Skip Berger gets all giddy at Crosscut this week over an “unexpected” report that, surprise, confirms what he already believes—cities are bad, suburbs are good, and any effort to rein in exurban sprawl is both doomed and counter to the natural order of things. His column begins, breathlessly, thus:
Okay, this is really interesting because it turns some conventional wisdom on its head. It turns out that the suburbs are not populated with urban refugees. Writing at NewGeography, Wendell Cox comes across what he calls an “unexpected truth:”
Much has been written about how suburbs have taken people away from the city and that now suburbanites need to return back to where they came. But in reality most suburbs of large cities have grown not from the migration of local city-dwellers but from migration from small towns and the countryside.
Wendell Cox, Wendell Cox…. Wait a minute, could that be the same Wendell Cox who has spent much of the past two decades as a professional anti-transit activist? The same Wendell Cox who has written anti-transit screeds for such impartial publications as the National Review Online and the Heritage Foundation)? The same Wendell Cox who’s on the payroll of the American Highway Users Alliance, a pro-highway group created by GM? The same Wendell Cox who is affiliated with the Reason Foundation, the far-right-wing/libertarian think tank? The same Wendell Cox who praised Houston as a fine example of urban planning and transportation management? The same Wendell Cox who makes his living on the speaking circuit arguing against land-use regulations? The same Wendell Cox who wants the federal government to lower clean-air standards? The same Wendell Cox who says the government should stop building transit and just buy everyone cars? The same Wendell Cox who has repeatedly been caught peddling wild inaccuracies (such as his claim that “no new light rail system carries more than a third of the volume of a single freeway lane,” his claim that we can achieve all the emissions reductions we need by investing in hydrogen cars, and his claim (in a paper calling Obama supporters “enemies of the American Dream“) that “‘Green’ houses can make it possible… [for] Americans [to] continue their favored suburban life style”?
Yep, that Wendell Cox.
Far from being an “unexpected truth,” then, Cox’s supposed revelation—that suburbs are awesome, that sprawl is inevitable, and that cities are bad—is exactly the philosophy he’s been selling (and profiting from) for decades.
Anyway, the core of Cox’s argument, as summarized by Berger, is this:
In looking at data from modern, “first world” countries, including the United States, Cox finds that while the suburbs are growing, most of the newcomers are migrating from smaller cities and rural areas, even in cities like St. Louis that have rapidly depopulated over the last 50 years. And this strong suburban growth is occurring even in the most mass-transit-friendly cities. …
Cox argues that suburbs need to be seen differently, not as the hostile “other” to core cities:
[S]uburbs have to be seen not as the enemies of the city, as just a modern expression of urbanization. They are neither the enemies of the city, nor are their residents likely to move “back” there. You cannot move back to someplace you did not come from.
In other words, the idea that suburbanites can be enticed back into dense urban cores is unlikely. In fact, the bigger cores grow and flourish, the more likely they will generate new sprawl.
Apparently, Berger has never heard of confusing correlation with causation. Just because cities sprawl outward now, doesn’t mean that cities are themselves the cause of sprawl. No, sprawl is caused by lax growth management rules and by government policies that heavily subsidize auto travel at the expense of alternatives like mass transit and affordable urban housing. Moreover, arguments in favor of mass transit and affordable urban housing are not, as Berger and his ilk insist, an argument that existing suburbs are somehow evil and should be bulldozed down, but arguments for developing in a smarter way in the future. Just because something has always been one way—for example, as Berger notes, because Seattle’s suburbs have continued to grow—doesn’t mean it must always remain that way. Nor does the fact that suburban sprawl exists make suburban sprawl the natural order of things. Government policies have supported sprawl for decades. Maybe, instead of treating government subsidies for sprawl and highways as if they were ordained by God, it’s time to change those policies.
Nobody beleives the shit you write, either, Erica, so you and Cox are even in that regard.
As for sprawl, whether you and your little cult of “new urbanist” weenies like it or not, millions upon millions of people in this country will not tolerate living packed together like sardines, and will go to any lengths whatever to escape living that way.
I don’t claim to know if sprawl is the “natural order of things” or not, but I know one thing for sure. Judging from the fate of last session’s “Transit Oriented Development” bill, there isn’t the political clout in this state to mandate YOUR version of the “natural order of things,” either.
So quit coming across like you’re the prophet of the next great coming trend, because that’s far from certain.
Urban sprawl isn’t caused by lax growth management rules. It’s caused by a common desire to have yards, fences, private parking, and no shared walls or floors. Pretty much everybody — even committed urban conservationists — would prefer to live in a free-standing house if such a thing were possible.
But there are lots of things we want that we shouldn’t get. I want a rocket launcher, but the social cost of allowing me to have one is too great for it to be legal. Urban sprawl is a result of failure to regulate the market for a natural monopoly (land). But that’s not what causes it.
And here I thought urban sprawl was what happened when you had too many steaks grilled after downing a 24 pack.
Where’s this list of cities that don’t have a ring of sprawl around them? I’ll take examples from anywhere; where are they? Because I can’t think of any.
Cities attract sprawl. I don’t see what’s controversial about that. Unless you’re going to go back to walled cities, they will continue to do so. Sprawl collects around successful cities and unsuccessful ones; both New York and Detroit, London and Liverpool. Paris has sprawl; Mexico City has sprawl; Tianjin has sprawl; Dar Es Salaam has sprawl.
It’s a disservice to the argument, on either side, though, to pretend that this obvious fact supports subsidies of either urban density or suburban sprawl. Judah’s post is closer to the real argument. The most important question is how to strengthen the economy of the city in ways that encourage smart development without unleashing stupid development outside it. But it’s a horrible mistake to fail to see the logic of the suburb (or exurb).
Berger is laughably wrong on one point, though; many suburbanites (and exurbanites, and rural people too) DO move into the hearts of cities, if the cities are successful ones, and they become rich enough. Seattle, like a lot of successful American cities, is increasingly becoming a city of very rich white people enjoying the benefits of a cleansed urban experience, while lower income people, and browner people, move to the suburbs, either older run-down ones, or new ones.
@1. The TOD bill was killed by conservative Democrats opposed to expanding the scope of the Growth Management Act to include climate change considerations, because they don’t like GMA and would repeal it if they could. The urban density provisions, for all the play they got in the blogs and among the neighborhoodies, were probably not decisive except for 2-3 south Seattle legislators.
As for the main post: Erica is right that suburban sprawl isn’t the natural order of things and has been promoted by certain local, state, and federal policies, particularly transportation policies. Nevertheless, if Cox is right that the primary growth in the suburbs has been driving by migration from depopulating rural areas, that at least is a step in the right direction that we should acknowledge, as suburban living is far less energy-intensive than rural living, though more so than urban living. The missing policy here is the flip side of the “smart growth” strategy that, for all its failings, is generally working in King County and is getting better in the neighboring counties. What we are missing is a “smart atrophy” strategy (I’m open to a better term for it, but that’s the one that the Buffalo Commons people use for it). When rural areas bleed population, or suburban ones (as they are in the most obscene examples of recent sprawl in places like Nevada and Arizona), we need a strategy for how to reclaim those lands for better uses, be it parkland, farmland, or otherwise. And as much as we’d like to see people migrating from the country to the cities, for now, I’m content to see movement into existing urbanized parts of big metro areas. And that acknowledgment is one that I see missing in The Stranger, though the smart urbanists at places like Hugeasscity seem to get it.
I hate living in the suburbs. I don’t even live in the suburb of a city. I live in a “suburb” of a resort community, which is itself, constructed like a suburb (country clubs/golf courses).
I live in in the seventh circle of hell.
If I could afford to, I would move back to an apartment in Seattle or Tacoma or Olympia in heart beat.
People who trumpet the suburbs, also trumpet high density commercial real estate (skyscrapers) that are consistently subsidized by government regulations and almost never fully utilized because businesses don’t like to locate themselves away from workers – you have to pay people more to entice them to commute into the urban core. If these douche nozzles were half as focused on developing denser housing in-city, you’d attract people AND businesses.
And to all you morons who think that houses and yards are some kind of magical fairy land of happiness, I invite you to work for a gardener or landscaping company, or a plumber, or an exterminator, or a roofer, or an electrician for a little while and realized how much time, money, and energy go into maintaining your fucking fairy land. Hell, just try picking up your dog’s shit every time you go out – now multiply that joy by 1000. You’re a fucking homeowner! Yay, misery!
“…millions upon millions of people in this country will not tolerate living packed together like sardines, and will go to any lengths whatever to escape living that way.”
Oh, we’ll see what “any lengths” are when gas goes back up to $4 gallon. I suspect it’ll be a lot of whining and going flat-ass broke.
I’m not a fan of ECB but is it really necessary to ream her for EVERYTHING she writes?
Urban sprawl is dying; get used to it. We’re out of room, resources, time and money to waste on building exurbs 50 miles from a city center…but, no one is going to start bulldozing the existing burbs to be replaced with townhouses and highrises, (well, not for a very long time), so quit panicking that someone is going to come along and evict you from your lameass tracthouse/quarter acre yard/three car garage in the forseeable future.
and WHERE exactly in 21st century America do people live like sardines? Manhattan, perhaps, but that’s about it in the US.
If you want to see REAL density and a state of sardineness, then you need to take a trip around the world…I’d start with Rio or Sao Paulo…
@6: You sound like one miserable human being.
Hey ECB: Google “urban deconcentration” and you will find that the re-densification of cities is phase two of a national policy that followed the unrest of the 60’s (see the Kerner Report. Opening up the Suburbs, and Urban Problems and Prospects). You get to find out what phase one is, if you care to look beyond being a hack. What Berger has to say is really beside the point, as you unwittingly promote suburbs as the new ghettos.
tiktok @ 7:
People will decide for themselves what is “sustainable” when gas goes to $4 a gallon. Plenty of people will make sacrifices to maintain their mobility. Others won’t. But don’t just assume that one set of priorities is intrinsically any better than any other. Because it isn’t. Plenty of rural people could teach you lot quite a bit about “sustainability.”
strangeways @ 8:
I have been to both Rio AND São Paulo, more than once. Plus I was born and raised in a row house in Philadelphia. So I KNOW what it is to live packed like sardines, and I see the beginnings of it here, make no mistake.
As long as people have kids and suburbs are considered more friendly to kids, people will move there. Don’t see a lot of play on the Slog about making cities more child friendly–and as long as they’re not, families are going to move out if they think they get more amenities, better schools and a more kid oriented community.
Rome isn’t child friendly and has kids in it since before Jesus was crucified.
So?
If suburbs are so kid friendly why do all the school shootings happen in suburban schools? And, why do all the smart suburban kids move to the city the first chance they get? And, what exactly does “child friendly” mean? Oh, I forget; that’s suburban code for “I don’t want my kid going to school with poor black/hispanic kids”
@15 – it’s a target-rich environment.
Kind of like Duck Hunt.
I live in the suburbs and despite some good things about my neighborhood I have to agree with Soupytwist. Yards and single-family neighborhoods are vastly overrated. I do appreciate not having to share walls with my neighbors, but that’s really the only suburban amenity worth preserving.
But you can have comparatively dense single-family neighborhoods (say, 10 units/acre) within city limits, giving you more manageable yards and reasonable house sizes and independent walls. If you converted the truly sprawling residential areas to 10/acre and upzoned single-story retail and parking lot apartment complexes to 4-6 residential over retail you’d solve the sprawl problem without reducing the overall supply of single-family homes.
The suburbs don’t need to go away, they need to be reinvented along with the cities. That means urban density where possible (as every suburban city in the Puget Sound area is currently planning and zoning for), better transit both regionally and locally, and a more subtle transformation away from McMansions and parking lot malls and apartment complexes to modest houses and thoughtfully designed multi-family multi-use neighborhoods.
Issues like the poor quality of urban schools will resolve over time if we fix the use-segregated sprawl of both cities and suburbs. Bad schools are a symptom.
In the long run our metropolitan areas will become multi-hub cities with a mix of different development styles but a much higher density overall. And maybe the big suburban estates popular now will give way to weekend homes shared by larger numbers of people who just need an occasional break from the comparatively hectic pace of the city.
As far as cities not being kid-friendly, they were plenty friendly to kids until social, economic, and racial segregation (i.e. “white flight”) took hold in the 60s and 70s. My dad grew up in the Eastlake neighborhood in the 1950s (his house still exists on Boylston next to I-5 and they lived there before the freeway went in) and it was packed with kids, just like the rest of the city.
The schools are bad because the middle-class and rich kids all left the city, and not the other way around as usually supposed. There is a chicken-and-egg quality to fixing cities, but if you fix the problems of sprawl the schools will repair themselves and families with kids will stay and cities will become appropriately kid-friendly again. Hipsters need not worry about losing their adult-friendly neighborhoods either as Seattle was a plenty adult-friendly city too back in those days, filled to the brim with bars, clubs, and other places of relative disrepute.
Erica – a good post w/ some real journalism and insight. You must be off the sauce today.
Damn to those myopic, self-centered, historically-uninformed, car-oriented suburbanites that prey on our city weekends and maybe for some office tower (or construction) job – and their fantasy vision of the future. Ignore their inane comments. Better yet, back to the comments pages of the Times with ya!
But we still have to fix our knuckle-headed land use code, zap that faux-green mayor and suck-up cowardly council (talkin to you Sally) that coddle greedy developers and keep us from creating more livable density, forcing cultural and urban open spaces, reducing parking to ‘drive’ the cars out, creating quality in-city family housing, and fixing the damn schools.
A minor chore, but do-able. Hopefully The Stranger will continue to push for that…
Okay, I think everyone is all about dropping the subsidies to urban sprawl. We should make road users pay for the privilege. But would you also sign on to banning subsidies for density. The posters above are totally right: suburbs exist b/c a lot of people seem to want a certain kind of dwelling. We shouldn’t have to help pay for them. But neither should others pay if we want to live in a condo in town.
Now that I’ve said something nice, I have to say that this is an awful post. Dude is making an empirical claim: the vast majority of suburbanites are people who either came to suburbs from more rural areas (in which case they are adopting a denser living arrangement), or came from the suburbs. I don’t know whether his methodology is any good, or if his numbers are right, but that’s where you should respond. A whole paragraph of ad hominem drivel doesn’t advance a goddamned thing, and makes your readers dumber for the wear. Once you move off the personal attacks, you then criticize his ‘philosophy.’ But he was never putting forward a philosophy in what you quoted, just (purported, possibly controversial) facts. When I see that you don’t even bother engaging with those, I start to wonder whether you’re just trying to change the subject and get back to arguing to ideology, where you think you have a better chance of holding your own. I’m not moved.
Most of the comments are well thought out and clearly communicated and many of them completely valid and better than the article we read. From my vantage point there seems to be a common thread that someone seems to want to claim that they know better than I how I am suppose to live my life and regulate it. Whether it be suburban sprawl, cars versus mass transit or whatever. Enough already with the Nazi approach to regulating the United States of America.