This isn’t a national issue. The country is called the United STATES for a reason. There is no good mechanism in place to handle this at a federal level and even if there were, it would be idiotic to apply the same standards to say Wyoming as to New Jersey. If any state wants to try this, they are free to do so. However, it will never happen because very few people want this and it would be political suicide for any politicial to propose it.
Unfortunately the very thing that makes suburban living attractive to many people is low-density housing. Once you start putting housing units on 60-foot lots instead of 30 foot, you limit the number of places that can be reached by walking, and limit the population density necessary for mass transit.
Despite those built-in limitations, the push for low-density neighborhoods has been going on since the first streetcar lines were developed in the 19th century. Why? Well, have a kid or two in a four-room apartment in the city with no yard and the nearest playground four blocks away and you’ll start thinking about the desirability of low-density housing.
I grew up (mostly) in the city. When I was 12, I was pleased, nay, proud to reside in New York; I couldn’t even begin to imagine living in hicksville. But by the time we moved to the suburbs four years later, I was more than eager to get out of that hellhole. Why? Well, admittedly, a big part of it was that living in a clean, modern house was far more appealing than inhabiting a roach-infested apartment in a pre-WWII building. Notwithstanding its benefits (like, say, getting to watch a hobo smoke a joint in the 68th street station while listening to a guy play opera on an electric keyboard), city life can get tiresome. The noise, the cramped spaces, the smell build up until suburban life seems like a welcome release. I’m not trying to be melodramatic here, but I was ebullient at the prospect of having a yard and being able to read in relative peace. I know these sound like small things, but they are important to people and even the most radical demographic engineering couldn’t fulfill them in an urban environment. So, yes, urban life would be more likely to facilitate socialization, but there are plenty of people for whom open spaces are just as–if not more–significant.
We have activists in this area who oppose the building or extending of access roads, on the grounds that they would “promote sprawl”. OK, I can respect that, even if I disagree with it.
BUT, we’ve got wackos who oppose REPAIRING roads, on the grounds that doing so would “promote sprawl” by making it easy for people to continue to live in the suburbs…
Let me get this straight: You want to make life for people living in a location that you disapprove of as miserable as possible so that they will “voluntarily” decide to move to a location you approve of?
You are not nice people.
Just because sprawl feels important, and has implications for bigger issues, does not mean that it is a federal issue. As others have tried to explain, zoning is not in the federal bailiwick. You don’t want the people in Washington DC deciding what is best for Boise Idaho, or Birmingham Alabama, or Bangor Maine.
You make it sound like mortgage payments are only made by people who live in suburbs. Home ownership happens in the cities, too. And the mortgage credit is extended to people who own townhouses & condos.
I live in a township that is a part of a creeping sprawl problem. And it was getting worse. We voted out our local government and brought in people who had pledged to do better, more coherent, long-term planning, not be at the whim of whatever development plans were pitched by the biggest builders. The town we are sprawling “from” also voted in a mayor and a city council who are committed to bringing more people downtown to live. They’re approving more downtown condo projects in lieu of more office space, for example. It’s working, and I credit that in large part because it’s being done locally, with people who know what the issues are here and who really care about the quality of life because they live here too.
When I wasn’t living on miltary bases I grew up in suburbs. In Colorado and Texas I lived in several different houses located in different suburbs. I have never lived in a suburb were a park wasn’t within walking distance. With the exception of kindergarten and 6th grade I walked to school until 9th grade. And for the most part a store of some kind was within 2 miles. It sounds to me like there are suburbs that fit your ideal for kids.
Marc
Why isn’t it a campaign issue? Because as John Mace has pointed out, people like living in suburbs and no politician is going to be successful telling people they’ve got to move into the city. Right now, most Americans just aren’t buying what the anti-sprawl advocates are selling. I recognize that there are varied problems associated with suburbs and I certainly think we can do something to offset those problems. Many of those problems such as oil dependency and traffic jams will probably be solved through new technologies.
Marc
Suburban sprawler checking in here. Solving the problem might begin by asking WHY we choose to drive 350 miles per week to avoid living in the city (2-jobs, 2-cars). The above poster nailed it pretty well. No way I’m letting my kids grow up in the much ballyhooed “urban” environment watching winos, addicts, etc on the street corners, while they ride a dingy bus to get to their friend’s house. Sorry, but I’ll take the suburbs any day. Chaufferring? No problem. If they’re too young for their own car, give 'em a go-kart or golf-cart. Our little suburb was recently annexed by the city; Our private police/fire/ambulance has been subsumed into the tax-hungry maw of that same city; My property taxes have DOUBLED (yes, doubled); And after a year, so has the local crime rate (according to the published figures). We’re already talking about moving further out, getting a larger lot (you know the drill. This will be following most of our friends who’ve already fled). Even at $2.00/gallon, I can buy a heck of a lot of gas with the property tax difference.
IMO, the “suburban sprawl” problem can only be solved by remedying the problems that force people to the 'burbs in the first place.
Simple answer - because there is a very, very limited role for the federal government in local land use decisions.
More complex answer - because the market that drives development isn’t calling for an end to sprawl (at least not in any significant way). Inner-cities are making a bit of a comeback among certain populations (young professionals, empty-nesters), but suburban living is still seen (rightly or wrongly) as the preferred place to raise children. Until the home buying population becomes convinced that it is in their best interest (and they dont’ generally give a rat’s ass about the environmental benefits associated with narrower streets, less impervious cover, etc. etc. etc. - I know, I worked in this area for years), they will continue to purchase suburban lots. Where the people are, businesses will follow.
But the mortgage interest deduction is not a subsidy in any way. In an income tax system that treats interest received as taxable income, you have to allow the deduction of interest paid (at least for business and investment type loans), or things would be seriously out of whack. There have been income tax reforms that would eliminate the interest deduction, but every one of those has also eliminated the taxing of interest income. They go together. The mortgage interest deduction is not a subsidy.
About the OP, let’s imagine that John Kerry today takes up your issue. I can imagine his speech:
“Ladies and gentlemen, I believe that the time to end sprawl is nigh, and as your president I will immediately do whatever I can to make life difficult for everyone living in a suburb, and will rally for legislation to prevent those of you who wish to move into a suburb from doing so. Thank you very much.”
Hmmm, I guess I see why it hasn’t been brought up too much.
Speaking as someone who just bought a home in Washington, DC, and who would not have been able to do so without the tax benefits of doing so, your argument is full of it. In fact, if I couldn’t deduct my mortgage payments, I would either be forced to a) live in apartments the rest of my life, or b) move waaaay out to the suburbs where land is cheap. So, I think you better think through your arguments a bit more on that count.
And zoning must remain a local issue because people from other states have no business whatsoever in determining how land in one community is used. Find anything in the Constitution that would give Congress or the President a hand in determining where minimalls and condos should go: it is clearly an interference in state and local matters.
The idea that putting the Feds in charge of zoning laws would somehow stem the tide of folks moving out of rural areas and into suburbs, and also out of urban areas into exburbs, is pure fantasy. We are undergoing a shift in population that reminds me of all the other great movements in American history. Laws can’t constrain that. In fact, the idea that you can legislate where people should live strikes me as slouching toward totalitarianism. What could be more coersive than channelling people to live where the government wants them to live?
Bottom line is that if there are energy issues, deal with energy issues. Deal with transportation issues as transportation issues. I’d think that we’d share common ground on both of those matters. Hell, I don’t like suburbs, either. But as Voltaire might have said in this situation, “I don’t agree with where you live, but I’ll defend to my death your right to live there.”
I’ve just moved to Belgium, and this is precisely what they have here and in neighboring countries. High-speed trains (Train-a-Grand-Vitesse, Thalys, InterCityExpress) connect major cities (say, Brussels, Antwerp, Cologne) quickly and for a low-to-medium price. Conventional trains (“Inter-City” and “Inter-Regio”) allow travel between cities that aren’t big enough to have the high-speed service (say, Leuven, Ghent, and Liege with Brussels), but for a region the size of Flemish Brabant, of Flanders, or even of Belgium, this is more than adequate. Every little town is linked by local trains to the rail hubs of the small cities. Finally, every city of any size has extensive tram, subway, and bus service within the city and to neighboring cities.
At most train stations, bicycles can be rented. If you have your own bike, you can take it on the train. Most major streets have dedicated bicycle lanes.
Despite tremendous population density, there’s still plenty of green space and parkland. Within the ringroad around Leuven live perhaps 50,000 people, but green spaces encircle and are integrated into the ring, and parklandsare to be found all over town, both large and small. Heck, there’s as many people in this shoebox-sized country as in my home province of Ontario (in Canada), but the industrial park where I work is as green-looking as the one where my father works back home. Looking out my window right now I can see treed hills, pastures, and of course a railway track. And I bike through corn and beet fields to get here from home.
I definitely don’t feel overwhelmed, constrained, or closed in by the city - common complaints by those who seek to escape to the suburbs. And I’m not an accustomed urbanite, or anything - I grew up with a forest in my backyard. (Like, literally.) If there’s anything to be learned from the Belgian example, it’s that it is possible to live densely and have the social and cultural embellishments of city life, while having plenty of green space and quiet places and open air at hand. Will this work in New York or Berlin? I dunno if it can be scaled that well. But it seems to work here.
There are issues, though:
- Belgium has a very high public deficit. This isn’t all due to transit, though - they ahve a lot of other expensive things like construction in Brussels to accomodate the EU institutions, expensive public health care, welfare, and other programs, and a major reorganization of the military underway. And subsidized university.
- There are still motorways, and they still get used extensively. Many people here at work travel as far as 45 minutes by car. Those that do do so because the train trip from their home town would take longer – mainly because of the bus system’s problems. (Specifically, there is a bus right from the train station to right in front of my building, but it winds its way through the car-clogged labyrinthine streets of Leuven to get here. That alone takes almost as long as the train commute from Antwerp.)
- The buses and local transit are very good in most cases, but not all. Leuven has some serious problems, posed largely because it’s an 800-year-old city with winding, narrow streets that are hard to put buses down, and impossible to install trams in. And it’s too small for a subway. This also has the effect of choking automotive traffice at rush hour… but since it was laid out more for the convenience of pedestrians and horses, it’s very well suited to bicycles. I can get anywhere on a bike – admitted not much of an option in places that have severe winters. But, of course, if you’re building new cities, you can get around some of these problems inherited from the Middle Ages.
As for the Federal vs Local issue… If the feds build highways, they can build intercity railways. Land use planning is much more a local thing, but the cost of building a new transit system efficeintly (rather than half-assed and piecemeal) can maybe be better borne by the federal government. As for the Belgian case? The railways were built quite a while ago by the federal government, the local transit was funded (as far as I can tell) by the provinces and regions. the Belgian government has become extremely decentralised, with most of the internal decisions left to the regions or the provinces.
Is this doable in North America? Quite possibly. Belgium could serve as a model of a US state, western Europe as a model of the US altogether. There are differences, of course… culture among them. Should it be done? Well, I can’t stand the cookie-cutter suburbs and strip malls… but some people like them. I propose that everything you get by living in them, though, can be had right here in Leuven.
This argument is just plain stupid, unless buses and subways are powered by passenger-operated pedals that I have somehow overlooked for lo these twenty years.
To anticipate the obvious claim to the contrary, the extra walking distance to and from a bus stop in the sort of densely populated areas where mass transit is viable is simply not a major addition to the walking around inside the mall (or whatever) once you get there.
Since I absolutely reject the notion that letting me keep my own money is some sort of “subsidy”, I find this argument unpersuasive.
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Why not? We’ve long since accepted that the federal government can legitimately set some basic national standards. For instance, we have a national minimum wage – which provides only a bottom floor, and any state or locality is free to enact a higher one. (We have a measure on the Florida ballot this November to raise the minimum wage in this state.) There’s no reason Washington could not both legitimately and beneficially set some basic standards for the form and density of new suburban developments.
Irrelevant. Regardless of such semantic points, regardless of the legitimacy or illegitimacy of taxation as such, it is a fact that tax policy can encourage some things and discourage others. I was merely making the point, well-grounded in history, that the postwar American suburban landscape is not purely a product of free-market forces, but was promoted and shaped by public policy in a lot of ways.
That “argument” – ancillary to my main point, which is based on our need to reduce oil dependency – is based on real studies of the differences in public health and obesity rates between different kinds of built environments, walkable vs. driveable. The differences are real, whatever might be the cause of them.
“Why won’t we, the people, debate about this more often and more publicly? Why are we in denial?”
Ahhh the mantra of the crackpot. The all-knowing seer who somehow “gets” what the rest of us do not.
It is not a “non-issue” just because you have decided what your position is. There are pros and cons to urban, suburban and new-urban development so it’s not that simple. The ideas you propose are exhorbitantly expensive for a country the size and population of the US. What is the optimal population density? Should we all live in massive hives like Blade Runner?
Instead of crazy schemes and neglecting vital infrastructure, we should do more to solve the problems caused by cars instead of pretending we can get by without them. I’m all for urban planning that makes our cities and neighborhoods less reliant on cars at the local level but most us don’t work locally or want to live in planned “company towns”
Is James Howard Kunstler, then, in your opinion a “crackpot”? Is Peter Calthorpe? And Andres Duany? And the whole New Trains organization (http://www.newtrains.org/pages/354049/index.htm) and the whole Congress for the New Urbanism (http://www.cnu.org/[/url) and the whole sustainable-development movement?