> But in the U.S. the dominance of suburbs over cities, and the
> dominance of automobiles over trains has little to do with peoples
> individual desires. We had a working light rail system in the U.S.
> that was destroyed, the tracks torn up the the cars sent to crusher,
> and replaced with a truly horrible bus system. Suburbs are subsidized
> by cities in very real ways - road building, water, sewers. Also the
> suburbs were largely financed by the GI bill - and that money was
> quite deliberately directed to suburbs in part to avoid paying in
> African-American arears to maintain segretion. In short, like the
> automobile, the suburbs were shoved down our throat. If you subsidize
> something heavily enough, you get more of it. We subsidized suburbs at
> the expense of cities, automobiles at the expense of trains. Naturally
> we ended with balace tilted unreasonably towards suburbs, and away
> from cities, towards automobiles and away from trains.
I'm not sure about the etiquette of quoting and linking here, but somebody on a different list had some interesting things to say about choice:
<http://search.bikelist.org/getmsg.asp?Filename=internet-bob.10403.0991.eml>
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> The notion of "Urban Sprawl" is a fairly recent onem, and comes, I think
> from a mistaken idea: That high-density European city centers can, and
> should be a model for the relatively low density American cities.
Definitions of sprawl are fluid, and the s-word is undoubtedly favored by those of us who don't like it. But the phenomenon of decentralization of urban populations has been recognized ever since horsecars, if not before.
(Moreover, the model offered by sprawl critics has little to do with "high-density European city centers," though this image does provide a convenient bogeymen for those who see sprawl critique as a conspiracy to infect the U.S. with old-world evils like socialism, gun control, single-payer health care--and, of course, subsidized public transportation.
Sprawl's defenders prefer to bash the European pinata rather than attack American models of urban density, such as inner-ring suburbs and small towns, precisely because Americans are pretty warm to these urban forms.)
> fact that people might regularly commute 40 or 50 or 60 miles to work
> says far less about "sprawl" than it does people's preferences and the
> relatively greater freedom people in this country have in choosing a
> place to live.
This strikes me as a somewhat optimistic view. I like living in walkable, bikable, public-transportation-friendly towns and cities. If it were all about choice, there would be no shortage of such places, and developers would be falling over themselves to build them. But it isn't, and they don't, because they aren't allowed to. As sprawl-critic James Howard Kunstler points out, you can't build Main Street USA anymore. It's not legal. Sprawl is legal and sanctioned, and so sprawl is what you get.
>I'm not sure I'm ready to start telling people where they're allowed to
>live.
Where I'm allowed to live doesn't really matter. I'm allowed to live next door to Sammy Sosa in Lake Point Tower if I can come up with the bucks, but
those of us who don't pull the $10 million a year that Sammy gets have markedly fewer choices, and they're all very interconnected, enough so that there's really not that much choice at all.
We have a modest choice in where we want to work, though depending on the economy, this is a very modest choice, especially in the short term, when it often comes down to be there or get fired.
We have a modest choice in where we can live, and that choice involves trade-offs between a variety of amenities, including obvious ones like square footage, backyard acreage, and type of countertops as well as less obvious ones, like transportation infrastructure and public schools, both of which tend to be bundled into the cost of housing. Most of us want lots of interior space, a big backyard, fine schools, convenient shopping, a 5 minute trip to work and a minimal number of gunshots in the area, all for $200 a month or less. Since that's rarely available, we bargain down accordingly.
Lastly, we have a very, very, very modest choice in how we can travel to work and back home and everywhere else we need to go. You can drive, or you can...well, for most of the country, that's pretty much it. If you choose to drive, you'll find a fair amount of costly infrastructure, all yours for the admission price of whatever it costs you to buy a licensible vehicle. If you choose to bike, you'll get a small sliver of that infrastructure, on the right hand margin, with a cacophony of honks in your ear. And if you choose to walk, in most places, you'll get nowhere, because there's nowhere you can go to in the time it takes you to get there.
It's tough enough for most people to optimize any one of these. Housing and employment are touch choices for anyone. By the time you add transportation to the mix, there's very little choice, and no meaningful choice. The choice is no longer how to get from point A to point B. It's only a matter of how far you want to drive, or how far you'll have to drive. Whether or not you're driving is moot, 'cause you're driving. Too old? Stay home, or call your kid, and get your kid to drive you. Too young? Stay home and play in the streets, or get mom to drive you? Can't operate a vehicle because of a visual or physical impairment? Get somebody to drive you.
> For an interesting debate on the topic, see:
> http://www.perc.org/pdf/feb99.pdf
Of course, there are those folks who argue, as do Bast, Gordon et al, that we want is what we get and vice versa. I don't buy it, precisely because the costs and prices of sprawling are so thoroughly interconnected, bundled and buried. Wanna live on the urban fringe, work in the suburbs and drive 20 miles to work? No problem. The road's already there and already paid for. You've got pavement from door to door, a zoning-mandated parking space at work and a zoning-mandated parking space at your $80,000 starter home ($500 a month, low down payment, interest deductible). Gas is cheap, and the government's made it clear that they'll go to war to ensure a steady supply of it. Drive as much as you want, and don't worry about the air. Not your problem.
Ah, but maybe you want to live in the big city? Or maybe a walkable, bikable small town? Somewhere where you can *choose* not to drive, if that's your style.
First you have to find one. They don't build 'em anymore, so they go for a premium. You'll have to figure out how to get to your job, which is probably all the way out in the burbs, like most jobs are. (Sears, as local folks know, left their namesake tower years ago. They're now inconveniently located in the suburbs. Their move was subsidized by state monies.) You'll get last-choice public schools, so if you decide to stay with your kids, you may pony up for private schools.
Sure, it's a choice. And you could choose to live in the burbs, among the asphalt. But it's fairly clear, to me at least, that about 7 decades of public policy momentum has combined to arrange for a forest of sticks and a crop of carrots that incentivize people to live in sprawl.
And it's not that it's necessarily an awful way to live. It's just that if it's so great, why is it subsidized to the hilt? And if city density is so awful, why do so many people pay a premium to live in it?
I could suggest a conspiracy theory or three about the costs, embedded subsidies, prices and incentives of our current transportation and land use system, but I don't think it's that malicious. People are just used to it and don't know any better. And if they dare to dream of something just a little better--a bus that stops at their curb so they don't have to drive absolutely everywhere, or maybe a few second-story apartments above the stores--they're simultaneously told that a) density is nasty and European, and b)sprawl is all-American, and not just that, it's your Choice!!!
And sure, it's a choice. It's a choice like your choice of food at the freeway exit is a choice. You can choose between a Big Mac at McDonald's and a Whopper at BK's. And if you pose the question of whether that's a meaningful choice, particularly if you pose it to someone who's never eaten anything but burgers at freeway exits, it's probably understandable if you then were met with the subtle suspicion that you're trying to tell people what to eat. ---------------------------------
-- Andy