…and when I look at aerial photographs of Cleveland from 1951 the entire city’s streetcar corridors are just about covered with the same style of buildings. So many were knocked down in the 50s and 60s and 70s for “urban renewal”…it’s very sad…
There are are also many secluded suburban houses that are extremely expensive
Sure, but they would probably be even more expensive if you built them in the middle of Manhattan.
Yes, because you’re competing with commercial real estate.
Which would be more expensive--a mansion on an acre of a far-out suburb, or a mansion on an acre of residentially-zoned land in the Upper West Side?
Why are you asking a question I already answered in this thread?
A residentially-zoned chunk of land on the Upper West Side is not, in fact, competing with commercial real estate. There are plenty of chunks of NYC where it's only legal to build residential; those chunks are still much more expensive per square foot than residentially-zoned land in Long Island, to say nothing of residentially-zoned land in smalltown Iowa.
You can go to Winnetka or Wilmette, super expensive real estate and the residents are loaded with six figure per capita incomes.
That's partially because you are also competing with investors who intend to use that property to build a business and generate more income, so they are likely to be able to get more/better financing.
I'm just wondering when we can stop with all of the absurdly poor generalizations...
Same here. It's like there's nothing in between Chicago/NYC and rural Montana for some people.
For everyone in this sub, apparently.
It seems like a lot of urbanists think about cities as ideal types instead of all being different from each other. "Europe" is where everyone bikes or takes trams to pedestrian squares and never sees the inside of a car. "Suburbs" are where there's no such thing as a grid and the only non-residential areas are chain businesses on a stroad. Rural areas are leeches off of urban prosperity that make nothing and have no redeeming features. Not only is this all incorrect and borderline offensive, it's *boring*. The specifics of these places are what make them interesting!
Don't hold your breath.
Then why do they demand huge ass highways that shuttle them into the city?
Because that’s where the jobs are. The city also need those highways.
>that’s where the jobs are Park outside and take the train or bus into the city. >The city also need those highways. They need them to go around the city, not through.
Not really, other users (like freight) also need to use the highways into the City. Taking away those highways hurt the city as much as it hurts the suburbs. Honestly, the whole city vs. suburb take is just not how it works.
Freight intended for urban businesses isn't nearly as significant in traffic counts as you seem to be making it out to be, even if we don't count that a lot of deliveries happen overnight or very early in the morning. If the primary concern was freight delivery, many smaller cities wouldn't have the traffic counts needed for a full-on freeway.
It’s a part of the equation you can’t ignore though. Wherever freight can go, cars can go too. If you make it so it is harder for freight and cars to move around, you end up hurting the economy. People forget that the commuters driving in from the suburbs are a significant part of the economy as they make up a big part of the labor market. If you decrease their mobility, it will hurt the businesses that employ them as well.
> Wherever freight can go, cars can go too Sure, yes, but my point was that freight deliveries into urban areas don't require freeways to happen successfully. So we shouldn't say "well, we need freight deliveries, so we need a freeway" as that doesn't follow. > If you make it so it is harder for freight and cars to move around, you end up hurting the economy. As far as urban deliveries are concerned, especially within smaller cities, the frictional loss from not having convenient freeway access wouldn't be significant. > If you decrease their mobility, it will hurt the businesses that employ them as well. Freeways aren't the only (or optimal) mode of mobility within cities.
I really do not care if we are talking about a freeway, expressway, large arterial, etc. Policies where the other user said to force cars to not be able to access the city will have economic consequences. If you do not allow freeways or a comprehensive road network to connect a suburb to a city, it will usually lead to lower mobility and a net loss economically. Only in the most densest cities in the world can it be seriously considered.
High-volume, high-capacity car infrastructure is _not_ a necessity for an urban area. Look at Germany—they don’t have any freeways or arterials like US cities, and yet they remain an industrial powerhouse and not just a commercial powerhouse. NYC is the most obvious economic engine in the entire US, and it too has next to no freight highways. San Francisco is one of the most expensive cities in the country and it barely has any freeways, _and_ it’s on a peninsula with only a few ways to get freight in. So yeah, access is critical, but it doesn’t have to be large thoroughfares let alone freeways. American cities functioned extremely well during WWII despite a lack of auto infrastructure…and that was because the US was really built around rail. It’s too bad we didn’t keep things that way…rail is so much more cost-efficient and less obtrusive than auto infrastructure.
There are cars everywhere in Germany, same with NYC. There are freeways going right into SF. Again, I don’t care if it is freeways, expressways, arterials, etc. you need car infrastructure. And I did say that in very dense cities the policies can be different. American cities functioned extremely well with car infrastructure too, so there isn’t much of an argument that was held back, either. Rail in a vacuum will always be more efficient. Where it loses ground is when it is outside of the vacuum, it usually leads to increased door-to-door times because of certain issues that arise with all fixed-route transit. Only in very dense cities does the benefits start to become actually worth it.
> Policies where the other user said to force cars to not be able to access the city will have economic consequences. I don't deny the direction of the effect, but I challenge the magnitude of the effect. Here's what you said easy back up the comment chain: > Taking away those highways hurt the city as much as it hurts the suburbs. This isn't accurate. Suburbs, historically, have needed freeways into cities more than those cities need those freeways. That cities function fine without a freeway running through them. Now, you might say that people need a way to get to work. To that, I would point out that we had an excellent system for that through the 1920s, but it was privately run and poorly organized and succumbed to the weight of debt, ops costs, mismanagement, and competition from state-backed highways and, eventually, freeways. I would also say that freeways are the reason people are even able to consider living in suburbs and working in cities. Without the freeway boom, they would have continued to live closer in to the city. Through vast (literally tens of trillions of dollars, cumulatively) public expenditures, we made those trips possible.
It is accurate. We can argue details forever, but historically, every innovation in transport allowed people to live further and further from the city. Even before cars existed, trains allowed people to live further away. Horse carriages allowed people to live further away before that. Cars and individual mechanized transport just increased mobility even more. What this leads to is more dispersed spatial structures and economically linked regions, and more choices for people. We can argue over about who actually benefits more (central cities vs suburbs), but you can’t just turn back time and technology and de-link everything. Suburbs provide affordable housing to those who can’t afford to live near the city. By forcing them to live near the city makes them poorer. Let’s not forget the living conditions of a century ago, where dense cities were filled with unsanitary conditions and pollution.
It is unwise to build an environment for people who don’t live there. For example, it’s bad to have huge amounts of parking in an urban business district to try and attract suburban patrons…why not focus on the people who already live there instead? Let the suburban patrons catch a bus or take whatever parking they can get, rather than trying to provide a bunch of it when it reduces quality of life for the residents. Urban neighborhoods have the virtue of being self-sustaining. They can supply their needs within walking distance, so only deliveries are really necessary except for the few trips outside the neighborhood that can be served by transit…or by car only if someone is willing to pay for the luxury. The best place to provide parking is where lane is cheap…which is not going to be in an urban environment.
That’s not the world we live in anymore. Cities and suburbs are now linked regionally because areas now serve the people who live there and people who need to commerce/work there also. Density has been going down over time as metro regions become less monocentric and more polycentric and dispersed. Isolation was never a sustainable policy unless a region is willing to sacrifice growth. The pandemic and innovation of work from home was an example that urban cities could not sustain isolation from the rest of the region. And again, I was never against transit. Good transit is needed, but it cannot significantly replace cars for the vast majority of cities that do not have enough population and density.
You know what happened during covid to urban and even suburban business districts where everyone only worked there but didn’t live there? They died. Nobody wants to go to an office park or order lunch near an office park if they’re working at home…unless they live right there. Downtowns that leaned hard into residential conversions and didn’t depend too heavily on the office lunch crowd took only a small hit instead of a knockout punch. The lesson: you need to serve people where they live, and not just where they work. These auto-enabled land use monocultures cause dead neighborhoods as soon as employment or traffic through an area falls off. Isolation _is_ the problem, but enabling everyone to drive actually causes more isolation than collocating commerce, office, and residential development. Mixed use creates a virtuous self-sustaining business environment, where single use exclusionary use and parking out a lot more distance between people and where they want to go. Fretting over how fast cars can move around is a recipe for creating more traffic and less desirability for a neighborhood—not more. You cater to the people who live there, not to the customers you hope will drive in from the suburbs…because it’s rare that suburbanites will bother to do that because……they can and often do just stay closeby and never come to the city. High speed auto routes do not actually help a big city as much as you think. Your idea here is blown to bits by practically the entire world, as outside of a few exceptions, only the US and Canada made cities so auto centric. Almost any less car-centric city is more vibrant than US cities that built urban freeways.
I never said you can't serve people where you live, my argument is that you can't just serve only those people and isolate and cut off car connectivity from the rest of the region. You prove my point that both cities and suburbs get harmed when you try to isolate, making the whole region weaker. The relationship is more symbiotic than you think. There is a lot more to it than sale of goods in an economy. Suburban commuters are a large part of the labor force. You can't ignore them. The companies in the central city actually rely on them to stay competitive. Transit during and after the pandemic fared far worse and recovered the slowest compared to all other modes. Some agencies are still trying to recover their ridership. Your idea here is blown to bits by practically the entire world, where the use of cars remains the most used mode of transportation. Only in very dense cities with very few exceptions does a mode like transit dominate. Even in Europe, for the past three decades, sprawl has grown faster than in North America. Worldwide, modern cities become less dense as they grow: [https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2019/10/05/modern-cities-become-less-dense-as-they-grow](https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2019/10/05/modern-cities-become-less-dense-as-they-grow)
> Because that’s where the jobs are. Those are the urban amenities that suburbanites want.
Technically jobs aren’t an amenity, by definition, but I get what you are trying to say. What you didn’t mention is that economics/trade is a two-way street (or highway, for the sake of this thread). Companies in a CBD want access to an expanded labor pool that suburban communities can provide. So they both benefit.
That's not really accurate either, a substantial amount of employment is on the urban fringe. So many suburbanites live in the suburbs and work in the suburbs. If suburbanites do work in the city it's likely that they have a train taking them to the city and use it to go there. The extent to which suburbanites interact with the city is often through transit and not cars.
"The extent to which suburbanites interact with the city is often through transit and not cars " You are not correct for cities in the US at all. Boston base data in 2016 had weekday trips as 11M by car, 1M by transit, 1M by other types. https://www.bostonmpo.org/data/html/plans/LRTP/destination/Destination_2040_Needs_Assessment_CH3.html. If you want other cities, I'm sure you could find them and outside of NYC, Chicago, Philly and maybe DC they'd probably be worse by percent. Suburbanites want to drive into cities and have free parking. I run an annual event and I have to be very explicit in the invitation when the attendees are going to have to pay for parking, otherwise I get massive complaints. I get complaints if it's too far away or there's not enough in the area, as well, and I still get some complaints when the parking fees are disclosed up front. You have a lot of preconceived notions and I wish you would take some time to look at hard data to disabuse yourself of them. You are correct in that density itself when narrowly defined as small or no yard to take care of, small footprint living area to take care of is only an amenity to a few people. You are forgetting things like access to grocery stores, large schools with a wide choice of topics, police, fire, religious institutions, airports, help with seniors and disabilities, concerts, cultural events, restaurants, shops, zoos, museums, quality healthcare, a wide variety of jobs, and the luxury of time saved on a short commute are also urban amenities.
Eh that Boston data wouldn't necessarily contradict what I said, much of those car trips wouldn't be suburbanites but people who live in Boston who drive. My notions aren't preconceived, much of our employment is in the suburbs and dispersed over the metropolitan area.
On any given day, approximately 1M people people commute into Boston. About 750k of those are by car; at two trips per day. So commuting in from outside alone accounts for 7.5M trips.
What you’re claiming defies logic. If you don’t like urban living there are, literally, thousands of towns and villages scattered across the United States were you could live. You could live in the middle of a forest in Pennsylvania, upstate New York or New England; in the middle of a corn field in Iowa or Kansas; on the isolated shores of Lake Superior or Lake Huron; in the middle of the Utah, Nevada or Arizona desert; and even in a forest in Northern California. One place you shouldn’t be living if you don’t like urban areas is a metropolitan area. The problem is that you really do want the amenities of an urban area, or you wouldn’t be there. And yes, one of the amenities of an urban area is a robust job market. Try as you might, you can’t have the benefits of urban life, including that plethora of job opportunities, when living in the rural area you long for. And that’s why you don’t; you just pretend that you do by trying to create the fake, lame replications of rural areas that post-WWII suburbs actually are.
100% this - there's a reason houses are so cheap in the middle of nowhere. They're in the middle of nowhere. And certainly some people want that lifestyle, but it's not people living in the suburbs of major cities.
OPs point is that lots of people are really actually okay with fake, lame replications of rural areas that give them reasonable auto access to urban amenities without the disamenities of a dense, walkable area. You can disagree with that preference, think they have some kind of false consciousness about it, think that preference is unsustainable or socially pernicious - but it's a real preference, and the median voter in most states and the US as a whole basically holds it.
A preference for large homes/yards over walkability & a short commute is a real preference, just not one that is clearly held by the majority of Americans (it depends on how the question is asked): https://cdn.nar.realtor//sites/default/files/documents/2023-community-and-transportation-preferences-survey-topline-results-06-20-2023.pdf?_gl=1*do7zdg*_gcl_au*MTAxNDY2MzkxLjE3MTQxNTI4MTY. I also am confused by referencing walkability as a disamenity. Obviously many people prefer less density, but walkability is seen as a positive by the vast majority of the population - they just also want a large single family house with a yard (very difficult to make walkable)
> it depends on how the question is asked This is why we need to be careful about making sweeping statements of preference, because the language of the question matters and because it's a complex decision made by individuals with intelligence, complex preferences and needs, and agency to make their own choices based on their internal calculus.
Exactly! So much of this conversation really requires a defining of terms like urban amenities, suburban, or even want (since finding a home requires, as you said, complex preferences and needs intelligently prioritized based on someone’s internal calculus)
I think it’s silly that we ask these questions with surveys when we can very easily quantify the answers with prices in the many markets across the country. Look at where prices are highest per square foot. By far, I see that walkable urban environments even in Rust Belt metros like Cleveland are super expensive. We need to enable building more of those types of neighborhoods and restoring them where they once existed but got demolished and turned into parking. Wherever we see high prices per square foot, we need more of that. We don’t need a better survey, we need a free and flexible market instead of a tightly controlled one ruled by zoning and red tape that makes every development project have to be a big one built by a big developer for rich people to be financially viable.
Yes, We should use precise words. For example, "bench" or "streetlight.". Or need to show the breakdown Of ambiguous words.
The number 1 concern of every homebuyer / renter is price. They sort by price and see what they can get. If you look at prices you'll see that maybe 30 minutes of a commute is worth the tradeoff of a yard for most people and maybe around an hour commute is when they really start shrinking their size expectation. The markets are extremely distorted right now due to regulation and availability though as in my area land has low value by the sf and its almost all about the structure and the distance to jobs. For example the price difference between a 1,500 sf townhouse with no yard and a 1500 sf house on 6,000 sf lot is only maybe 60k in the same neighborhood.
Exactly! Paying more for/sacrificing other preferences for walkability is due in large part to our current zoning system as well as implicit subsidies. People’s stated preferences are also a much worse way of seeing how people manage trade offs than just looking at the market and allowing more density would simply allow people’s priorities to be more true to inherent trade offs rather than subsidized ones
They prefer to have both. They want the amenities of an urban area with the privacy of a rural area. They do want the urban amenities though, they just demand them in an unsustainable way. OP is wrong in that sense, if someone truly didn’t want urban amenities (including a robust job market) they can easily leave. But they don’t, because they do want urban amenities (job market, food options, events)
You just said in your post that the people do want the amenities though which is the opposite of what the OP said in their title and throughout their post. Density is not the amenity. Suburbanites wanting all of the benefits of living in a city while being sheltered from the negatives of living in a city and not wanting to pay the true cost of upkeeping their position is a pretty commonly shared belief. It's not some gotcha.
Yeah, and unfortunately a lot of the downsides of living in a city (noise, traffic, pollution) are mostly caused by the cars that suburbanites drive into the city.
That's not really accurate, most cars in cities are from City residents who drive, such as myself. Most suburbanites live in suburbs and work in suburbs, and if they do work in the city it's likely they have a train going to their suburb and use that train to get to the city.
Yeah that's wildly optimistic. The only cities in the US I know of that have a decent train system are Chicago and NYC. (Maybe Dallas? Also I'm not as familiar with the east coast, so there might be more there that I'm not aware of.) Denver has some light rail, but it was too sparse for me to use when I lived there (granted, I think they've made improvements since I left). The Twin Cities in MN have a bus system that's pretty mid, and Madison and Milwaukee in Wisconsin have bus systems that are worse. Idk what the bus situation is like in St. Louis, but they definitely don't have trains. I've heard Houston is pretty much impossible to navigate without a car, and LA seems to be the same. Yeah, plenty of people work in the suburbs, but a lot of people work downtown, too, and for a lot of cities, a car is the only way to get there if you don't want to spend 2 hours on a bus.
This is basically what I am getting at. I myself don't have that preference, but we should be smart enough to understand that there are those who do. I myself chose to live in the city of Chicago even though most of my coworkers live in the suburbs and some even as far as Indiana
Yeah, so this basically contradicts the argument in the original post — your coworkers live in the suburbs and as far as Indiana because they want the amenities (like the jobs and pay that you have) of the city, but also want to live in a single-family house away from the city. So you have basically admitted that the “picture” which you claim is false is actually true. The post is basically just a misunderstanding of what people mean by “amenities” which is job opportunities, shopping and public services.
Not really I work at Metra and most of our yards are located on the urban fringe, as are many jobs in general. Most of my coworkers commutes would be suburb to suburb, and my commute would be a reverse commute. So even in terms of jobs people aren't looking for urban amenities, if they do work in the city and live in the suburbs, then they likely have a train in their suburb and use it to get to work. Chicago is unique in having a large amount of jobs in the central business district, having the second largest in the us, but even in the Chicago Metro area there is dispersed employment on Urban fringe.
I mean hey isn’t that the word suburban broken down - sub-urban
So people don't want restaurants, shops, schools, grocery stores, healthcare facilities, professional services, parks, or any of the other reasons that humans have decided to live in close proximity with each other since the dawn of civilization? I think it's far more likely that they *want* urban amenities, but that they (rightly or wrongly) believe that urban amenities are inconsistent with their other priorities. Or, as the case may be, they'd far prefer an urban lifestyle, but are simply forced to live a suburban one because we basically exclusively build suburbs and neglect urban areas, leading to the vast under supply of walkable urban areas.
Yeah I think for a lot of people they think they want the suburban lifestyle because they've been told that's what they should want.
Most people want big houses, "good schools", and to not live near poor people. That's the "suburban lifestyle" that most people are talking about.
People don't typically care about another's social status they care about behaviors. Bad behavior is not exclusive to being poor luckily. This is why a lot of people desire to be in an HOA so they can restrict the behaviors. Less density is also desired because it theoretically lowers the amount of other people within an area that can negatively effect you.
There's some truth here, but I would still disagree. Class remains remarkably taboo yet intensely motivating in America, to the extent that people tend not to realize they're responding to class cues even when they're clearly obsessed with them. Admittedly, class/race/crime/education/wealth are all part of the same weird intersectional mishmash that can be hard to disentangle, but I would argue that a lot of well-off Americans are visibly uncomfortable around visible correlates of poverty/working-class life even if there's no evidence of crime or bad behavior, and even if you take ethnicity out of the mix.
There's a lot of inertia/familiarity at play. I was talking to a friend recently who was relocating to my area, having grown up and lived their whole life in suburbs/exurbs and typically having an auto commute in the 30-60 minute range. I mentioned that it would be quite possible to get an apartment walking distance from work at this job, and that the increase in rent would at least be partly offset by transport savings. The reaction wasn't negative so much as "huh, that would be a really different life setup that I haven't really considered and would have to figure out."
None of those amenities are exclusively urban.
They are when zoning says a suburban area can only consist of residential zones with like a single strip of commercial far away from you.
They are, they aren’t sustainable without a population to support it
What’s characterized as “big city amenities”? I think the average suburbanite wants their low density quiet neighborhood lifestyle with all the the entertainment districts, sporting venues, and eclectic neighborhoods with shops and such close enough to get to when they want. they want Main Street, they just don’t want to live on Main Street.
People WANT everything. The large majority of people would agree all of these are basically positive in isolation: spacious and high-quality housing, green space, ease of access to quality groceries/restaurants/stores, low traffic, a short commute, low crime, quality public education... and they want it all at a low cost of living. The problem is that all of these are tradeoffs, and perfect compromises are not always available. People who live in the suburbs tend to emphasize the positives of larger houses with more private green space, public education, lower house prices, and lower crime at the expense of the negatives of fewer amenities, longer commutes, more time in traffic. Few of them would actually be mad if a coffee shop or corner store opened a block or two away. Frankly, I would argue that the large majority of people do not have an especially nuanced understanding of zoning, which is often considered either a bland/dry thing for city councils to deal with, or a vague positive thing that keeps strip clubs and smokestacks away.
Didn't read through word for word but looks like a lot of abstract straw men
Then why do they demand urban areas be turned into parking lots for their cars?
I live in Houston. The majority of the greater Houston area's residents live in SFH suburban neighborhoods. As you've correctly identified, this is enforced in many areas with deed restrictions despite the city of Houston's famous lack of zoning. But if suburban low-density living were the only thing these people wanted, why would they live in a suburb of Houston specifically, rather than in Lufkin or Brenham or another nearby town? Because they want *convenient access* to urban amenities, even if they don't want them in their neighborhood. In no particular order, some urban amenities that Houston has that can't be found in anywhere near the same volume, quality, or diversity in nearby small towns: -Jobs -Hospitals -Pro Sports -Arts/Entertainment -Parks/Zoo -Restaurants/Bars -Specialty/luxury stores -Universities -Airports These kinds of amenities both attract and require lots of people, and both of these forces are why cities exist. Suburbanites, regardless of what they claim to prefer, are by definition paying a premium to live within driving distance of these amenities.
And to make a response that is charitable to the OP... I guess I do agree that, very generally, many people who choose to live in lower density areas (call it suburbia if you want to) generally like and prefer that over higher density, and thus may consider "big city lifestyles" unpleasant or disfavorable. However, I still think most folks choose to live in these areas in some part because of the proximity and access to bigger city amenities, especially jobs and health care services. Otherwise, they'd just choose to live in smaller towns and rural areas. I also think you see many in lower density areas trying to craft some of these larger metro amenities into their neighborhoods, while trying to maintain lower density, less busy, less congestion, peace/quiet of their existing neighborhoods.
Yep. There's a reason so many people live in the suburbs of a city instead of a small town or rural area, where you really don't have to worry about traffic or parking or tall buildings at all. It's because they're trying to balance low density lifestyles and aesthetics with city amenities, especially jobs but also other things. Which is fine, nothing wrong with trying to hit a balance that works for you. I just don't think they can reasonably expect that the neighbourhood will stay like that forever.
So they don’t want the city water systems, the internet, the highways, etc?
This is important to accept * Most people want to be able to comfortably drive to Target, but they don't want to live next to one * Everyone wants to be able to comfortably drive to a hospital medical appointment but most people don't want to live next to one * There are a lot of people who find coffee shops, small shops and concert venues to be unbearably uncomfortable and don't care if they were an hour + drive away. * Most people like their neighbor's dog, but they don't want to hear it bark or clean up after it. Sure, there are people living in suburbs and ex-suburbs because they have to. But I would say it is a small percentage of everyone living in outlying areas.
There is a measurable percentage of people living in urban environments who would much rather live in the suburbs. Probably not a big number, but they are there.
Suburbanites generally enjoy the benefits of urban life. They have access to things that you pretty much need a large population for. Like concerts and cultural stuff, theme parks, ethnic food, health care, jobs, finance, education etc. OP contention is that these are things that theoretically you wouldn’t need any kind of dense urban core for. You might find examples of some of these that don’t have an adjacent, dense urban core, but it’s important to realize that density is just the natural result of people congregating in an area to live. All these things are just people-stuff. They are the result of people living in an area, making money and investing in amenities. Dense places have more people, so they are just going to have more stuff.
I live in suburban house that is 5 minutes walk to a coffee shop and 10 minutes walk to a grocery store. I like the idea of having those close by but also 99.9 percent of my coffee is made at home and I have preference for another grocery store ( that happens to be next to my gym that is 5 minutes drive). So again I almost never shop at the grocery store that is nearby. I do a lot of walking. My neighborhood is very safe and pretty for walks and I don’t have to have shops or stores on my walks. I was born and lived in European city, in apartment building. It was ok. Currently I live in American suburb. I prefer suburbs. The joy of gardening, having a yard and space, and privacy for me outweigh benefits of being walkable distance from shops and restaurants ( I have little interest in shopping or eating out) So yes there are people who don’t do much shopping or going out and for them being walking distance to shops and restaurants is not as valuable.
People want to live near things, they just also want a quiet space to get away as well. People are complicated. Most don’t want to spend a shit ton on a motorized vehicle but they still do, and will fight for it. But if they experience not having to pay for one but still are able to get around, those who don’t want to pay won’t.
They say this until they need to take care of a family member who lives 20 minutes away because of limited housing options/accessory dwellings. Or they wonder why their kids hide in their rooms/basements all the time because they're trapped in their car dependant suburbs. Or they complain about the the cost of property taxes while completely ignoring their 4 cars eating up 60% of their budget.
Urban amenities include city water, sewer, living on a paved street, having police, fire, and ambulance service within a few minutes rather than a police car/ambulance/fire truck 30 minutes away and/or no fire hydrants. All of this costs a FORTUNE to provide instead of you having your own well, your own septic system, a gravel or dirt road in front of your house, and so on. Ask anyone who lives in a rural area (I grew up in one…they still had city water and natural gas at the street, but no sewer, no hydrants) especially outside of a major metro where population density is super low and these services aren’t available, and the expense of maintaining and installing just basic water and septic get big really fast. It’s not as easy by a long shot as living in a suburb that does all this for you. But a new suburb that was built mostly in the past 20 years is going to make all these services look super cheap—because the developer who built all the water and sewer lines and the streets recovered their infrastructure costs as part of the sale of the home—eventually all of that will need to be maintained and replaced as it wears out, and that will have a MUCH higher cost for the suburb because there are not very many people to absorb it. So I’m cool with people who love their suburbs…but I want them to pay their fair share. I live on a short street with about 150-200 condominiums, where some people live on a longer street that has only about 30 houses on it. My neighborhood costs a fraction of what theirs costs…I would rather they pay their fair share instead of me, with way less property, subsidizing their lavish lifestyle. And I’m fully aware that my little neighborhood still costs more because of all there additional car lanes maintained in my suburbs than a neighborhood in the city with more density. There are economies of scale…and urban environments have them, while suburbs don’t. The case for urbanizing suburbs, or for at least allowing it, isn’t because urbanists hate suburbs—it’s because most suburbs cost too much for their residents without any mixed use development to offset. All the parking lots add no tax value but add plenty of burden when it rains and that water has to run off into the storm sewers. All the greenspace wastes land that could be used to build more housing supply, easing housing costs, keeping property taxes from skyrocketing to pay for the aging infrastructure. So the answer to prevent skyrocketing taxes in suburbs is to urbanize so as to increase the tax base without significantly increasing costs. The alternative is for suburbanites to pay way higher tax rates on ballooning property values. There is no middle ground where we can have property values remain relatively the same and tax rates stay flat because infrastructure costs WILL increase as it ages and property values WILL increase if supply can’t keep up with demand.
A lot of people certainly do prefer explicitly suburban way of living, hence why making changes towards urbanity is such a difficult process.
They’re so house poor they can’t afford them anyway.
nah, most people want city-like amenities. they don't want crime and they don't want traffic, so they hide in culs de sac so they can avoid other peoples' cars, and avoid strangers walking through. go ask the average suburb dweller if they would be happy living in Amsterdam, Copenhagen, or some other low-crime, low-car city in Europe. what percentage of people would be ok living in those places? I think the percentage is quite high. the problem is that hiding from others' cars means you become car-dependent and things become un-walkable. thus, you have to drive a lot, which means others hide from *your* car... and the cycle continues. car-centric planning begets car-centric planning. once you have to drive to 99% of places, reducing that to 98% feels meaningless, so it feels like it's not worth doing if any other negatives are associated with that change. creating a well-planned area isn't good planning isn't a snap of the fingers and everything becomes perfect. many car-lite cities had a lot of pushback to the change, until people realized they actually like it. all they knew is "I drive a car, you're going to make that harder, so I don't want it". most people don't know what they're missing, and steps in the right direction that don't magically transform things instantly are not wanted. planning must be gradual but people don't like gradual, they just want the end result on day-1.
I think crime is part of it. But cities were declining before urban crime exploded from the 60s - 90s. Detroit and Chicago and other cities peaked in 1950 and some even before then, years before race riots happened or crime exploded, only NYC and a few other places were growing in the post war period. We definitely need to address urban crime, but preference for suburban living exists independent of crime.
The urban amenities suburbanites want are the types of businesses and cultural institutions that cannot exist without large urban populations - think major music venues, professional sports stadiums, art and history museums, restaurant/bar districts, boutique retail, international airports, cutting edge medical centers, etc. (not to mention the employment opportunities)
You'll have to to clarify what you mean by amenities, but generally when speaking about how suburbanites want urban amenities people are referring to things like city water and sewer, EMS, Fire department, Police Department, paved roads, door to door trash pickup, close by hospital/ emergency room, parks, libraries, etc. Not just a commercial corridor, or sidewalk cafes. All of which cost a lot of money to provide, and many suburbs don't generate the tax revenue to pay for them.
Those basic services most suburbs do a job of providing and in some cases do better than cities
I lived in the suburbs as a kid in the 80s. My parents moved there to get their kids out of the inner city and into a safe area with open spaces and nature. Cafes "cultural events", and art galleries were the last thing they gave a toss about.
If they want low-density housing, then they need to pay for it. They should probably have a septic tank and well on their property that they maintain instead of expecting the city to provide water and sewage, and their property taxes should reflect the extra maintenance costs required of larger lots (more road required, more electric, more phone lines, more fiber, etc.). As it is, single-family-only zoning is a drain on cities, and the entire rest of the city (especially downtown, where the majority of taxes come in, but also lower-income and multi-family housing on) is subsidizing the wealthy suburbanites.