Christopher B. Leinberger posted:"Arthur C. Nelson, director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech, has looked carefully at trends in American demographics, construction, house prices, and consumer preferences. In 2006, using recent consumer research, housing supply data, and population growth rates, he modeled future demand for various types of housing. The results were bracing: Nelson forecasts a likely surplus of 22 million large-lot homes (houses built on a sixth of an acre or more) by 2025—that’s roughly 40 percent of the large-lot homes in existence today. For 60 years, Americans have pushed steadily into the suburbs, transforming the landscape and (until recently) leaving cities behind. But today the pendulum is swinging back toward urban living, and there are many reasons to believe this swing will continue. As it does, many low-density suburbs and McMansion subdivisions, including some that are lovely and affluent today, may become what inner cities became in the 1960s and ’70s—slums characterized by poverty, crime, and decay." from "The Next Slum?", by Christopher B. Leinberger, The Atlantic.
Espaldapalabras posted:What is really interesting is to see this happen in my own backyard. And by that I mean there are now all sorts of walkable developments. I just went to a movie theater a few miles from my house that I hadn't been to in a few years, and now it is surrounded by all sorts of stores, with quite a few empty because they are brand new. It is at the entrance of a 40,000 person development of mixed income housing on small lots with lots of parks, a lake, and I think they are building an office center as well. Oh and the LDS church is building a second temple in my city on the development as well. Which is pretty amazing as there are only 150 in the entire world. Downtown SLC is also being transformed, it already has a few walkable neighborhoods, but the LDS church is basically redeveloping the entire city center into a new walkable mixed used mall/residential area. I'm in an area that is still suburbia, but close enough to the city center that it is still growing very rapidly. The other interesting trend is that people have also been moving out to places on the other side of the mountains, and I would guess they might run into the problems mentioned in this article.
Jabbadabbado posted:diz, I think you're the person who introduced me to Kunstler a few years back. Certainly he's the biggest doom n gloomer there is when it comes to decrying the misallocation of resources that went into building up these suburban housing developments at the far end of commutability from urban employment centers. But I've witnessed two of the trends discussed in that Atlantic article. I live in one of those turn of the 19th-20th century suburbs built around a downtown grid. The "in-filling" has happened exactly the way the article describes. Our suburb is walkable, and I live here by design because we have all the advantages of city living (public transportation to work, walking distance to shopping)and all the advantages of a wealthy suburb (great public schools and park infrastructure). The other side of that trend is people I know who built and bought new houses at the peak of the real estate bubble at the far outer edges of suburban expansion who now live in developments that have essentially been abandoned by their developers. Half the lots are empty, and some of the houses in the developments have been sold at foreclosure auction, and other owners have sold at losses and the rest of the owners are left wondering if the community will ever recover. These are people who are commuting 1 1/2 hours to work at a minimum, each way. Their new houses are built badly, larger than they need with huge vaulted ceilings and hence gigantic heating costs in winter and oppressive cooling costs in summer. I have my own problems with a house built nearly a hundred years ago, but $1200 monthly natural gas bills and $1500 air conditioning bills is not one of them. And spending $150 a week on gas for commuting is not one of them.
LtNOWIS posted: I was just thinking, as I read through that article, that those small urban centers sounded a lot like my hometown of Reston, Virginia. Than we get mentioned by name. But yeah, growing up in Northern Virginia, I remember driving by these huge new tracts of houses or townhouses just sitting isolated on the highways. You'd have to get in your car and drive minutes down the highway for anything. In retrospect, there's no way that trend was going to be sustainable.
Alex Steffen posted:"Our efforts to build a one-planet prosperity may involve an astonishing variety of new approaches, but in the U.S., we most need to adopt one solution that leverages almost all the others: stop sprawl and build well-designed compact communities. That's because the land-use patterns in our communities dictate not only how much we drive, but how sustainable we're able to be on all sort of fronts. Sprawled-out land uses generate enormous amounts of automotive greenhouse gasses. A recent major study, Growing Cooler, makes the point clearly: if 60 percent of new developments were even modestly more compact, we'd emit 85 million fewer metric tons of tailpipe CO2 each year by 2030 -- as much as would be saved by raising the national mileage standards to 32 mpg." from "My Other Car is a Bright Green City", by Alex Steffen, Worldchanging.com.
Richard Florida posted:"Concentrations of creative and talented people are particularly important for innovation, according to the Nobel Prize–winning economist Robert Lucas. Ideas flow more freely, are honed more sharply, and can be put into practice more quickly when large numbers of innovators, implementers, and financial backers are in constant contact with one another, both in and out of the office. Creative people cluster not simply because they like to be around one another or they prefer cosmopolitan centers with lots of amenities, though both those things count. They and their companies also cluster because of the powerful productivity advantages, economies of scale, and knowledge spillovers such density brings." from "The World is Spiky," by Richard Florida, The Atlantic
dizfactor posted: 2) Environmental costs: Suburbia as we know it is environmentally unsustainable. Period. Compact communities use resources more efficiently and require less driving (and fewer roads, etc). Cities are really the only green ways to house large numbers of people. Thoughts?
Princess_Tina posted:dizfactor posted: 2) Environmental costs: Suburbia as we know it is environmentally unsustainable. Period. Compact communities use resources more efficiently and require less driving (and fewer roads, etc). Cities are really the only green ways to house large numbers of people. Thoughts? I would play devil's advocate and say that with today's technology, companies could easily encourage a lot more tele-commuting, which would drastically cut down on driving. It could also theoretically increase productivity, and give people more spare time, because they wouldn't waste so much time commuting to work 5 days a week.
Espaldapalabras posted:I think that it wouldn't be healthy to have a top down mandated federal density requirement. There is simply just too much local variation, what might be higher density here with lot sizes less than 1/4 of an acre, would somewhere else be far too spread out.
Espaldapalabras posted:I think increasing CAFE standards should be a top priority, because that is the number one thing we can do right now to reduce our oil consumption.
dizfactor posted:Espaldapalabras posted:I think that it wouldn't be healthy to have a top down mandated federal density requirement. There is simply just too much local variation, what might be higher density here with lot sizes less than 1/4 of an acre, would somewhere else be far too spread out. Screw local variation. We should not be building any new low-density housing, at all, anywhere. Our survival and future prosperity arguably depends on it. 13 units per acre. Everywhere. Penalties on people who build in lower density than that which go to subsidize people who build in higher density.
Kimball_Kinnison posted:The vast majority of the US is rural, not urban. That's where most of our food comes from, and where many of our other resources are produced. What you suggest would be economic suicide for the country.
Espaldapalabras posted:Diz, I support the general idea of new urbanism and sustainable development as much as the next guy, but 13 units per acre everywhere? What are you smoking? I'll take that as a clear signal you just don't know what it is like to live anywhere except the coasts. The best plan is one where you build neighborhoods around transportation hubs, that are small enough that from any dwelling you can walk in 5 minutes or less to a hub and also meet most of your shopping and entertainment needs. But in-between these circles of development, you are always going to have rural areas and there will always be people who live in the rural areas. It makes absolutely no sense to penalize them for living where they work just because they aren't packed in.
Espaldapalabras posted:For the past 3 years I have lived in Idaho and Utah. If you placed penalties on people for not living closely in Idaho, you wouldn't have any french fries or potato chips anytime soon. You would destory the nation's agriculture, which is always going to be an important part of our economy even if it employs few people.
Espaldapalabras posted:Yes suburbia as we know it isn't really feasible in most cases, but there is no use freeing up all the extra space if nobody can live there.
Espaldapalabras posted:The other thing is that home ownership is good, and you require every development to be a hi-rise building, then you basically destroy the middle class because they can never have enough capital to build such a thing, but we can still have home ownership and the good things that come with it with townhouses and similar sized houses on smaller lots. Note I'm not talking about McMansions, but I don't think it is unreasonable in many places to build a 2,500 sq feet home.
dizfactor posted:Espaldapalabras posted:The other thing is that home ownership is good, and you require every development to be a hi-rise building, then you basically destroy the middle class because they can never have enough capital to build such a thing, but we can still have home ownership and the good things that come with it with townhouses and similar sized houses on smaller lots. Note I'm not talking about McMansions, but I don't think it is unreasonable in many places to build a 2,500 sq feet home. 13 units per acre is townhouses and small homes with yards. High-rises are significantly higher density than that. Also, plenty of people privately own apartments in high rises.
DarthLassic007 posted:There's been a great trend to move to New York City, but this trend consists of mostly wealthy couples and investment bankers buying multi million dollar places in Manhattan. Even so, the wealthy suburbs around New York City will never turn into slums. The prices for houses will always be expensive. The demand is too great.
Jabbadabbado posted:I don't think anyone is arguing that small towns can't work. What isn't working is the subdivision, subdivision, subdivision, strip mall, subdivision subdivision model that locks people into 1) long commutes to urban workplaces, 2) owning 2-3 cars per family.
Jabbadabbado posted:The real issue in America's gas consumption is not average gas mileage but miles traveled.
Kimball_Kinnison posted:The simple fact is that the urban lifestyle will not work for everyone, We have almost 7 billion people on this planet. It's going to have to. [quote=Kimball_Kinnison]For example, several years ago I knew a family with 13 children (11 of them adopted). How do you propose fitting a family like that into "townhouses and small homes"? How many families exist like that in the developed world now? Not a lot, and in decreasing numbers. They can buy already-existing larger homes, or they could buy two adjoining townhomes and knock out some walls, or they could buy a larger house and suck up financial penalties. [quote=Kimball_Kinnison]Yes, you are fond of the urban lifestyle, but you aren't the only person or personality type in the US. We have an incredibly diverse country, and you can't just try to fit everyone into your mold and expect it to be able to work out.
Espaldapalabras posted:Oh and that is the other thing, Diz, you are always talking about how people are moving to the cities and how everybody is leaving middle America. Perhaps in the rustbelt, but the Mountain West has more middle class Californian immigrants than Mexicans.
dizfactor posted:You can't just assume that everyone's lifestyle is going to continue to be feasible going forward. A lot of people enjoyed rural farming life, and the transition out of being a rural agricultural society into an industrial one caused a lot of upheaval and adjustment and radical changes to family structure, living situations, cultural expectations, etc. We are now facing a change of comparable magnitude, and whether or not we do some sort of top-down minimum density mandate, it's unlikely that certain lifestyle options (superlarge families and surburbanism-as-we-know-it among them) are going to make the cut.
