See the Strong Towns article "The Growth Ponzi Scheme" [1] and the ASCE Infrastructure Report Card for more concrete data [2].
The gist is that we've funded the construction of our infrastructure nationwide without accounting for the cost of maintenance. Now after decades of neglect, the cost of fixing all of our infrastructure is astronomical, far worse than if we had been doing it correctly from the beginning.
If it is indeed that much cheaper to start from scratch, we have the open land to do so. Housing prices might fall in the areas that are chosen for divestment, but if we can't afford it, it's unclear what other paths remain. I largely believe in Strong Town's thesis, but we can't make everything a 5+1 because there is too much underdeveloped land use to justify that level of density everywhere given the total population size. There certainly are plenty of areas where's it's economical to upzone, but in many areas it won't be.
What? We can't do 5+1 everywhere because first we need to litter every last bit of countryside with failed sprawling towns that were swallowed by their own maintenance costs?
You can't do 5+1 on the current total land area occupied by low-density because you'd end up with far more housing than 330 million or so people need. You add that level of density to the core of small towns, then you have enough for everyone. That leaves a long tail of abandoned infrastructure in the areas that you're describing (rural/exurbs not picked for 5+1 upzoning).
The suburbs take a huge amount of land. If everyone lived in NYC-level of density, we could all fit in New Jersey. If we all lived in middle-missing housing level density, that amount of land is still far less than the total area of all the suburbs.
Oh... it sounds like you're saying the proposal is to actually convert all existing developed land to 5+1. I don't think that's anyone's proposal?
Upzoning does not mean you automatically get a building at maximum allowed density, it means you increase what is allowed and let the market decide what makes sense where. It would play out exactly as you describe.
You just have to densify existing towns and smaller cities, and go back to something more like the traditional model of small-scale urbanization. Density is more efficient than suburban sprawl.
I live in one of top 20 densest municipalities in the US (Somerville MA) with 18k people per square mile, and none of those things are an issue here. You can have density without noise.
Density. North American suburbs built around cars spread taxpayers thin over a large area that requires a lot of expensive infrastructure. These places can’t actually afford the services they depend on and infrastructure debt is usually paid off by new developments kind of like a ponzi scheme.
Not GP but locally there are a few exurbs that have serious budget problems because they overbuilt infrastructure and don't have the tax base to fully maintain it which creates a feedback loop of poorly maintained roads, water systems, parks, etc.
Some of it had to do with the murder of brick and mortar retail in tightly packed downtowns in favor of the big box stores on the edge of town. That creates an enormous waste in municipal resources, doubly so if the store got property/sales tax subsidies.
This is less of an issue in the denser near suburbs where populations and revenues have been consistently rising the last few years.
> doubly so if the store got property/sales tax subsidies.
Walmart is particularly good at this. Search for Walmart property tax lawsuit and you'll find hundreds of examples of Walmart filing lawsuits to get their property taxes lowered. The latest ploy for these big retailers is to push to have their property taxes valued as if the store was empty and shut down and had no inventory.
At least American suburbs are ultra car-dependent meaning you're not walking anywhere (literally physically degrading to both you and the environment) and you do not have chance social encounters at nearly the frequency of any walking city (socially degrading).
This is not to say there aren't real benefits to life in the burbs and serious disadvantages to city life, but it's fairly evident by now that American suburbia is not the utopian dream it was sold as.
At least with WFH, the trend is reversing. People are leaving urban cores and moving to the suburbs where they can get more space for less money and avoid a lot of the QOL issues.
San Francisco is a great example. The once bustling downtown is losing business at a rapid click not only because residents have left, but also office workers aren't coming in anywhere near as often.
I predict it'll be a positive feedback loop. As more businesses close, QOL issues become worse, it'll accelerate the exodus. It's like a repeat of the 60's.
I predict that with people who weren't interested in the amenities of the city and not contributing to the culture and community gone, SF will recover some of the culture it lost when high rents pushed all the creatives out. It'll make SF even better than before.
Cities are the lifeblood of any culture and economy, after all.
Sure. To be honest the most interesting cities are the unpopular ones. They tend to have a bigger mix of people, long established communities and lower cost of living.
Once they become “hot” they tend to lose a lot of what makes them unique.
Perhaps for you city dweller's, but for the rest of us, we really like our suburbs.
Not being able to walk everywhere is literally not even a factor I look for when moving to a new area. I want quiet, safety, cleanliness, privacy and affordability.
I have yet to see the metropolis that checks all of those boxes, or any of them for the matter.
I see why you like the suburbs. But it's essentially a hoax, it's like living above your means on a bunch of credit cards - at least for most people (not all).
Affordability for a lot of suburbs is when you allow for degrading infrastructure and moving more and more towards bankruptcy of cities. Budget analysis for a lot of suburbs show very troubling trends. In essence, living in a properly maintained suburbia is not affordable. Too much street, pipe and wire per capita.
Cleanliness - it's only in appearance. The dirtiness is externalized to the environment by means of CO2 and other emissions due to personal transport. A lot of concrete and asphalt being poured require massive excavations and destruction of nature elsewhere. More than cities.
Quiet is also externalized - cars are extremely noisy and suburbia basically requires a lot of 4000 lbs metal hunks with mostly a single person inside.
Privacy is there, but it costs quite a lot in total societal costs.
> Budget analysis for a lot of suburbs show very troubling trends
Do you have real examples of this? The past few suburbs I've lived in have been very prosperous, as a counter-example anecdote. I don't doubt some towns/suburbs are having financial troubles... but so are mega-cities too. Recall all the city bailout money that got spread around during the pandemic? How much of it went to small suburbs vs. mega-cities?
> The dirtiness is externalized to the environment by means of CO2 and other emissions due to personal transport.
I disagree here. A lot of hand-waving has been done about commuter cars - but somehow we ignore the miles of idling cars stuck in traffic every day for hours in these mega-cities. Fewer individuals may own vehicles in a mega-city, but the pollution is still there.
> Quiet is also externalized - cars are extremely noisy
On a freeway maybe. Inside a neighborhood? You can't hear any traffic noises.
There's been this movement to villainize suburbs and push everyone into mega-cities. It's rather misguided at best.
> miles of idling cars stuck in traffic every day for hours in these mega-cities
A US problem, created by the very suburbia that forces people to buy cars. All those suburbans are going to go downtown to work. Naturally you get congestion.
The argument for cities is that you can build no-car-required infrastructure that is both cheaper and easier for humans. Like in Europe etc.
As long as I get to make 90% of streets in my city also dead ends to prevent through traffic, we're on the same page. I too want my neighborhood streets safe enough for kids to play in; the only reason they're not is through traffic, mostly from the suburbs.
This is a bizarre take. The suburbs of the Bay Area are often wealthier and better run than the cities. In fact, it's true of most major cities. The urban core is likely lower income and the surrounding suburbs are where the wealthy live.
Kind of weird to talk about "living on a bunch of credit cards" when it's the cities who seem to burn cash with little to show for it.
But look at the trend post-Covid. It's basically reversing itself. San Francisco is going be completely screwed by the exodus of workers who live in the city and commuters.
It's one big cycle, people moved to cities during WW2, then out to the suburbs during the 60's. Then back into cities in the 90's, now back out in the 2020's.
Pick any moderate sized city in Europe! There's no reason Americans have to choose between glass and concrete imposing megastructures a la (parts of) NYC or sprawling car-dependent and socially atomized burbs a la Houston/Phoenix etc.
We can have moderately dense, highly walkable, transit-connected, safe, clean, private, quiet, socially vibrant, affordable towns and suburbs all over the country.
We just choose not to in large part because many Americans, brainwashed by The Automobile, can't even imagine such a state of affairs.
The thing is, America is very big. For perspective, America is just shy of the square mileage of all of Europe - but America is just one country... and it has half the population of Europe.
This means things can be, and are, very spread out. It is not unusual for a person in the US to live 20-60+ miles from their work - by choice.
It is simply not possible for everyone in the US to live in or near these mega-cities. Nor do most people (by the numbers) want to live in or near these mega-cities.
When I visit mega-cities, I see overt drug usage on the streets, trash everywhere, homeless camps everywhere, parts of the city a visitor is unsafe being in... and worse. That doesn't mean these things don't exist in a suburb - but clearly they are more readily evident in a mega-city.
We can go on about externalized things like carbon emissions from the commuter cars... but every time I visit a mega-city, there's miles of idling cars just spewing emissions while in traffic.
If you like living in a mega-city - good for you. Enjoy it, as is your right. That, however, also means I get to enjoy my suburbs. We don't get to tell each other how to live.
The thing is, I grew up in a tiny town in rural Arizona. I’m amply familiar with how large our country is.
It simply does not track that because our country is huge, we must either live in uncomfortable mega-cities or in car-dependent and socially/economically/environmentally unworkable SFH sprawl. Americans overwhelmingly live in one of these two. They both have significant downsides that we truly don’t have to accept!
Americans have multiple health disasters on our hands - physical, emotional, and social - due at least in large part to the way we’ve built our living situation. It’s frankly sad that you think we have to accept it because… errr… mega cities are a bit dirty? You really think we ought to condemn generation after generation after generation of American to deteriorating quality of life because we couldn’t pull our heads out of our asses enough to build moderately sized cities with the physical infrastructure necessary to support strong communities? Good grief, what a low opinion of our country!
The problems you attribute to how American's live are not unique to America. Therefore, correlation does not equal causation.
> tiny town in rural Arizona
I don't think most of us would say a tiny rural town is anything like a suburban area surrounding a moderate/mega city.
My suburb is near one of these moderately sized cities (less than 1 million population). None of these fantasies are working well for this moderately sized city. All of the same problems exist... drugs, crime, safety, privacy, homeless, trash, exceedingly expensive... plus public transit isn't sufficient to rely on either. It's literally the worst qualities of both combined into one special dump.
And... if you truly believe suburbs are a deterioration of quality of life in America, you really need to try living in one. I can just as easily wave my hand and exclaim mega-cities are the root of all problems in this nation. In fact, I'd have a lot more evidence to support condemnation of mega-cities, including how they doom people into permanently impoverished lives.
> The thing is, America is very big. For perspective, America is just shy of the square mileage of all of Europe - but America is just one country... and it has half the population of Europe.
Every time Americans use that argument to defend anything that is wrong with the US policy, it looks crazy to people who are looking at the situation from another place around the world.
Neither size nor population are arguments for anything. There are gigantic countries on the planet that do not have America's suburb/car problem. They not only have well-run cities, but they also build fast trains and whatnot. The main trick is in not setting up entire urbanization and infrastructure to maximize profit for real estate, automotive and oil industries by spreading out people to immense areas like in the US. So, in that regard, the people who say that the 'suburban American dream' was a scam, they are right: It can be sustained in a few very rich regions. It is unsustainable for anywhere else. Even in those rich regions it causes many problems ranging from inefficiency to traffic congestion in the cities where the suburbanites have to go to work.
> When I visit mega-cities, I see overt drug usage on the streets, trash everywhere, homeless camps everywhere
Those have nothing to do with the concept of cities but everything to do with the US policies that prevent social services with public spending in order to maximize the tax breaks for the corporations and the rich.
> We don't get to tell each other how to live.
Actually, they do - you are spending their tax money for your inefficient suburb in a much higher rate than your tax money that they are spending for their city. An inefficient system is inefficient, even if those who run that system can afford to run it - like your local prosperous suburb. For the regional infrastructure in your own locale to be affordable by your suburb, a lot of taxpayer money will have to be spent for the society-wide infrastructure. So that the costs of being integrated to the larger infrastructure can even be affordable in your region regardless of its prosperity. From the larger power network to the transportation and communication networks, from production & supply chains to judiciary, police, even defense & military.
There is no small region that can afford the modern local amenities that they have without having a much larger society making those possible through society's aggregated spending regardless of how rich the region is.
Have you.... even lived in a city? You see miles of idling cars in cities... do you think those are city residents sitting in cars? Those cars are suburban commuters. People in cities don't own cars. You know that right? The whole point of living in a city is to avoid wasting hours of your life every day sitting in a car. What a depressing existence that is. And even so, the miles and miles of highway are an order of magnitude more - you just don't experience it the same way so it's hard to compare. Think about it.
It's not really debated that the carbon emissions of suburban life is an order of magnitude more than urban life. They just aren't comparable.
> This means things can be, and are, very spread out. It is not unusual for a person in the US to live 20-60+ miles from their work - by choice.
Probably less common, but it is not that unusual to meet someone in Europe who commutes long distance by train. Probably it will become even more common as WFH or partial WFH becomes the norm in many industries.
If ZEV’s and alternative energy take off, and self driving eventually lives up to the hype, public transportation will be obsolete with the exception of dense cities.
Assuming such a future comes to pass (And that’s obviously a big question mark), desirability and property values in suburban-like neighborhoods would go up, since suburbs are no longer at a disadvantage for all those things you are arguing, like walkability, socially vibrancy, etc. A quick tap on your phone and 15 minutes later you can be at the bar or the shops or whatever else. Combine that with the remote work revolution and the future is looking great for suburbs and terrible for cities.
If anything, I’d argue Americans are ahead of the curve. In a society where self driving cars are cheap, environmentally sustainable, and always available people would naturally fan out into suburban living, with mixed-use development falling out of favor.
Unfortunately even in the optimistic case this will exacerbate many of the real insidious problems: obesity, loneliness/social atomization, extreme age and income stratification
>I have yet to see the metropolis that checks all of those boxes, or any of them for the matter.
I hate beating this drum because it's borderline stereotypical at this point, but Tokyo really should be studied because for an incredibly dense city of nearly 14 million people they manage to achieve quiet, safety, cleanliness, privacy, and affordability
>I want quiet
Visit the residential neighborhoods of the largest city in the world, Tokyo, and discover that you can get quiet with density. These are not mutually exclusive items, we as American society have somehow decided that noise pollution was an acceptable feature of urban landscapes. Japan decided, as a society, that anti-social noise activities in residential areas were bad and makes sure it stays that way.
>safety
A controversial topic pre-loaded with mountains of baggage, but IMO this is a result of policy and philosophical decisions. Japanese cities are incredibly safe at all times of the day -- you can leave a phone out in the open and no one will steal it. A lot of theories as to why that is, but the end result is clear: Japan, a city of 14million residents, is safe.
>cleanliness
Interestingly enough, 1960s and 70s Tokyo was a bit infamous for its litter/trash problem. I am a little fuzzy on how they turned that around, but they did and today it's one of the cleanest cities in the world. Again, a societal decision that has enforcement with teeth. And mind you, there aren't a lot of trash cans on the street. You have to carry around your trash with you if you generate any until you find a suitable trashcan or take it home with you. Yet the streets stay really clean.
>privacy
I will hand it to you, a big city can be a lot less private. But there are ways to create that sense of privacy within a more dense urban residential area without sacrificing density. Also, as density rises, you can get a weird counter-intuitive effect where the crowd affords you even greater privacy.
>affordability
The average house in Japan costs around $400,000 to build from scratch. Yes. You heard me right. When you buy a house in Japan you buy the lot it sits on, demolish the previous house, and build a house customized to your liking (designed and built by one of many competing housing companies). All for around $400,000.
Now, is it smaller than the current average American 2-story house? Yes. Is such a house size necessary? As it turns out, that's also a philosophical question and society over there has decided that in a trade off between smaller house + more urban density vs bigger house + less density, the density was worth the trade. You can definitely spend a million dollars and get yourself a proper sized mansion. But at least you get a proper sized mansion.
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This isn't direct at you specifically, but one thing that frustrates me in the debates between urbanization vs non-urbanization in the USA is the lack of imagination everyone possess. So much possibility, so much possibility that IS ALREADY PROVEN and yet we circle back around the same things. American cities aren't the only way cities are. Our cities can be so much better, they HAVE been better, and we can make them better again if we collectively as a society choose to.
> I want quiet, safety, cleanliness, privacy and affordability.
Most of these are pretty cliche. New York City is one of the safest cities in the country per capita. But as with “cleanliness” is usually trotted out in a dog whistly kind of way that really is about something else. And affordability: yep. You’ve got that for a couple reasons: 1. People LIKE living in cities. Good old supply/demand. 2. As this thread is discussing, suburbs are massively subsidized to the detriment of the cities they neighbor.
> New York City is one of the safest cities in the country per capita. But as with “cleanliness” is usually trotted out in a dog whistly kind of way
Having lived in other big cities that manage to collect garbage in containers, NYC's continued practice of dumping uncontained garbage on the sidewalk for collection gives it a very real non-dog-whistly feeling(/sight/odor) of dirtyness.
> Most of these are pretty cliche. New York City is one of the safest cities in the country per capita. But as with “cleanliness” is usually trotted out in a dog whistly kind of way that really is about something else.
Calling someone's preferences cliches and dog whistles is a really lazy way to have a discussion and degrades this forum.
Not the OP. It's a literal claim, not metaphorical.
Pipes break. Schools wear out. Roads wear out. Houses and fencing wear out, etc.
Many cities don't budget in perpetuity and (further) can't maintain existing infrastructure as a population bulge dissipates or as young people move away.
Aye, some communities get it (mayors don't typically have a lot of power or knowledge in these matters). These tend to be communities that have an industrial base of some sector, the more varied the better. Farming communities tend to have more maintainable infrastructure than bedroom communities under stable or growth regimes.
All hell breaks loose when the population sinks. Its hard to justify higher taxes now to pay for things 10 years away.
Aldermen or council folks typically have too much power over their mayor such that it renders such city inert and non-responsive to rapid market changes (technologies).
I am reminded of some cities having "weak mayor" government structure. And it is painfully self-evident by looking at the unmaintained roads and sidewalks.
Also I noticed unchecked huge retirement benefits used as an award for "good" governance toward token administrators, and disproportionate sapping of local taxation by its state government (one such tax example, Robin Hood school funding).
It is said that the infrastructure required to sustain suburbs costs more money than these suburbs bring in. In the US a city gets federal money to build new suburbs, but when it comes to renewing them after a few decades, the city has to pay on its own and it often has not enough money to do it.
Aside from the other replies, they are degrading in terms of "living experience" - infrastructure, budgets, HOAs and whatnot. The infrastructure is being subsidised by dense cities, as there's simply too much street/pipe/wire per capita to support. So you either get prohibitive taxes, unsustainable budgets or subsidies from some level of government. Either way, they're not heading in a good direction.
The gist is that we've funded the construction of our infrastructure nationwide without accounting for the cost of maintenance. Now after decades of neglect, the cost of fixing all of our infrastructure is astronomical, far worse than if we had been doing it correctly from the beginning.
[1] https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme
[2] https://infrastructurereportcard.org/