“We don’t need more houses if they aren’t in dense cities!” Ok, but I don’t know how to make a bunch of Americans fundamentally different than they are. People really do like their big houses and their yards. They aren’t pretending.
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The way you make people different is by teaching them. People have been taught to want certain things. Maybe some people are too far gone to learn to be different, maybe I am, but that's the way. Every piece of information that you are exposed to literally physically changes you.
Illegal- until enough money is poured in or a building is pronounced unsafe, and even in the cities where it is illegal, it only because they found a way to ship the poor off to created communities within a half hour of mass transit.
The elite still need the “small fish” to wait tables yenno
Your responses are tellingly vibe based, and I really want you to actually look in the real situation of zoning in cities. There are still enemies to be found who are hoarding wealth but not the imaginary ones you’re posting about.
Just when I thought “oh they can’t possibly squeeze more in” they find room or export it to the suburbs and tout trains or busses as a way to justify the change in policy. Which is hilarious as people need to have 2 or 3 jobs and busses take FOREVER and makes running errands tough as well.
The same is happening in TN, TX, NE, IA, MI, PA, FL, SC…. Maybe this isn’t a thing in Chicago or New York, but even in places like Seattle, LA, and San Francisco there is lots of room based on how I saw CO change so dramatically over a nearly 30 year time span.
I think it’s helpful to define which cities you’re speaking of. Even bastions of no development like Boulder CO are making room for the dense communities you speak of. I watched the Cherry Creek area and many others in Denver “find room” for massive apartment complexes
No he is literally saying dense walkable neighborhoods are illegal to build in the majority of cities. Dealing both with regulations like parking minimums, setback requirements on top of the already very strict single family zoning makes them illegal. It dosen't matter how much money you pour in.
I have literally seen otherwise. I’ve seen cities rezone to move industrial applications out, install affluent studio to penthouse complexes, create dense living communities for the less affluent in the burbs, All require parking in those structures and mass transit access.
I guess I don't believe that's a research based solution when compared to palatable fixes like not building McMansions and permeable growing driving surfaces. Overly large houses don't exist because "we like them" they exist because they're the most profitable to billionaire builders.
I still don't get the whole dense housing for the climate thing. I would LITERALLY like to live slightly underground in a hobbit hole covered with native plants with no driveway in nature than live in a cheaply made noisy apartment. Though, I could see myself in a very well made micro apartment...
Apartments can be and, in more functional markets tend to be, as comfortable as a home, and at least as diverse in form. The current US state of affairs pushes them into a tiny possibility space
I think that passive solar heating/cooling are a good solution in many areas of the nation. Again, it's the builders who have no incentive to build more investment of $ for the climate...not that we can't. As for driving, that's true, but only one issue out of all the issues.
Don't forget about just being a flat more efficient use of land. The less land used for housing is better for the environment although I hate both suburban sprawl and high density towers. We need for mid density housing and fill the missing middle. 5 in 1s are perfect.
Don’t think about American-style flats in single use areas. Think Paris, with thick walls and buildings designed to deal with heat and cold, green roofs, and mixed use buildings with retail, business, groceries, etc on the ground and often first floors.
Yes, agreed. We have global technology and models do all sorts of things. Just like science/medicine it takes 2 decades to get from discovery to public access. Maybe housing is even more slow.
I think housing is just complex, and it requires the kind of buy-in that doesn’t happen anymore. Especially when it comes to intentionally designing (or redesigning) cities. It also requires, to be really blunt, a lot less bigotry and racism than we have right now, at least in America.
I am not sure precisely what kind of "buy-in" previous eras of housing construction are supposed to have had. The idea that anyone interested gets a veto over a building came about in one lifetime (if one longer than mine). Recent laws have half-demolished that principle in California
Exactly this. We’ve made it artificially difficult to build MF and mixed use for 80 years. If those types got the subsidy and easy financing of single family they’d boom and a lot of people would build them and more would choose to live in them.
Other cultures seem to have more self restraint in their expectations- why is that? What makes Americans unhappy with their lot? Poverty aside obviously.
I think we substitute stuff for relationships, culture, and ease. There is no collective consciousness no sense of the good life beyond “more”.
I mean I bought a single family home because it was the only option in the area that was cheap enough. The townhomes weren't cheaper and there weren't any condos within 30 minutes. If these denser options existed I would take it and leave a big SFH for others.
Housing prices in many urban areas seem to contradict this? I know lots of people that would have stayed in smaller homes in my city but were priced out and moved to big houses in the suburbs. Once there, it’s hard to come back though - kids schools, community, etc.
I think the problem is with people who want both. Higher density means less available space per person, no way around it.
Better mass transit would help a lot. Roads and parking take up a ton of space, and high speed rail could let people enjoy city life while living further away.
It would be easier to solve everyone’s problems and get everyone on board with my solutions if everyone were just like me and wanted all the things that I want.
Not to mention that it’s fundamentally false. I’m going to guess that most of the folks saying this are either apartment dwellers by choice, rent, or already have their single family dwelling in an ideal city location.
People aren't pretending to love pickup trucks either, but they are still unsafe money sinks. Suburbs and Trucks aren't inherently bad things, but they both need a rework, because they are unduly taxing the rest of society.
Yes, but if you run on this platform, you lose. Because the suburban-pickup truck constituency is constitutionally overrepresented. Just facts. Our first goal has to be to win. Because when you lose, it doesn't matter how right you are. You still get nothing.
on this one, i think that rapidly densifying the inner suburbs will alleviate a ton of the pressure - the people priced out of living in a nice part of a city and so settling for a house further out will gladly move in-wards, freeing up space for those who actually desire the space
But Americans like apartments in big walkable, bikeable, transitable cities much more, as evidenced by the average $/sq ft of suburban mcmansions vs apartments in good cities.
We have a big shortgage of city flats because the zoning laws have forced sprawl (among other reasons).
Source: A buddy who operates a fairly large landscaping business in the exurbs, and can say with a fair degree of confidence that a number of his clients never actually use their yards for anything.
They like having the big house with the golf-course-looking yard. But a lot of them don't actually like the house (or the neighborhood, especially the HOA that effectively mandates a landscaping service because maintaining the yard would otherwise require a garage full of tools and full time work).
And, to be clear, I'm not suggesting people should not be allowed to buy these monstrosities. I'm just saying that if we hit a real estate downturn and the bank ends up owning a bunch of these, they're probably going to rot.
We technically have enough houses for Americans, the problem is the houses aren't where people want to live/where there are good jobs. Building more houses where people already aren't moving isn't going to help much.
My question on it (not an issue, a genuine question) is the abundance fight relies on deregulation/streamlining processes that don't work, which is necessary. But how often in our history has that streamlining been on the back of groups that lack political power?
This is the fatal flaw of the "abundance" thinking – imagining/pretending that we can get something for nothing. There are real costs to deregulation, borne inevitably by the poor and powerless.
This is the fatal flaw in the critique of “abundance”—imagining that the policies and regulations we’ve got now are doing what we want. Failing to recognize regulations rooted in sustaining segregation. Thinking reform is merely deregulation.
Another fatal flaw is thinking that zoning laws only serve segregation. They primarily serve quality-of-life. The government is directly responsible for the G.I. Bill and redlining, and should be sued for massive reparations. Simple justice: the perpetrator needs to pay for the crime.
The perpetrator is homeowners across the country, dude. Quality-of-life is a euphemism for not having to see poor and/or non-white people. Read The Color of Law by Rothstein to see how red-lining’s goals continue to be embedded in zoning to this day.
It's so much more complicated than that. Black-and-white thinking often leads away from the truth. Character limits are fun, but maybe I belong on Reddit... 🫤
I don’t think they said you can get something for nothing. But it IS happening. That bridge in PA for example. Maybe we kids something but us the kids mitigated by the gain? And in cities it is often just NIMBYs blocking progress.
The current regulations on housing protect landlords and current homeowners. It also hurts renters and blocks out those who don’t have the highest wealth from buying.
I have lived in my mobile home 29 yrs. I own the home, lease the land. The park was bought 3 yrs ago by a millionaire who owns 38 other parks in FL. For 26 yrs our yearly increase was about $25-$35. It has jumped $350 in the last 3. We have no recourse, no remedy, and now, less of something else.
When I retired 4 yrs ago, I was solid middle class. Now, bc a greedy millionair wants to rob us blind by increasing our lot rents over 35% in 3 yrs, I am struggleing. I am looking to buy a house or property under $175k. At 67 yrs old. And I have to move at least 5 hrs north to find it.
Is it the regulations, or the selective enforcement of only those that benefit the millionaires that have their tentacles in the courts and boards?
We had 4 tires slashed a few years back, was like pulling teeth just to get cops to take report. But they run BOLOs on petty shoplifters on TV non-stop.
I think this is a point that a lot of thinkers do take to heart. Regulation is important, but when we try to do everything with every policy we end up doing nothing
Minorities and the powerless also need more than a government of no. We need to build more housing so people are again able to find opportunities in cities. We need to build broadband in rural areas so people can connect to the modern economy. Because we’ve made all of this harder everyone gets less
But is that what these regulations are for? Is it what they do? To pick an obvious example, desegregation is an obvious deregulatory win. Zoning was a response to regulate neighborhoods by wealth once explicit race restrictions were banned.
This is conflation of the specific with the general. The banning of redlining, and in fact desegregation itself, are also based in regulation. That there are tons of regulations not fit for purpose and conceived by evil people is not in dispute. All regulation requires constant, *careful* review.
Agree with you. Have to look at the specifics of the regulation, just saying regulation on general is bad/good gets you nowhere. This is one of the reasons I’m a YIMBY, there are specific things in local law that we can fix. Those have costs, but are well worth the benefit of more homes.
Agreed. And if the competitive business practice regulations were properly enforced, it would go a long way to fixing the problems. The vast majority of apartment complexes in a 200+ sq. mile area that I live in are owned by 1 company. Rent is illegally price-fixed, but there's no enforcement.
I think the real problem is that lots of regulation exists to protect those who have at the expense of those who don't. To drive up property prices to the benefit and comfort of those who already own at the expense of renters and new owners. Those will be the hardest to get rid of.
Lots of people will oppose regulations that make it easier to build cheaper, more dense housing because it will hurt their house's price (and "livability" etc.). People who don't own a house will not have the same time or money or particular motivation to lobby the politicians and planners.
A regulation change that would make it easier to pollute would actually be easier to achieve, because while their might be a lot of people in the community with time, money and motivation to lobby against, there will also be lots time and money for the relevant industrial interests to lobby for it.
It's just neoliberalism in a new suit. The second they mentioned deregulation you know it's not a left idea at all let alone the rest of it. It's just Reagan Republicans who aren't down with open racism
How often in our history has *enacting* regulation been on the back of groups that lack political power? Zoning was literally enacted as a tool of segregation. Ignoring the harsh realities of the particular regulation to argue theoretical concerns with the general concept of deregulation is obtuse
This was not his claim. His claim was that there are people who do not want to live in a dense, multi-use walkable neighborhood, who want a big yard, and they vote. And that isn't changing. You either compromise, win, and get something, or you don't compromise and you get nothing.
The point is about approach. If we take the approach that suburbanites are *wrong* for wanting a yard, they don't vote for us. We look like condescending scolds instead of outcome-focused, competent leaders. We have to address the concerns of everyone, even people different from us.
That's not the point, either. 1) it's not about the notable Dems but the left broadly construed. 2) the problem isnt "attacking the suburbs" it's treating suburb & rural folk as a problem to be solved instead of citizens to be represented. A party that only reps the big cities is a party that loses.
1. Zoning for density affects affordability. Failure to do so pushes people out. See SFO for examples.
2. A lot is made of schools and all that. We should maybe fix that shit.
3. Some cities have decent transit, but some do not. That matters. It's only worth it if it's ... worth it.
I feel like if this were true, the median rent for a 1 Bedroom apartment in the New York Metro wouldn't be over $2.5k a month.
This isn't an attack on you, btw. I'm just pointing out that, looking at supply and demand, it seems pretty clear that there's a whole lot of people who care more about-
-just having a home, than having their own land like they're their own king/queen. Rents shouldn't be as high as they are in any metro area, in fact, if this were really as true as you make it out to be.
More green spaces like parks, less big yards with manicured lawns which are terrible for ecosystems. Big ass houses are wasted space, let's normalize and prioritize reasonable ideas, not enable abusive addiction level greed and status chasing.
If you are making the abundance argument, which sounds to me like supporting more faster greed, don't pretend to care about the environment and global warming. I was told once people will need to look into the abyss to get it, but now I think they will need to experience it.
At the same time, giving people what they want is how we ended up with deporting thousands without due process, climate denialism and the rejection of the concept of diversity. Statistically, people "want" that.
Suburbs are a buzz word, the word your looking for is small town.
just because the cities grew bigger doesn't mean they are more important. or do you think public schools and libraries and the etc only belong to the Urban?
I guess if we built enough dense housing such that apartment rent was significantly lower than a single family house rent/mortgage, ppl could still choose a house if they wanted, but I'd bet a large number of people would suddenly start to "prefer" the cheaper apartment option.
I would love to downsize from my single family home but it’s hard to do because developers keep building giant homes (on tiny lots) or crowded apartment complexes in noisy places. Neither of those is appealing to me after living in my quiet neighborhood.
1. Right now high income people are moving into cities for jobs and pricing out low income people. Reversing that would be a big benefit for low income people. 2. If 50% of high income workers moved out of cities they’ll need a lot more baristas, gardeners etc outside the cities too
I’d love to see the demographics on this. I live in a small house with a big yard in the suburbs in the US, but I’d much rather live in a functional big city. I’ve lived for a year or two at a time in apartments in the city cores of Beijing, Montreal, London, Sydney, and Prague and it was glorious.
And often times, people will benefit and like what the government did! They will still hate the government, but they will benefit from better train infrastructure, centralised housing and wealth taxes. And that's such a difficult path to tread politically.
I’m always extremely cautious of folks with specific critiques that boil down to “X group is getting special treatment.”
Cause those always seem to actually be “*I* want special treatment, no one else.” And sadly, a country/government/society is, by definition, more than one person.
The problem with "abundance liberalism" is they are just trying to do Reaganomics deregulation spree and unironically arguing for trickle down.
There's some merit to some of what they say, like zoning laws genuinely are bad but they were written to be bad by a bunch of racists so that makes sense.
I like having a private yard that I don't have to share with anyone. My wife grows plants and flowers and our dogs have room to run around with no one yelling at us about their mess if we're in a rush and can take care later. Also, I like loud music. I'm a horrible apartment tenant. lol
One way to combat this is to show them what a competent space looks like. In my city there’s a small subdivision where there are no yards or driveways, small homes fronted to the street and public spaces. Wealthy people flock to it. People do like urban communities. They don’t like poor people.
The problem is most places like that need to be affordable not just luxury for no reason. Often times the difference between prices is the only thing keeping poor ppl away. And sometimes that doesn’t even work
Yes, that’s definitely my point. Suburban living is not all about two car garages and yards. It’s often about being away from poverty and “undesirable elements,” code for non-white.
That is the fight, is it not? I often say you couldn't give Americans the conveniences of modern countries because they wouldn't know what to do with them. They've been trained not to, in fact, by people who have a vested interest in them not wanting better things. We need to deprogram the culture.
My point is that public spaces, in American culture, are understood to belong to *no one*, whereas in a functional modern society they must be understood to belong to *everyone*. If the public square is unowned then there is no interest in maintaining it. Dump your trash. Shit on the bus station.
I think I'd be okay with city life if the housing infrastructure wasn't potentially riddled with corner-cutting cost-saving preventable catastrophes. Like the Miami building a few years ago. It's hard to trust greedy owners who may want to horde any profit.
More people would probably like apartments/condos/townhomes if we invested in walkability and community spaces. People are adaptable - but I think a lot of US cities aren’t meeting people’s needs right now.
I wouldn’t really call suburban single family zoning necessarily a revealed preference when it’s often the only thing legal to build. SFHs have far fewer regulatory and planning hoops to jump through than multifamily.
Having lived in a variety of places, I am going to say that this is false. The monetary gain per unit is favorable to multi family units. That monetary gain makes it worth it. People will buy single fam if they like privacy, or multi if they like convenience, but builders will go for profit
The level of design and building code restrictions on multi family are several times that of single family and it massively increases the cost to where many projects don’t pencil. This is why the only kind of MFH that gets built tends to be drab five over ones.
Seriously, attend any city planning commission or city council meeting where a rezoning is getting brought up and you’ll see. Leaf through your city’s building code and zoning. It may surprise you just how much we stymie density through direct and indirect restrictions.
I'm guessing the abundance folks would agree with you on this and suggest rolling back all zoning laws to let people's real preferences reveal themselves.
One bedrooms with no amenities rent for $4500 in Manhattan, I think people do want them!! They also want suburban mansions, but the idea that cities are empty bc ppl hate them isn’t it either.
Let's be clear here that this is a false dilemma, and not what Hank was claiming. People want urban apartments, people want big suburban houses, people want mcmansions. These are different constituencies, and they all vote. And trying to change what people want has been an obviously losing strategy.
Sure, but the current state of things make suburban houses seem a lot more popular than they would be otherwise in an actually competitive, unrestricted housing market. That’s all I’m saying.
Absolutely, I agree that our current housing system does not allow people to self-select. I think the broader point, though, is if progressives approach the problem as, basically, "convince people they want to live in a high rise," instead of "how do we make the suburbs better," we'll keep losing.
I think that’s a reasonable way to frame the problem. I wasn’t meaning to come off as hostile to Hank by any means, I just (possibly mis-)understood his framing to be an assumption that *future* residents all want the big yard and SFH the same as *current* residents.
Cities are empty or have large homelessness problems because of housing affordability, not desire to live somewhere. Anyone saying otherwise is grifting.
Education and actually doing shit thoughtfully and with some forethought. We’re not fundamentally one way of another, and it takes surprisingly little time for people to adjust to major changes.
Yeah fuck those small farmers...why can't they just move to cities where amenities and stuff are available. Vain assholes taking all that land and raising food for the people that live in cities...🤦♂️
Sure sure we need about 10 million small sustainable holistic farms in this country in the next 50 years to combat climate change but you're totes right moving folks into urban areas is absolutely what we should do that way folks become even more dependent on multinational corps
We can understand a desire for space, but that comes with limits like all things. Space is limited and with a healthy ecosystem in mind, it's really more limited. Ultimately, we are broaching the pinnacle question. Can we live with each other? I think yes, but only if we see each other on a level
Until they visit Europe and are suddenly wondering why it's so much nicer there.
Condescending as it sounds, at the root of this issue is the fact that many ppl actually don't know what they want and are quite bad at selecting healthy lifestyles for themselves, and are ignorant of alternatives
I've seen online lefties say the ideal living space, unironically, are gigantic towns-inside-city-buildings like in that Judge Dredd movie (the good one) and my guy, go outside and talk to other human beings before making housing decisions for them, please.
Or they don't get how we're not going to completely remove car dependence because of how many people live in the sticks and running trains everywhere is not a viable solution, or they well sometimes say "Well, they should move to the city then."
Exactly! You need to have some people out there, and they're going to want to do more than just farm work all the time, so rural communities, and infrastructure that allows for free movement between these communities, are going to be necessary.
That’s actually debatable- yard
sizes normally find themselves regulated at the local level, and people who want connivence ( ie short travel to anything), can not realistically have a large lawn at the same time. As the bigger spaces between buildings mean less buildings are built.
Okay but the same goes for other things then: "people really do want to travel a lot by plane and eat more meat than necessary and buy lots of ultra-fast-fashion products etc etc, they are not pretending". Okey but how are you going to fit all people want within planetary boundaries then?
I think what needs to exist, before anything else, is guaranteed housing (even if it’s minimalistic and not in an ideal place) for all. The government should be providing that, full stop. Then that’s there for those in need, and the better off can go have their mansions in Texas or whatever.
This would inevitably lead to slums, etc. But you have to start somewhere, and this is better than today. So put this in place and then continue to fix the problems in the system.
It’s like debugging code, and trying to make it more efficient, while it’s running. We need to debug the government.
Like others have said, it's less about preference, more about regulation. The houses that get built get built because nothing else is legal. Many people want to live in cities, just look at prices. What you need is to loosen zoning etc, allow a diverse range of dwellings to be constructed.
Very similar (and inextricably intertwined) to the push for car-free living; anyone who wants to should have the option to, but a lot of people still just won't want to. And that's ok!
Yeah, these sorts of desires are, to use the snobby academic term "constructed," but re-constructing them in some other way is... well... hard and complex. People either tend to portray desires as eternal-and-outside-everything or arbitrary-and-easy-to-change and those are both wrong, IMHO.
Different groups are even wrong on this. The people against allowing higher density building, and the people who say we have enough housing and people should just move (to towns with no jobs)
You're great at science communication. Convincing people that housing development needs to center dense, walkable, low-car cities so that we can lessen the climate crisis makes you the perfect person to start changing minds on this.
Part of the problem with the last bit is that there's a lack of in between. You're either in an apartment building or in a suburb. There's few terraced houses or other mid density neighborhoods.
But that is still a separate problem from the fact that a lot of people want to live in the same place.
The main critique I've seen is that it's the same neo-liberal free-market nonsense that got us here in the first place.
Sure, some regulations (ones meant to maintain the privilege of the privileged i.e. single family zoning) are bad. Some are good. That can't be as deep as we are willing to look.
True. I’m one of those people. I love my little half-acre. But I really do not have a choice to live in a pleasant, convenient, walkable, dense urban neighborhood. Everything is designed around cars, not people. I would gladly move if it were available.
This sounds like the same "we don't need EVs; we need public transit" argument - letting perfect be the enemy of good. I don't care where the houses get built _just build the houses_.
Do we need more dense housing? Absolutely, but not everyone wants that and we need to accommodate them as well.
There are some people living in 4000 square foot houses in a suburb who would be happier in 2000 square foot apartments. If America can build those apartments, then they can free up the houses for people who want big houses.
One of my hobbies is looking at floor plans, and houses are getting bigger but not more usable. I'll see houses twice as big as mine but with fewer rooms.
Hank Green being wildly reductive to the point of absolute wrongness and unable to notice it because of his internalized image of intellectual humility? Say it aint so!
1/ I appreciate your points, and I also think that it is not so difficult as your wording implies. There is no need to force people to do something they don't want to do. Our desires are not unchangeable and are hugely impacted by socialization, culture, and marketing
2/ The problem, to use just one example, is that in the U.S. we have spent decades with anti-people policies pushed by car manufacturers. Eventually cars became so ubiquitous that now car-owners also often advocated for anti-people infrastructure. Many people need cars and many also want cars
3/ But those desires exist within a political, social, and economic context which every day pushes people toward owning a personal vehicle because in many cases there are no other options. It often takes creating those other options before people begin to understand how limited their desires were
I mean, we DO need more housing in cities, but plunking down a big single family home with a huge yard in the middle of the city kinda de-densifies it. There's also a HUGE difference in economics of ownership between the SFH model and multi-family homes and apartments.
As a single person, it's hard finding a house that is the right fit, even the "small" ones from recent decades are 1800ft²+ (Most of what I find are 2800ft²!!) I want a nice simple 1k ft² 2br/1.5ba, nothing exotic. Want a yard, but as noise buffer and dog space - not for green turf worship.
I won't go back to apts, I don't want shared walls, I don't trust neighbors to be that close. But I don't want to live in a Lg. City again (too big for me, that was a mistake) so maybe I'll find a better fit once I leave here.
Unfortunately big houses and big yards need to cost more than they do. We subsidize their existence. A person with a big house in a big yard pays less in property taxes 10 people in condos while taking up 10x more space and more road/utility/etc infrastructure. They can have it if they pay.
Also! They won't actually be happier with that! People have been getting that and getting less happy and less connected as a result. You can let them have it anyway but we should still encourage people not to
Bunch of the comments here are just rephrasings of "but if they experienced x they'd feel differently!" Which is just a fancy way of saying everyone would come to the same conclusion as the commenter given the "right" info.
We need more housing. Full stop. We don't need to put *more* qualifiers on.
We also need to build robust job markets in places that don't have it so pressure to move to one of a handful of big metro areas is eased. This *in addition to* building more affordable housing *everywhere* would reap huge benefits.
Except Americans didn’t think like this until post-WWII, and it was kind of a combination of investing in highway systems and then propaganda about suburbs that caused it. Why assume something that’s only been around 75-odd years for some Americans is the default setting for all Americans?
Ppl just want affordable places to live that’s the dream, being able to choose where you stay vs being forced out when landlords want to make more money.
most ppl who can afford to choose where they live end up wanting bigger and better, the housing crisis isn’t about actual homes, its about where
Too many ppl who shouldn’t be tied down to a place are because they don’t know any better. Or they can’t afford to go somewhere else. Affordable housing is about not charging ppl a premium. Not about availability
The data does support this, masses of ppl leave cities when they’re allowed true remote work, masses of ppl move to the city simply for job opportunities. That’s the basis of why cities form where they do. Opportunities draw ppl in, high prices drive them out.
Ppl who have enough get bigger
Hank I really think you're underestimating the effect of induced demand on suburban living. Americans who visit the ultra-walkable cities in Europe can't get enough of them, but it's literally impossible to build similar cities here because of zoning laws. We really don't need more suburbs.
Even when zoning is changed it's what is built because nobody is willing to pay for the transit infrastructure needed for anything but car-oriented places, and there is widespread antipathy to using transit.
Unironically I think this might be a problem media depictions could solve.
Can you think of a single positive depiction of dense housing in media? The first thing that comes to my mind as I type this is the apartment building in Dahmer...
If you do not create newer multi-family dwellings all people have to go by is the tenement and housing. Why would they want different if those are the choices.
Individuals could fight zoning laws and build better. But there are lobbies keeping them from succeeding.
Exactly. I’ve lived in suburbs where the minimum new house size was 2200sf. The only reason I would need a 2200 sf house is if I decided to keep indoor ponies.
(The joke here is that I have mostly had Great Pyrenees mixes.)
That’s fine, but there’s a reason that suburban housing is far more affordable than urban housing.
Build enough everywhere and then see how things shake out.
I think the housing market is changing what people want. Americans only change their buying habits when the economy forces them to and it is forcing them to. I know it certainly is here in the Seattle are. People have no choice but to buy smaller.
Within the current system, where car companies lobbied for minimum parking requirements, while originally racist then deemed illegal and turned classist (to effectively still be racist) zoning laws were invented, eventually making it illegal to build anything but single-family homes with a yard
and car parking, with the one exception of high-rise apartment areas...
Yes, a lot of people (especially families) prefer big homes to a concrete box in the sky, especially when housing is treated as an asset.
HOWEVER, there is a clear demand for middle housing, which cannot be met, because nobody
can build that kind of housing in this country. If we change zoning laws to allow this kind of housing (with a very real demand) to be built, giving people more freedom to choose, the opinion on suburban mcmansions could change a lot (even for people who seem to like them now).
Basically, rather than trying to change the way Americans are, we should just actually give them the option for something different, so they can see what we're missing and THEN they can decide what they like.
Chicken-egg dichotomy, without good incentives. Half the US population lives in cities, but we don't have good and reliable public transit with clean and safe walkability/bikability.
If neighborhoods had less cars w low speed, and it was quicker to get to work or the store, they'd consider smaller.
People can like their big house and yard, and those same people likely would oppose shifting to an alternative, but I think those same people could also be shown that the alternative is just different - not worse like they're thinking.
I think it’s bad vertical living options more than a desire for big houses. I’d be fine with those big houses paying their fair share for sewer, water, and other public services. Property setback laws should also be reconsidered, for result as much as for purpose.
I'm fine with my small rural house why do they need to be in dense cities again? We can build more houses in rural areas too. We have homeless problems too and it's not about big yards and big houses that we're not in cities, Jesus. Also we don't all commute. Small towns that aren't red exist. Yikes
Anecdote, to add to the good points about availability: This is what I thought I wanted (thanks to HGTV), but it turns out I really *don’t* like having to devote all my free time to yard maintenance and keeping the house clean! I *do* like being within walking distance of coffee and my kids school.
Rather than outright saying "people need to stop wanting the things they want things" I take it that what is happening is people say other things, from which the implication is drawn that that is what they mean. One of those things is "people are wrong about what they want."
We are all lying to ourselves. It's a matter of degree. Adults pretend like children. If we can pretend, it's true as true. A society ideally helps guide people to choose to pretend to be something that isn't a Nazi.
It’s emotivism and in the
disinformation environment, it may be necessary for big talking heads to distinguish better from what people say they want between their fleshed out answer to many possibilities. I think by all measures, cities are better for human flourishing but marketing is powerful.
All I'd suggest is we can say, sometimes we can change things like marketing and so the perspective of people and get them to pursue different things, other times we can't achieve a change in behaviour or satisfaction in that way.
Also different people are different. I hate driving, others love it.
If everyone said exactly what they meant in full detail with no ambiguity the two statements would not be in tension, but when we are in the realm of interpreting other people's pronouncements as "what you are saying boils down to" then tensions I think are inevitable.
A lot of people do but I'd love to own my place in a mixed development zone.
I'd love to walk down the street and hangout with the locals at the bar or pickup tonight's dinner and the shop down the street after getting off the metro.
There's no reason to force me to take care of a lawn I don't want.
I suspect that there's more than 1 reason the PTB don't want communities like that. Ofc, they want you buying a car, auto insurance, & gas. But, they also don't want you hanging with other locals, chatting in the small shop down the street. They want you siloed and atomized, knowing no one.
The automotive industry did a number on our infrastructure. If we decided to as a country, it wouldn't be the first country to change from being completely car centric.
A lot of European countries followed suit in the 1960 but later managed to strike a balance between cars and alternative transit.
Our zoning laws suck ass because we could have mixed zoning suburbs with small shops and daycares. Think of how nice it would be to have silent streetcars or bike paths that take you into town.
I don't care about parties but I think there's a lot of room for improvement in our current zoning laws.
I'd love to see our old fashioned downtown areas flourish again because it's a much nicer place to shop than a highway with strip malls and box stores.
Before I moved to a smaller town, the town I lived in invested heavily into the downtown area.
It was so fun seeing all the small businesses sprout up like weeds and the crowds of people shopping every weekend. Fun events to draw people in every holiday.
Where I live now, what used to be the pride of this old oil town. Everyone talks about how cruising down grand was the hot thing to do is now filled with failing business and collapsing buildings.
Honestly I care a lot more about a small business than some chain in a strip mall.
I grew up in a leafy suburb, and loved that closeness to nature. I also remember how lonely it was.
Also, since my childhood, fireflies, bumblebees, and monarchs are nearing extinction, along with so many other life forms, from our careless land use and chemical experiments.
Probably because they haven’t been exposed to a walkable suburb (street car suburbs) or a walkable city. People don’t advocate for more public transport because they don’t have public transport. This is a self fulfilling philosophy.
The problem with that is that those sorts of building models are unsustainable. Every town built like this in America is going into severe decline and cannot keep up with infrastructure costs. Building like that would balloon those costs
My thing is we HAVE those houses, it’s just that greed is stopping us from actually making them affordable. We certainly don’t need to build more right now.
While I agree that greed is at play here, (empty homes owned by investors, Airbnb, etc.), there are areas where the number of people who want to live there exceeds the number of homes. I moved 15 mins further from my job to a lower demand area saving 20% on my home for example.
Look, I generally don’t like people. If you make me live in a city you will regret it. If you make me live with people on the other side of my wall you will regret it. If I can’t see a horizon I’ll regret it.
Yeah they like it but there's also massive amounts of people that like to drive massive gas guzzling trucks and burning anything they view as garbage. Suburban houses are economically unsustainable, environmentally terrible, and isolate people. Just because they like it doesn't make them right.
Grew up in a suburb, sm house, busy street that became more urbanized. Trees chopped down everywhere. Later I lived in Boston. The crammed humanity smothered me.
Now in the suburbs again. Sm house, less land, less busy street, but trees!
If I ever have to live in a city again, I'll wither and die.
I won't deny the answer would be to not incentivize that behavior. The problem is that it would be extremely unpopular if you just raised prices on large cars, large houses, large lawns etc. Would have to incentivize dense housing, walkable areas, and tighter cities and that creates a diff problem.
Yeah, well, see, that's the problem. It doesn't matter what they like. They can't have it. We're at a degree and a half. I could wipe my posterior with the desires of the hoi polloi for beef, trucks and McMansions.
noise, air pollution, and road rage are only major problems in cities because of cars, mostly driven by suburbanites who want to experience the benefits of the city (food, culture, etc) without actually supporting the systems that improve the city
lacking green space isn't a /direct/ consequence of cars, but in most US cities around 25% of the land area is devoted to parking and another 25% is roads and car-oriented space (gas stations, car washes, etc). If that was reduced, imagine how much more green space, housing, transit, etc could exist
I live in the burbs and I love being able to take the train into the city. I would love it if more of the city was pedestrian only, it would make it more enjoyable. This would require better infrastructure and transit reaching outside of the city and easier, faster, and cheaper than driving.
It’s so nice to see the majority of people cooking Hank on this. Hank is a gifted data driven speaker but his blind spot is “people really want that so it’s going to be too hard to change” he’s said the same with veganism even though he recognizes it as the most important way to reduce emissions.
It is also very difficult to get new housing built INSIDE dense cities, fwiw. About 75% of Seattle is restricted to single-family zoning, and is already built out. The only places where it's legal to build dense housing are along our busiest roads, which are unsafe & unhealthy.
Housing in cities is expensive because demand outstrips supply, which is a problem that I think we can solve at the permitting level.
Housing in the suburbs is expensive because you need to build out infrastructure that will only benefit a few dozen people - a much more intrinsic problem.
I don't think that we, as a society, need to RESTRICT suburban housing! But I also don't think that we should ask urban residents to subsidize this lifestyle, either.
Certainly some people do like their yards, but literally the only reason I own a too big for me house with a yard I don't care about is because it would cost me twice as much to have a nice sized condo that has reasonable sound proofing and this was the most affordable way for me to have privacy
I do think the quality of builds has a play. If your house lets in a bunch of noise from outside, if there aren't many safe outdoor areas nearby, you might want a house and yard further from others. I think most people want privacy, safety, and peace & think big house/yard guarantees it.
This is an excellent point. I struggle with sensitivities that make apartment living REALLY difficult. I literally fantasize about thick walls and sound proofing while living in noise cancelling headphones. Quick and cheap housing sucks for SO many reasons.
The comment stems from living in an apartment building with noise sensitivity. The physical stress of constant inescapable noise was rough and we absolutely could do the work to make it better. But that won't happen on its own and it will make things more expensive.
Comments
The elite still need the “small fish” to wait tables yenno
Also it's not all or nothing. Moving from 70% in detached suburban homes to 55% would be a great leap forward, climate-wise
Also I'm not sure what is any more politically palatable about regulating down the size of new homes
I think we substitute stuff for relationships, culture, and ease. There is no collective consciousness no sense of the good life beyond “more”.
Better mass transit would help a lot. Roads and parking take up a ton of space, and high speed rail could let people enjoy city life while living further away.
So there.
#sarcasm
A little bit of this is the current regulations don't allow for any alternatives.
A lot of marketing and subsidizing has gone into making people "really like" things that are not just bad for the world, but bad for them.
The status quo is often the easier choice, but we don't have to treat it as an inevitability.
We have a big shortgage of city flats because the zoning laws have forced sprawl (among other reasons).
Source: A buddy who operates a fairly large landscaping business in the exurbs, and can say with a fair degree of confidence that a number of his clients never actually use their yards for anything.
It's why the latter despise "regulation" non-specifically.
Not that much doesn't need fixing, it does. Like you, I've used a gas can recently.
If the regulations we have in place now are supposed to protect the poor, they suck balls.
In the instance of housing, it is specifically the poor that are losing out due to regulations.
Regulations should be in place to promote abundance but also limit the wealthy.
We had 4 tires slashed a few years back, was like pulling teeth just to get cops to take report. But they run BOLOs on petty shoplifters on TV non-stop.
When NIMBYs talk about who they think will live in new multi family housing the dog whistles aren’t subtle
https://calmatters.org/newsletter/why-are-black-californians-leaving-the-state/
2. A lot is made of schools and all that. We should maybe fix that shit.
3. Some cities have decent transit, but some do not. That matters. It's only worth it if it's ... worth it.
This isn't an attack on you, btw. I'm just pointing out that, looking at supply and demand, it seems pretty clear that there's a whole lot of people who care more about-
Sometimes what people want is destructive and we need to do our best to curb it. Suburbification hurts everyone.
Also, have you changed your mind at all give what's happened recently?
Ive always felt like a huge number of the goals you have would be best supported by having a champion in congress.
just because the cities grew bigger doesn't mean they are more important. or do you think public schools and libraries and the etc only belong to the Urban?
There's always gonna be loud NIMBYs. Sometimes they are right (coal plants, highways), sometimes they are wrong (windmills, suburbanism, 5G).
In the end, we can't ideologically change everyone but sometimes the government has to do it anyway.
The suburbs in most of the country are financially unsustainable.
They’re an infinite-growth Ponzi scheme.
Cause those always seem to actually be “*I* want special treatment, no one else.” And sadly, a country/government/society is, by definition, more than one person.
There's some merit to some of what they say, like zoning laws genuinely are bad but they were written to be bad by a bunch of racists so that makes sense.
Thanks for the discussion!
Also, push the North American conservation model and wildlife and wilderness as a public good and trust, and push it hard.
It ain’t fucking 8000BC anymore. Scaring the country with fucking fences for the sake of petty landowner’s egos is a huge fucking mistake and problem.
And thanks for dragging small farmers into this shit when I was happy to just shit on rich people buying up land.
Condescending as it sounds, at the root of this issue is the fact that many ppl actually don't know what they want and are quite bad at selecting healthy lifestyles for themselves, and are ignorant of alternatives
sizes normally find themselves regulated at the local level, and people who want connivence ( ie short travel to anything), can not realistically have a large lawn at the same time. As the bigger spaces between buildings mean less buildings are built.
It’s like debugging code, and trying to make it more efficient, while it’s running. We need to debug the government.
But that is still a separate problem from the fact that a lot of people want to live in the same place.
Sure, some regulations (ones meant to maintain the privilege of the privileged i.e. single family zoning) are bad. Some are good. That can't be as deep as we are willing to look.
Do we need more dense housing? Absolutely, but not everyone wants that and we need to accommodate them as well.
We need more housing. Full stop. We don't need to put *more* qualifiers on.
Those people deserve housing and income security as much as those who thrive in the city.
most ppl who can afford to choose where they live end up wanting bigger and better, the housing crisis isn’t about actual homes, its about where
Ppl who have enough get bigger
Can you think of a single positive depiction of dense housing in media? The first thing that comes to my mind as I type this is the apartment building in Dahmer...
Individuals could fight zoning laws and build better. But there are lobbies keeping them from succeeding.
Media always shows apartments as undesirable.
But also US zoning laws are terrible. A lot of this *is* fixable by just letting people build better high(er) density housing than we normally do.
(The joke here is that I have mostly had Great Pyrenees mixes.)
(My house is 850 sf but I have half an acre.)
Build enough everywhere and then see how things shake out.
Yes, a lot of people (especially families) prefer big homes to a concrete box in the sky, especially when housing is treated as an asset.
HOWEVER, there is a clear demand for middle housing, which cannot be met, because nobody
If neighborhoods had less cars w low speed, and it was quicker to get to work or the store, they'd consider smaller.
disinformation environment, it may be necessary for big talking heads to distinguish better from what people say they want between their fleshed out answer to many possibilities. I think by all measures, cities are better for human flourishing but marketing is powerful.
Also different people are different. I hate driving, others love it.
I recognize though others have different basic desires and conceptions and the plan and pitch must be different and compromise is needed etc.
I'd love to walk down the street and hangout with the locals at the bar or pickup tonight's dinner and the shop down the street after getting off the metro.
There's no reason to force me to take care of a lawn I don't want.
A lot of European countries followed suit in the 1960 but later managed to strike a balance between cars and alternative transit.
https://www.npr.org/2017/05/03/526655831/a-forgotten-history-of-how-the-u-s-government-segregated-america
I'd love to see our old fashioned downtown areas flourish again because it's a much nicer place to shop than a highway with strip malls and box stores.
It was so fun seeing all the small businesses sprout up like weeds and the crowds of people shopping every weekend. Fun events to draw people in every holiday.
Honestly I care a lot more about a small business than some chain in a strip mall.
Also, doom.
Also, since my childhood, fireflies, bumblebees, and monarchs are nearing extinction, along with so many other life forms, from our careless land use and chemical experiments.
I live in the city.
Now in the suburbs again. Sm house, less land, less busy street, but trees!
If I ever have to live in a city again, I'll wither and die.
Housing in the suburbs is expensive because you need to build out infrastructure that will only benefit a few dozen people - a much more intrinsic problem.