THE VINE MAY 20, 2008
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As an armchair sociologist and rabid opponent of urban sprawl, I really appreciated Paul Krugman’s musings on energy consumption and civil planning yesterday. In the column—which marked the converging problems of high gas prices, big-box driving culture, and American failure to adequately and efficiently conurbate—one comment jumped out:
there are, as always in America, the issues of race and class. Despite the gentrification that has taken place in some inner cities, and the plunge in national crime rates to levels not seen in decades, it will be hard to shake the longstanding American association of higher-density living with poverty and personal danger.
A couple thoughts in response: That “association” has always struck me as an American eccentricity; in few other countries is the denser, more diverse metropole the undesirable place to be. The disenfranchised Parisian suburbs are perhaps the most well-known inversion of this trope of the “inner city.” And beyond the race and class dynamics (the stuff of every American political argument these days), the mere availability of suburban geography is pretty unique to North America.
And, further, rural to urban migrations are driving economic growth and civic culture in just about every large developing nation (China, South Africa, Nigeria, Brazil, India) and many post-industrial ones (Japan, Ireland). Latin American immigration to US cities likewise proves the point. Why—in only 2006, the UN reported that the earth’s population was cleft in two: 3.2 billion humans in the cities, and another 3.2 billion living in rural or exurban sites. Today, we have tipped from that knife-edge, and a distinct majority of earthlings are choosing the opportunity and diversity of city life. American manifest destiny—transmuted into the desire for 40 acres, a riding mower and a hot tub—has, outside the US, morphed into a desire for strap-hanging and skyscrapers.
Second, and more importantly: What are we doing to meet this demand? Environmentally, it ain’t pretty. George Packer’s phenomenal reporting from Lagos in 2006 proved an ode to the modern megacity—those centers (New York, Cairo, Sao Paolo, Tokyo, Kinshasa and Mumbai, among others) whose populations are well over 10 million and mounting daily. In the must-read piece, Packer marks the extreme disarray of public infrastructure, and laments the ways in which people are forced to reckon with badly planned, often half-finished structures and byways that are, in Lagos at least, effectively lost to reform. Rather than responding as poorly as such failed city-states, lovers of civilization must make a push to accommodate the changing—and naturally more energy efficient—ways in which people choose to live. Krugman drifts into narrow platitudes at the end of his column (“Americans will face increasingly strong incentives to start living like Europeans — maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of our lives”). Matt Yglesias head-fakes in the proper direction in his response to Krugman, by noting “one piece of very low-hanging fruit is to promote denser development near our existing [rail] stations.”
But this is halfway stuff. Ideally, you’d want an urban infrastructure that reduced everyone’s work/play/life “commutes” to 20-minute walks, bikes and buses—if not shorter. This isn’t unheard of; in the South Bronx in the 1960s, for example, many residents walked to work in factories by the river, and now-vanished local grocery was prevalent. To reclaim this history at scale, we’d have to rezone and rebuild existing cities to offer more low-carbon lifestyle options—but also develop entirely new, densely urban areas. This means growing the “second cities” of the planet—the Auroras, Sacramentos, and Omahas; the Krakows, Rotterdams and Mombasas—in ways that will allow us to live more densely than today, but more sustainably than in, say Lagos. This decentralization is happening naturally (see the incredible recent growth of all the named cities) but could also use some concerted pioneering from public and private developers.In another interesting piece yesterday, Michael Malone reported that in 1893, period historians believed “so much of the nation had been settled that there was no longer an identifiable western migration. The very notion of a 'frontier' was obsolete.” It would be nice to prove that wrong all over again.--Dayo Olopade
4 comments
Dayo...
Excellent post. I would have to add that one of the first things Americans need to address is the question of semantics played with when using words like urban, suburban, city, rural, exurb, density and sprawl. How one defines these words professionally and personally colors the perceptions that Americans have of suburbs. Most Americans consider "city living" to be living in the heart of Manhattan but urban living encompasses every density up to the exurb environment. It's the level of density that defines how one perceives density. I like to play geographic games where I take the population of a state and divide the total square area of the state by it's population to get an idea of how many square feet each American "has" based on where they live.
Having studied and practiced at dealing with the issues of urban planning from mid/high rise urban center infill to rural master planning for "trophy homes", I've seen the good and the bad. I'm a strong proponent of revamping the older, inner ring suburbs into higher density, multi-modal areas of living, working and playing. Recapturing open space, upzoning single-use zoning areas to be multi-use, multi-zoned can actually produce positive results of getting people who might not like living "in the city" to reconsider the older post-WW2 suburbs as urban neighborhoods. Which ironically are the one's they try desperately to replicate with new developments out in the middle of nowhere under the guise of New Urbanism. Cities and regional planning plays an important part in getting reinvestment in the first generation suburbs.
But fighting against the ingrained idea of American Manifest Destiny is almost a lost cause. Instead it requires redefinement.
I know previous E&E posters have taken the position that any "urban" living is bad because
1. The schools suck.
2. Cities are crime invested with pedophiles and meth addicts
3. Cities are too expensive to live in.
4. I love my 40 acres, hot tub, grill and 40 minute commute in rush hour traffic
5. I like living in convent controlled gated communities.
But for whatever reasons people give for living out in the sprawl, countering that with simply highlighting the negatives of their current conditions by counterpoints of living closer to where one works and at a higher density works great. But it's a slow process.
One example I can give is how Mayor John Hickenlooper of Denver was able to get the Front Range region of Denver metropolitan area on the same page by getting all the suburban and adjacent city and county officials to consider a comprehensive master plan which focused on increasing density development at proposed light rail stations that would expand out into the Denver metro area. It was the realization that all of the independent municipalities were also interconnected by infrastructure, roads and populace and acting independently did not solve the issue.
After watching my hometown struggle with sprawl, dead and dying first generation suburbs, traffic congestion and air pollution, it was heartening to see not only a regional response to these issues but that voters supported the tax and bonds to implement the TREX plan.
Americans will have to come to the realization that the suburban lifestyle and the perceived quality of life solely or wholly dependent upon automobiles to work is coming to an end. The rising costs to family time, commute time, rising transportation costs, infrastructure upkeep, highly dispersed services, unwalkable neighborhoods, loss of open space, etc. all contribute to a decline in quality of life.
This isn't to say that cars will be banned and everyone is forced to walk to work and live in a 400sf apartment but what it does mean is that a fundamental shift in the way the American urban landscape is designed to ensure a higher quality of life that allows people to walk, bike or mass transit for their basic daily needs and save the driving for Sundays in the country.
- singlespeed
May 20, 2008 at 5:48pm
You obviously recieved a phenomenal education at Yale, Dayo, filtered through your native abilities, that is. This is a superb piece. I have one question, though. I so agree with the thrust of your piece but what to do about the intense upward pressure that densifying can put on the prices of homes? I live in Seattle where we have experienced a huge run-up in real estate prices, until the recent downturn mitigated this situation a bit. A major factor has been the Microsoftization of the region but another significant contributor to the great increase in prices is due to the Growth Management Act, which prevents extreme sprawl (we still are experiencing considerable sprawl, as it is). Any thoughts?
- liberal reformer
May 20, 2008 at 6:16pm
In the section of the above post reading:
...Ideally, you’d want an urban infrastructure that reduced everyone’s work/play/life “commutes"...
the “ideal” refers to the environment and energy issues at stake, if this blog's title didn’t make that clear. Though I could just as easily have said “eventually”—the point I’m making about human dwelling is descriptive, not normative.
Since forever, and decisively since 2006, the global public has been populating and developing established urban centers. The “choice” to spend (and spew) more for transportation from suburban enclaves has already been foreclosed to at least a billion people. My addition to that factual assertion is to suppose that those people already living in or around the world’s cities (at > two driving- or six walking-hours, in cases) could be better distributed—for the sake of cutting energy costs and carbon emissions. Outlying American resistance, as singlespeed noted, is largely a matter of semantics.
As to increasing urban housing prices, liberal reformer: That’s good reason to head for the hills of Krakow and Aurora. Costs of living are lower in less developed third and fourth cities—the difference between renting in Boston and in Concord, New Hampshire, for example. The observable spike in demand for city life has led to higher real estate valuation--in part because the centralized supply is seen as “fixed.” More high-density options don't offset entirely but help this squeeze, in addition to reducing commuter emissions.
Thin suburban skin aside, this evolutionary trend *is* better for the planet in peril. Developers *ought* to get off the fence for this one.
- Dayo Olopade
May 21, 2008 at 7:49am
In the column that Dayo references below , Paul Krugman says: Still, if we’re heading for a prolonged
- Anonymous
May 21, 2008 at 8:52am