Urbanism and Sprawl, Responding to Greg and Rick

Doh!  I just spent the last 30 minutes writing a long response to Rick and Greg in my hotel room here in Tel Aviv, but when I tried to post it, the room's internet connection broke down and I lost the work.  I don't have the heart to re-create the whole thing, so I'm going to give a very truncated version of it. 

First, my points of agreement.  I'm not sure what in my op-ed made Greg think that I favor a sort of Soviet reurbanization program, but I don't.   In the op-ed, the "sprawl" whose end I was talking about sprawl in the sense of the process of spreading out (i.e., sprawl as a verb), not sprawl as a description of our present pattern of development (sprawl as a noun), which, I agree, is not likely to go anywhere soon.  Moreover, I agree with Greg that most people at most times have, when presented with the choice, favored the single family dwelling over the high-rise apartment.  (In fact, this preference -- which I happen to share -- seems to me to be about as close to a human universal as anything.)  But I think the significance of that preference requires a few qualifications:  (1) you can't always get what you want.  If gas prices continue to rise, a pattern of development built around dependence on gas-powered automobiles is going to be increasingly out of reach for middle-class families, as it was before the invention of the car, and as it remains out of reach for those who cannot drive (the very poor and the very old); (2) there are multiple patterns of development consistent with the single family home; you can have the privacy and comfort of that home within a walkable, mixed use, transit-friendly community (see, e.g., Forest Hills, NY), or you  can have it in a car-dependent, single-use bedroom community.  Choosing to change our present way of organizing land uses does not require a shift away from a way of living that is distinctly "suburban" in the way that Greg values.  We can throw out the bath water without the baby. (3) Focusing on the waste of land within our present suburban living patterns misses a number of important environmental costs.  (Not that the waste of land is unimportant.  The 5% figure ignores the fact that human settlements tend to concentrate around lands that are especially ecologically productive.)  Most significantly, it ignores the connection between car dependence and climate change.

Whether the present situation is a housing "collapse" is probably a matter of perspective.  But focusing on the metropolitan edge, as I do in the op-ed, the word collapse is probably the correct one.  As for gas prices, I agree with Greg that the rise so far may not be enough to take the argument the whole way, which is why I couched the (always dangerous) prediction in the caveat of gas prices continuing to rise, as I believe they will.  That said, however, I think the impact so far on the residents of communities at the very edge of the metropolitan area might be double what Greg estimates.  A $1 increase in fuel prices per gallon translates into about $1500 extra dollars per year for the average family of four.  This certainly seems like enough to me to start having an effect on consumer behavior at the margins, which is all I was really talking about in the op-ed, despite its somewhat grandiose title.  At gas prices rise,  development at the metropolitan edge looks less attractive, a phenomenon that  should create growing demand for development within the existing metropolitan footprint. 

In response to Rick, I think we are in agreement.  I don't think cars tell the whole, or even most of the story.  They do, however, seem to me to have had an impact on our culture's move towards privatization.  Moving through the world within a metal and glass cocoon gives us the luxury of indifference towards the communities through which we pass on our daily commute.

With respect to Rick's zoning point, I have my own quibble.  For every low-density, single-use zoning ordinance, there is probably a common interest community that imposes the same restrictions through private covenant.  And suburban zoning ordinances themselves are, as William Fischel has argued, almost quasi-private in the sense that they result from fairly robust competition among suburban communities to give homeowners what they want.  So, as far as public policy goes, suburban zoning seems almost private in its operation.