More on Saving the Suburbs
- Posted by ryan on February 10th, 2009 filed in Cities
I’m kind of busy today, as I’m going to be a Good Citizen this afternoon and testify in support of the Brookland small area plan. So, submitted for your parsing is this, from the Infrastructurist:
You mentioned 40 miles outside town. Last year people were talking about high energy prices as the one of the prime causes of suburban collapse. But gas is back under $2 a gallon. Energy prices have nothing to do with it. I said that at the time. They can accelerate the process, but what drives it is the shift in consumer preferences. Gen Xers and Millennials want a lifestyle closer to Friends and Seinfeld (that is, walkable and urban) than to Tony Soprano (low density and suburban). It’s not that nobody wants Tony Soprano. About 50 percent of Americans actually do want that configuration. But if we’ve built 80 percent of our housing that way, that’s the definition of oversupply. The other 50 percent of Americans want walkable urban arrangements and yet that’s just 20 percent of the housing stock. That’s called pent-up demand. So the market is just responding.
It’s an interview with Chris Leinberger. I don’t agree with everything he says, but it’s interesting throughout.
February 10th, 2009 at 2:36 pm
Funny thing about Jersey: NYC has labeled it the quintessential exurban wasteland but by the standards of most of the US it’s kind of streetcar-suburban. Most towns have main streets with sidewalks and storefronts.
February 10th, 2009 at 3:01 pm
I’d like to know the basis for Leinberger’s claim that only about 50% of Americans want a low density and suburban lifestyle. If it’s opinion surveys, I think they’re basically worthless as indicators of real-world choices.
As for those Gen Xers and Millenials, I think they are likely to find walkable urbanism considerably less appealing as they get older and start settling down and having families.
February 10th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
Anybody have some data to back this up? From some Googling, the trend for those Friends and Seinfeld neighborhoods seems to be down in 2008. Perhaps not as fast as in Jersey, but definitely not what you expect for “pent-up demaind”.
February 10th, 2009 at 7:02 pm
The reference in the original article is to price differentials:
February 10th, 2009 at 7:41 pm
A higher price does not by itself imply a higher demand. The price also depends on the cost of supply, among other things. The price of a pound of caviar is much higher than the price of a pound of potatoes, but that doesn’t mean there’s more demand for caviar than potatoes.
February 10th, 2009 at 8:15 pm
No, it means that the marginal buyer of caviar is willing to pay more per pound than the marginal buyer of potatoes.
In the scenario discussed in the original article, a premium per square foot is important, because if market price for regular suburban property drops below replacement cost, then it implies a slum dynamic like the inner cities in the 1950’s and 1960’s, where inner urban residential properties are broken up into apartments and, since the value of the property is below replacement cost, allowed to depreciate.
In the face of that, a value premium in the suburban hinterland of walkable districts that brings the market value above the replacement cost ensures that is is financially worthwhile to engage in ongoing maintenance and, therefore, avoids the slum dynamic.
February 10th, 2009 at 8:29 pm
Bruce, I wonder if anyone has the slightest idea what you’re trying to say.
February 10th, 2009 at 8:34 pm
That Mixner! He’s such a card! Who else could come up with LOL comments to a post about housing demand?
February 10th, 2009 at 11:36 pm
Mixner, February 10th, 2009 at 8:29 pm
Since it was written in reference to the original post, linked to above, those trying to bluff their way through without reading that post would definitely be at a disadvantage.
That is, I definitely assumed people not skimming past the part of the original piece where it says:
February 11th, 2009 at 1:52 am
Still waiting for that evidence to support Leinberger’s claims regarding housing and density preferences. Housing price differences alone tell us nothing. Here is Joel Kotkin’s rebuttal from the LA Times:
And here is Ed Glaeser, from his New Republic review of Tom Vanderbilt’s Traffic:
February 11th, 2009 at 11:09 am
Kotkin fails to address what ’suburban counties’ mean. Leinberger’s point is about urbanism as a built form - he mentions several times that urbanism - not necessarily urban locations - are what’s in demand. Of course urban locations tend to have urban form, but not always.
Would Kotkin’s classification declare Arlington to be suburban? Almost certainly. Of course, Arlington has that exact kind of urbanism in suburbia that Leinberger is talking about.
This, of course, says nothing about what a poor measure the county is to determine built form.
February 11th, 2009 at 11:26 am
The sprawl apologists don’t recognize that it’s form that counts, not which county it’s in. There are definitely places like Orange Line Arlington, Silver Spring, and Hyattsville that are quite urban, despite not being in DC proper. The same is true of Towson in the Baltimore region. They just manipulate numbers to match their own views.
February 11th, 2009 at 1:07 pm
Kotkin fails to address what ’suburban counties’ mean. Leinberger’s point is about urbanism as a built form - he mentions several times that urbanism - not necessarily urban locations - are what’s in demand.
He asserts that, yes. But if this “walkable urbanism” is supposed to be located in the suburbs rather than in central cities, where is it? Where is all this dense new development in the suburbs? Where is all the suburban rail transit and transit-oriented development for which there is supposedly a huge pent-up demand? As far as I can tell, almost all new suburban development over the past 10 years, especially in the south and west where most of the population growth is occurring, has been of the traditional low-density, car-oriented variety. What little transit there is consists almost entirely of buses.
February 11th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
But note that in the quote from Ed Gleaser, he asserts:
Note that the core claim is supported on the same basis that you are arguing is not valid:”The housing stock is durable and valuable, …
That the outer suburban housing stock build during the housing bubble is valuable is a claim.=, on the price dimension. And you have said that claims on price dimensions carry no weight.
The next piece is a straw horse argument:”and all those shiny new homes on the edges of Atlanta and Phoenix are not going to be abandoned anytime soon.“. The argument in question points out that when the inner cities became slums as market values dropped below replacement values, those residences were not in the first instance abandoned … rather, they were converted into multiple occupancy and continued to be occupied, while their landlords allowed them to depreciate (because, after all, the market value was below replacement value).
Disputing a claim that has not been advanced, because its easier to dispute than the claim that has been advanced, is not a rhetorical trick that becomes more persuasive simply because of its popularity.
And of course, the argument is driven home by a simple lie:”Attempts to service these low-density areas with rail are enormously expensive undertakings that can never be justified on the basis of ridership.“. Where the rail right of way currently exists, serving these low density areas with rail is a quite inexpensive undertaking. All new HSR rail corridors are expensive … putting rail corridors into densely populated areas that do not have an available right of way is quite expensive … but its just a lie to describe a regional stopping rail service in a low density area along existing rail rights of way as an enormously expensive undertaking. The obstacles are institutional rigidities, not capital or operating costs.
February 11th, 2009 at 3:24 pm
That the outer suburban housing stock build during the housing bubble is valuable is a claim.=, on the price dimension. And you have said that claims on price dimensions carry no weight.
I didn’t say any such thing. I said that the price difference alone between two commodities doesn’t tell you anything about the relative supply and demand. Caviar costs more than potatoes, but that doesn’t mean caviar is undersupplied relative to potatoes. The same is true for different types of housing, or any other commodity.