Opposition to High Density Development

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/10780874211065776?journalCode=uarb&

by gotmedium • 5 years ago

60 227 5 years ago

journals.sagepub.com

Pet_Ant• 5 years ago

Generally the presence of other people devalues places. You want just enough of the right number of people and that’s it.

cheriot26• 5 years ago

The most valuable residential land in the world is in the most densely populated places.

jcims• 5 years ago

The most valuable residences in the world tend to be single tenant though.

nitrogen5• 5 years ago

What is value? You can't really use dollar price as a measure of value unless everyone were given equal buying power, every house and apartment was listed on the market at the same time, and every job could be performed from any location.

chollida1• 5 years ago

Thought experiment.

What is worth more?

The average house in the country with a couple of acres of land or a 700square foot condo in Manhattan.

Generally the presence of other people tend to push up property values as it brings in a lot more amenities.

nitrogen5• 5 years ago

I and many others would take the house with the land, unless I'm being forced to live in the city for work. When remote work became a necessity, we saw tons of people (and speculative investors) buying up housing in cheaper states.

progman32• 5 years ago

Economic value and desirability are related but different concepts, though. You'd have to pay me big bucks for me to even consider living in that 700 square foot condo. Just because other people are also willing to make a similar compromise (driving up the price) doesn't mean any of us necessarily prefer that condo over other forms of living.

syshum• 5 years ago

Well depends on the person. to me personally I would pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for a couple acres of land in the country side, and would pay exactly $0 for any property in Manhattan

joomooru2• 5 years ago

Totally, that's why rent in Manhattan is extremely affordable :)

AnthonyMouse6• 5 years ago

Generally the presence of other people devalues places.

That's not it.

If you have a hundred acres of land and a hundred families and you require every house to be built on an acre of land, housing will be pretty expensive, because even the poor will have to pay the price for a full acre, when you might otherwise have mix of half acre lots, two acre lots, etc.

If you have a hundred acres of land and two hundred families and you require every house to be built on an acre of land, housing will be really expensive, because building enough for everyone is prohibited by law. And relaxing the zoning to allow higher density will lower housing prices because the supply of housing increases.

That's not because people don't want to live there anymore, it's just because you don't have to outbid your neighbors in a fight over the artificially scarce housing anymore because if you get more people you can build more housing.

And there's nothing about allowing higher densities that prohibits you from paying for the lower density housing -- it just doesn't prohibit someone else from doing otherwise. Which actually makes lower density housing more affordable, because you can buy it without having to outbid people who would choose higher density housing given the option.

ahoy• 5 years ago

Generally the presence of other people devalues places

this is why rent is so cheap in manhattan, san fransisco, london, etc

cheriot26• 5 years ago

For those of us not affiliated with a University, is there a way to read the article without paying $37.50?

Anecdotally, there's a lot of mythology in America about the supremacy of single family exclusive neighborhoods that's contradicted by actual numbers (mentioned in the abstract). There's also people's preference for the thing they know and at this point we have two generations that have grown up in single family exclusive neighborhoods.

It's really difficult to soften this kind of opposition.

xyzzyz• 5 years ago

Use Sci Hub.

sebmellen• 5 years ago

Unfortunately Sci-Hub is not able to index all articles. See: http://sci-hub.se/10.1177/10780874211065776.

AlbertCory13• 5 years ago

Such loaded language! "mythology in America", "people's preference for the thing they know", "really difficult to soften this kind of opposition"

Can you accept that your preferences are not shared by large numbers of people? And that they have free will and know what they want?

nemothekid7• 5 years ago

It's a very hard pill to swallow when those preferences are built on flawed data, and those preferences lead to choices that massively increase housing prices, exacerbate homelessness, destroy local businesses and indirectly contributes to climate change through increased vehicle usage

keawade• 5 years ago

Yes, I can.

However I am not convinced that is what has happened in the US and Canada's suburban development with regards to the overwhelming adoption of single family homes.

Charles Marohn, a former city planner and engineer, has written about this "the free market has spoken" position as his own previous position on this topic which he no longer holds:

At this point in my life, I was a self-described free-market Republican with an outspoken passion for markets and my chosen profession of civil engineering, which to me was a technical way to say “city building.” If I had been pushed to reconcile my rejection of congestion pricing with my support for the free market, I would have had no problem. I would have said something like:
> Markets are about the expression of personal preference. It was clear that, since most people drove automobiles, auto-based infrastructure was the clear market preference. Since most people lived in single-family homes, they were also the clear market preference. Given those clear and obvious preferences—combined with the fact that people paid taxes and expected the government to respond to their desires—charging people more for something they already paid for was a ploy to benefit the rich. Instead of congestion pricing, the state should have been building more capacity.

The ubiquity of a given mode of something, in this case single family homes in US and Canadian suburbs, is not necessarily evidence that people overwhelming want or support those modes. Especially if there is rarely, if ever, a true alternative available to actually choose instead.

Further, even if we assume that the free market _did_ actually freely choose this mode that it should stand unquestioned in perpetuity. Needs and desires change as people and the world change together.

0: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2021/10/25/my-journey-fr...

Jackim3• 5 years ago

Free will is part of the equation, but when good mid-density housing has been illegal in North America since WWII is it really a question of free will?

Daishiman3• 5 years ago

A preference uninformed by alternative ways of living.

Having lived in suburbs, exurbs, dense and extremely dense cities, I find most people have no idea of the benefits and disadvantages of each place.

My impression is that the vast majority of suburbanites live in thoroughly suboptimal conditions and that their health and social lives would be massively better served by living in more dense and walkable areas.

cheriot26• 5 years ago

It's loaded for a reason: people are using the law to force their preference on others and ruining lives. There will always be single family detached housing, but making them the only legal thing drives up prices and commute times to insane levels.

hdesh2• 5 years ago

The author's webpage lists the article:

https://faculty.ucmerced.edu/jtrounstine/Skittles_UAR_ALL.pd...

cheriot26• 5 years ago

Thanks!

jerkstate5• 5 years ago

Telling people that they are wrong to want a single family home is a statement with a short memory, when just a few short months ago the reasons for having private space for every occupant, some outside space, and separation from other families seemed very, very, very clear.

cheriot26• 5 years ago

Who is telling you your preference is wrong? The problem is when people use the law to force their own preference on others. In residential zoning, that takes the form of forcing people into single family homes that would prefer walkable urban areas.

wiskinator• 5 years ago

I have a feeling that if we spread the theory into small and midsize towns that the urban density laws were a conspiracy by the urban elite to keep cities rich and relevant we'd see them get repealed.

tenebrisalietum2• 5 years ago

Honestly:

- I don't want to share my street with anyone, let alone a wall.

- I don't want increased traffic.

- Increased population density also tends to increase crime.

- Increased population density has economic benefits that tend to go to companies and developers, not me.

- It's too hard to get infrastructure built. Roads will never be enough and we'll never have good public transit.

- Culture is too antagonistic. Public shared spaces with no charge or admission control always get overtaken by inconsiderate, loud people. The less of them, the better.

cheriot26• 5 years ago

It's fine to prefer rural areas, but the problem is using the law to force suburbs on people that would be happier in urban areas.

"Increased population density also tends to increase crime."

This is a myth. Murder rates by county https://i.redd.it/xl23t365qub41.png

"Increased population density has economic benefits that tend to go to companies and developers, not me."

This is a self fulfilling prophecy. The thing killing budgets of the middle and working class in cities is the cost of housing. The cost of housing is so high because we prohibit building more of it!

"It's too hard to get infrastructure built. Roads will never be enough and we'll never have good public transit."

We use to be good at this. America had great transit before WW2. Other rich countries are still good at building it. We should not accept the status quo here.

"Culture is too antagonistic. Public shared spaces with no charge or admission control always get overtaken by inconsiderate, loud people. The less of them, the better."

American's go on vacation and come back raving about the parks and plazas of Europe so there's plenty of American's that would enjoy the things we outlaw.

nitrogen5• 5 years ago

The cost of housing is so high because we prohibit building more of it!

I helped a friend run for city council years ago at a time when almost everyone else on the council and the mayor were connected to the property or construction industries. They wanted more development because they got paid -- the cost of housing is high, so let's build more so we can make more money. This is what people who currently live in smaller suburbs or rural areas see as driving the push for more housing -- more greed from their corrupt city council.

AnimalMuppet4• 5 years ago

The ones who would enjoy it (and who go to Europe to find it) aren't the ones making public spaces inhospitable in the US.

betwixthewires17• 5 years ago

You're getting at the core issue with this discussion: cities are by their very nature high density living situations.

It's no coincidence that congested cities are looking for ways to build higher density housing. There are just too many people to manage the logistics of a city that is built horizontally rather than vertically.

What it really comes down to is, do you want to live in a city or not? Cities are going to be densely packed. I personally do not want to live in shared housing and ride a train or bus, sit in traffic and hang out in free public spaces and the like either, so I don't live in a city. But people that choose to live in them really ought not complain about the facts of life of living in a city, specifically, that people are packed together like sardines.

nitrogen5• 5 years ago

But people that choose to live in them really ought not complain about the facts of life of living in a city, specifically, that people are packed together like sardines.

What happens in most of these HN threads is that people who live in cities start telling people who don't want to live in cities that they have no choice in the matter, and that they're coming to destroy their town next.

joomooru2• 5 years ago

Infrastructure is so hard to build because of NIMBYs, and you've indicated you're one of them. Also, it's much more costly to build infrastructure for low-density development, so you're complaining about a problem which your advocacy directly causes. Oh, and lack of public transportation directly increases traffic

tenebrisalietum2• 5 years ago

I am, and that's the thing - if it's my property, and I go to the council meetings and what not, then you're kinda stuck.

Also, it's much more costly to build infrastructure for low-density development, so you're complaining about a problem which your advocacy directly causes

My real complaint here is this--and I'll use a recent event as an example. In a town (not city) I used to live in, adjacent to a major city, somehow some developer got approval to build these really narrow row-home style town houses - 3 deep from the street and about 20 units wide. About 12 of these things. About a year has passed and this housing is up and ready for service. The additional roads that support that population increase will probably take at least 5 times as long. Until infrastructure improvement is strictly tied to additional housing supply and one doesn't move without the other, it doesn't benefit me to have more people in a place I live clogging up the roads.

Oh, and lack of public transportation directly increases traffic

Goes back into antagonistic culture. How can we keep public transportation safe and without criminal elements? We need to really solve a bunch of problems first - some of which are economic (homelessness), and some of which are culture (people using these facilities for drugs and as bathrooms, etc.) before it's something I really want.

Zigurd2• 5 years ago

Not all your points are supported by data. Urban land and housing is the most valuable. Urban areas produce the most wealth.

Some of your points are self-fulfilling: Commuting from suburbs necessitates more expensive infrastructure, for example.

American urban problems mostly have solutions that are exemplified in other parts of the world: Social housing from Austria; highly trained armed response police separate from "everyday" police in several countries.

Letting go of American exceptionalism is in most cases a good thing.

kiba2• 5 years ago

Roads and cars are just terrible from a capacity, noise, and air pollution perspective.

skybrian3• 5 years ago

I wonder what opposition there will be to the new laws in California allowing duplexes everywhere?

cheriot26• 5 years ago

There are signature gatherers out for a ballot proposition to make local land use laws override state law. The main supporters are small, rich municipalities.

anamax4• 5 years ago

Pretty much everyone in a duplex would rather live in single-family.

Pretty much everyone who has lived next to a duplex would rather live next to single-family. (I'm not saying that every instance of living next to single-family goes well.)

Yes, duplexes are less expensive than single-family, so they're the best that some people can do, but that's no reason to make them the only option.

skybrian3• 5 years ago

Why would you say people prefer this?

endisneigh• 5 years ago

Why wouldn't you oppose density? The issue is a prisoner's dilemma. Only a top-down heavy handed resolution can actually, well, resolve this problem.

More housing should certainly be built, but the YIMBY crowd ignores the inherent dis-incentives that one has towards more housing near them. People bring in the morality of more/cheap housing, which is fair enough, but isn't sufficient to get people to change their behavior.

zip12344• 5 years ago

Yes, it the only fair way is to allow density everywhere. If it is spread out, it becomes much less.

oxymoran3• 5 years ago

That doesn’t even make sense…density is allowed in a lot of rural places, there just isn’t demand for more. People that live in high density areas, want to live there because it’s a city. They aren’t going to want to put up with both living in a high density building and rural area because that’s the worst possible combination. But people put up with living in a high density area because of the benefits of a city and people put up with the inconvenience of rural area because of the space. They are kind of mutually exclusive ideas.

RandallBrown• 5 years ago

I prefer density because of the things density brings with it. Things like bars, restaurants, public transit, shopping, sports etc.

I don't want to drive to those things. I want to live among them.

oxymoran3• 5 years ago

Makes sense when you are young for sure. Especially young and single and looking for a partner. That sort of stuff loses its tends to lose its luster when you are 40 married and have kids.

Karrot_Kream• 5 years ago

Why wouldn't you oppose density?

Not everyone dislikes density and not everyone is motivated by rising housing prices. People are different. It's why I find it so silly that US zoning has created a lifestyle monoculture through most of the US.

AnimalMuppet4• 5 years ago

I don't know about that. More housing means more shops and restaurants within walking distance; it means it's more likely that bike lanes are created, and so on. If I want that kind of thing, then more housing helps me get it.

... but isn't sufficient to get people to change their behavior.

That may still be true, despite what I say here.

lijogdfljk• 5 years ago

Yea i've never quite understood this housing issue but i've always been confused why everyone wants to live so densely.

I feel like as a country we should be spreading out, not huddling. But i also dislike living in cities, so maybe that's just me.

zajio1am• 5 years ago

I use a conjoint survey experiment to provide evidence that preferences for single-family development are ubiquitous. Across every demographic subgroup analyzed, respondents preferred single-family home developments by a wide margin.

One thing is verbal preference in questionnaire, a different thing is revealed preference in the market, where realistic economic constraints are applied (equi-affordable high density apartments would be in much more desirable locations than single-family homes, in the same location high-density apartments would be much cheaper).

nitrogen5• 5 years ago

revealed preference in the market

Revealed preference is just a polite way of describing either exploiting vice or taking advantage of someone in a weaker economic position. Works well enough for your average A/B test on a small website, but we can and should be more aspirational when dealing with housing, community, and society.

ravenstine2• 5 years ago

I don't think either side of the argument is necessarily wrong. Both high and low density housing bring different pros and cons as well as different elements that the residents of either one may not appreciate of the other.

The question of whether one form of housing development is better than the other is a red herring.

What we must ask is why we've organized cities the way we have, whether we can change how they are organized, and if we even should. That's because, let's face it, there's a form of NIMBY for both. Create more high density housing and the people with McMansions complain. Build some McMansions and the high density people cry "gentrification!" None of these people are going away, and neither one necessarily needs to lose their way of life.

The way I see it, there's too much a dichotomy between the city-life and the suburban or rural life. We might find ways to for them to better work together

For instance, although high density housing can be a good thing for many, from a structural standpoint they mostly make sense in dense urban cities and the outskirts of said cities. But why have dense urban cities in the 2020's? Why can't suburbs actually live up to the urb part?

Maybe we can actually use a lot of the vacant land we still have in America to create systems of small cities that can satisfy the needs of the many as well as the few? I don't think that there would be as much an opposition to high density development if it could be planned in such a way not to step on the toes of those who don't want to be around high density housing while still having a place for it. It would be better for policing and a sense of community.

Better yet, create networks of paths for bikes and tiny vehicles between said small cities. I mean actual bike paths, not the fake ones we paint on existing roads designed for cars. Economic opportunities could be created along those paths and make it simpler for towns to have their own cultures yet be involved with each other and easy to travel between without the hell of vehicle traffic.

I guess my thought is rather vague, but I still feel that we always end up asking the wrong questions.

goda90• 5 years ago

Not Just Bikes has a recent video[0] talking about the lack of middle ground for suburbs in North America.

I think a big problem is that laws as they are prevent variety. Either everything must be single family homes with huge setbacks and wide roads, or it is doomed to be bought up by large apartment developers. Is it a threat to your ability to have a yard and two car garage if the house next door is a duplex and the end of the block has a corner store with a couple apartments above it? No, but the laws make it so that only your yard and two car garage can exist in your neighborhood regardless.

[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWsGBRdK2N0

nemothekid7• 5 years ago

If you don't think they are wrong in how they feel, I hope you can be convinced that one side is more morally wrong than the other. You should unpack what you meant you say 'high density people cry "gentrification!"'. The people in the McMansions are complaining that their "housing value" goes down. The high density people are complaining that they are being priced out of a place to live.

If I had to choose between protecting "housing value" and having people be homeless (or rather, the working class spending 60-70% of their income on housing), I'd side with the high density people.

More specifically,

For instance, although high density housing can be a good thing for many, from a structural standpoint they mostly make sense in dense urban cities and the outskirts of said cities. But why have dense urban cities in the 2020's? Why can't suburbs actually live up to the urb part?

There is a huge difference between Manhattan and Amsterdam, and Amsterdam's multifamily housing is what alot of YIMBYs argue we should have; however alot of Amsterdam's housing is completely banned in the US.

ravenstine2• 5 years ago

No, I don't have to "unpack" anything. I'm not the one making a value judgment within that framework. You seem to think I am making a judgment, which I assume you think is a negative one given your choice of words, because I said "gentrification". People who say their neighborhood is being gentrified may be justified or they may be not. It's really not relevant given how I already framed my argument starting from the first sentence.

It's possible that one side is more morally wrong than the other, and it's at least inherently true. In fact I would bet we'd agree on which is the most morally wrong. That doesn't really matter because both sides have valid positions.

AnimalMuppet4• 5 years ago

I'm not sure your argument works here. When people complain about gentrification, they don't mean (as far as I can tell) tearing down high-rise apartments to build a McMansion. They mean first-ring suburban homes being driven up in price. So it seems to me that densification is the cure for the complaint about gentrification. Create enough higher-density housing to overcome the price increase of the gentrification.[1][2]

[1] This presumes that the gentrification complaint is a good faith one. Instead, it could amount to "I want my neighborhood to be remain one of small, single-family homes, but I don't want it to rise in price." I guess it's fine to want it, but I'm not sure that it's a problem that policy should solve.

[2] Increasing density in this way may also hinder gentrification. People who are causing gentrification by buying up homes in such neighborhoods are looking for that style of neighborhood. If some of the houses get replaced by high-rise apartments, well, do the gentrifiers really want to live in that neighborhood?

Eextra9534• 5 years ago

That style of layout is called 'urban village' and it hasn't worked in the long run because economic incentives will favor infill development that is closer to economic centers. This isn't to say that they can't work but there are many examples of failed urban villages that eventually turn into sprawling regions.

nine_k4• 5 years ago

Suburbs can't live up to the urb part because they are car-centric. What makes high density worth it I the ability to walk down a street and reach many points of interest, like a grocery or a gym or even a school. And not just one but a choice of them.

For said high density to be able to operate, people should widely use mass transit, because streets cannot and should not have room to let everybody drive a car.

This is why suburbia with single-family houses and driving everywhere, and a dense city with high-rises and subway are like oil and water, they can't mix freely.

frenchyatwork• 5 years ago

But why have dense urban cities in the 2020's? Why can't suburbs actually live up to the urb part?

A suburb living up to the urb part is really just a town or a small city. As for why you have suburbs, I think the primary reasons are economic, though there are social (and in some places racial) reasons as well. As it currently stands, ignoring the problem of atmospheric carbonization and climate change, it's cheaper to centralize industry. This issue is quite poignant in the tech industry, where things are extremely centralized, and where many people flock to the handful of cities that have the biggest tech companies.

Zigurd2• 5 years ago

Nobody I know of is proposing only high-density housing. The issue, especially in places like the Bay area is that density should have been going up closer in, instead of paving over the garlic fields in Gilroy. It is much less costly to make subway stations bigger and add cars to trains than it is to extend rail farther out.

There are existing solutions that would "create systems of small cities that can satisfy the needs of the many as well as the few." If US trains did not suck, Lawrence, Worcester, Springfield and more would see an economic boom and take pressure off the Boston housing market. I can fly into Schiphol overnight and take a train to Hilversum in the morning more easily and vastly more reliably than I can take the MBTA to Amtrak to New York.

bluejellybean• 5 years ago

Such is the beauty of America, if you don't like a place, you can go somewhere else with relative ease. People like dense urban places, they like suburban cul-de-sac, they also like quiet country living.

I personally really like a hub and spoke styled system for cities and towns, we have a little of that here in my neck of the woods (south-east Michigan). I can choose to live in a fast(ish) growing city or it's burbs, the small cozy town 15 minutes north of the city, or 20 minutes west in the rural country. To your point about biking trails, I'm in total favor of these types of developments and have been absolutely elated about the growth of it in my region.

[0] This is a recent map of the built and in-progress routes, it uses Ann Arbor, a small city with ~120k pop, as the hub, and connects it's to its various sister cities. It's got a long way to go, but having ridden some of these stretches, it's been an awesome experience to say the least. Part of this has been that, yes, it connects up small towns such as Chelsea, Dexter, and Ypsilanti, but it also connects up with various parks and recreation areas.

I've been planning a move from the city into the country, and these paths are part of the reason why. It doesn't really allow me to bike in on the daily, but it does make it a LOT more reasonable to spend an afternoon biking into the city, grabbing coffee, hitting the theater, grabbing dinner, and then grabbing groceries before heading back. Pair this with a remote job, and I don't think I would actually end up using my car very often, this is a huge win in my opinion.

[0] https://www.washtenaw.org/DocumentCenter/View/1258/B2B-Overv...

filoleg• 5 years ago

Create more high density housing and the people with McMansions complain. Build some McMansions and the high density people cry "gentrification!"

I don't know if it is just where I live (Seattle) or if it is common in other big cities trying to densify as well, but the "gentrification!" chant seems to be prevalent across both sides, not just the McMansion side.

Here we get "gentrification!" yells even when high-density residential buildings are constructed. In fact, we have NIMBYs fighting against increasing density behind their chant of "gentrification!" and "we have to preserve the character of this neighborhood!" at the same time.

melling• 5 years ago

“Across every demographic subgroup analyzed, respondents preferred single-family home developments by a wide margin.”

According to the article, this is a common desire.

I have not studied the issue. Are there examples of where switching from low density to high density worked out well?

resonantjacket5• 5 years ago

I have not studied the issue. Are there examples of where switching from low density to high density worked out well?

That's the default for most cities around the around besides American cities where low density suburbs eventually start building 4/5 story buildings and then taller ones.

zip12344• 5 years ago

Even if that is the desire, it should not be mandated by law. Also, the framing of 'low' vs 'high' density is bad way to frame the issue. For most places where this is an issue the question is 'medium' density or 'more medium' density. Half of Seattle is zoned single family detached. Seattle is not low density.

a-dub• 5 years ago

some people like housing on land, other people like housing that is attached to busy public spaces.

both options have their tradeoffs and what makes sense is both individual and subjective.

kashunstva• 5 years ago

Since only the abstract is available to the general public, I can only speculate on what the article actually says.

That said, I've long thought that the opposition to high density development is partly driven by the complete asynchrony between private development and public infrastructure. I live in a rural area adjacent to a medium-size metropolitan area (pop ~400K). With alarming frequency, private entities put up high-rise residential structures; but beyond cursory project review and maybe an access lane or two our municipal governments do nothing with foresight. There is no consideration given to the system-wide impact of these dense developments.

lotsofpulp• 5 years ago

Opposition to high density development is because everyone likes space. But everyone cannot afford for everyone else to have space.

The sweet spot is when you have space, and others do not have space.

As for infrastructure, I am convinced there is no in between possibility. Either you optimize for dense living, or non dense living. There is no world where we can have our cake and eat it too.

Eextra9534• 5 years ago

I live in a similar setting and this has been my experience as well. New HD housing is approved, the developer pays the impact fees, but the city doesn't build the improvements for years and years.

throwaway0a5e3• 5 years ago

"I can spend the money on what I want today and let the next guy who holds office deal with the problem"

betwixthewires17• 5 years ago

I'm opposed to high density housing as well, for myself, personally. That's why I don't live in a city.

But being opposed to it generally, in a city no less, is a bit ridiculous. Either you want/need to live in a place with a ton of people or you don't. If you don't like traffic and neighbors upstairs don't live in a city. If you don't like long drives to the grocery store and needing to rely on a car to get around and on interpersonal business instead of professional employment, live in a city. But this middle of the road, cake and eat it too, cities designed for cars, urban sprawl by ordinance just makes things suck for everyone involved, it's the worst of both worlds.

giantg222• 5 years ago

Many people are forced out of rural areas due to the availability of work. I would prefer a rural area with some land, but it's difficult to find a good job in those areas.

cheriot26• 5 years ago

Those people get screwed the most by high rent and long commutes... that are the direct result of prohibiting dense housing.

mikepurvis• 5 years ago

Hasn't one of the big lessons of COVID been that anyone can work from anywhere that there's a decent internet connection?

AnthonyMouse6• 5 years ago

I would prefer a rural area with some land, but it's difficult to find a good job in those areas.

Ironically, that's because we restrict density in cities.

Suppose you have a city, San Francisco, ~17,000 people per square mile. About a quarter of what it is in Manhattan.

For the same number of people, if the density was higher, the city would cover less area. And then the number of miles away from the city center you would have to go before you were living with cows would go down.

betwixthewires17• 5 years ago

I wouldn't call that being forced, I'd call that weighing your priorities and making a decision.

Where I live, you can pay your own rent alone working a full time minimum wage job. If you're turning that down, the trade off isn't worth it. You would rather live in a densely packed place if it enables you to do professional work not available to you otherwise.

It's always a trade off.

jltsiren3• 5 years ago

Those people voluntarily leave rural areas due to their personal preferences. They would rather have a good job in an area that can support them than live in a pleasant area with worse job prospects.

People are rarely interested in living in dense urban areas due to the density itself. They are usually far more interested in the consequences of the density and the opportunities enabled by it.

asdfsd234234444• 5 years ago

In other words, "not in my backyard". But other people's backyard is fine!

nine_k4• 5 years ago

The important part here is that the OP moved their backyard in order to avoid high density next to it.

Commendable, I'd say.

giantg222• 5 years ago

That's basically the point of democracy and local levels of government - sufficient support at the local level means they make a change that fits the desires of the constituents. Different areas have different desires, and thus different laws.

Why should I care if there's high density housing in cities if I don't live there? Let those people decide what they want for that area.

AnimalMuppet4• 5 years ago

For those who want it, let them have it - all of it. Not the halfway version we have now.

Doing so, generally, will make things worse for someone like GP, because when they do go into the city, it will be less car-friendly.

So I think your reply is somewhat less than charitable.

ruddct• 5 years ago

But being opposed to it generally, in a city no less, is a bit ridiculous

Here in NYC we call these folks 'Manhattanites against the Manhattanization of Manhattan'. Shockingly, quite a few of them exist.

mandevil• 5 years ago

Walking my kid to his second favorite playground on the Upper East Side, there was a sign opposing the shadows from the Blood Center Tower (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/18/nyregion/new-york-blood-c...). Because why should Manhattan have a gasp 23 story building! It would ruin the character of this neighborhood in Manhattan to have a building that is 70 meters high!

What utter nonsense.

dragonwriter4• 5 years ago

That's why I don't live in a city.

“city” encompasses suburbs/exurbs as well as urban cores

nine_k4• 5 years ago

A city only "encompasses" suburbs because suburbanites drive to the city to work.

Functionally I'd say that the urban space ends where mass transit ends.

giantg222• 5 years ago

I think that depends. You could be talking about the actually city (like jurisdiction and laws within the city limits) or you could be talking about the Greater [city] Area/Metro Area. Or even something else.

betwixthewires17• 5 years ago

Sure, and those suburbs are for people that want the benefits of the city and are willing to pay a premium for less of the downsides, and also create more traffic for themselves to sit in. They've made a trade off as well, they live a little more densely packed than I do, but a little less than true urban dwellers, and their commute is longer, property maintenance is higher, living cost is usually a little more, they rely on a car. Personally not worth it to me, so I don't choose to live there either.

rrrrrrrrrrrryan• 5 years ago

But this middle of the road, cake and eat it too, cities designed for cars, urban sprawl by ordinance just makes things suck for everyone involved, it's the worst of both worlds.

It probably seems nice to these people at first.

Their property values go up, undesirable (a.k.a. poor) neighbors get pushed away to the outskirts of town, gridlock traffic is kept at bay, the town maintains its low-rise charm (whatever that means), etc.

But longer term, it causes strange distortions. In San Francisco, the people working the customer services jobs are sometimes homeless because there is nowhere affordable within commuting distance. Artists and musicians just straight-up leave, causing the city to become a cultural wasteland. And in the past year or two we're finally starting to see talent flight due to the out-of-control rent spirals and the rise of remote work.

Nobody's really benefitting from this; it's just lousy regulatory capture by landowners that's begun to backfire on them. You can't encase a tree in a glass box and expect it to magically stop growing. Ultimately, you just have to let people build what they want on their land, or your city will not only stop growing, it will begin to wither.

ZoomerCretin3• 5 years ago

The negatives of these zoning laws are vastly worse than most people know.

US GDP would be 50% higher than it is now if we did not have exclusionary zoning laws. (https://www.theregreview.org/2018/06/14/somogyi-zoning-codes...)

If New York City and the San Francisco Bay Area alone removed their exclusionary and needlessly restrictive zoning laws, the average worker's income would rise by $9,000 per year.

6gvONxR4sf7o6• 5 years ago

I'm opposed to high density housing as well, for myself, personally. That's why I don't live in a city.

Sometimes the city comes to you. That's what's happening all over, where people are in suburbs outside the city, but the city grows and suddenly they learn that where they live isn't considered the outskirts anymore, and everyone's pissed that they oppose high density housing.

betwixthewires17• 5 years ago

The city didn't come to them. They chose to live in close proximity to enjoy it's benefits thinking they could avoid the trade off entirely, forever.

They even considered this a benefit when they decided that as the population rose their property value would go up. They considered the state of affairs they're complaining about to be a good investment decision.

The suburbs are never truly outside the city, this is an illusion, and everyone knows it, and they knew it going in, they're just pretending they're getting the short end of the stick here.

Eextra9534• 5 years ago

I can't access the article.

There is a lot of opposition to high density that is racist and selfish. However, in my experience, a lot of people who are not ignorant or racist are opposed to high density housing because it is built in places that lack infrastructure to support high density housing. I think there would be a lot less opposition if cities were more proactive in improving infrastructure (more parks, mass transit, wider roads, etc.) before high density housing was developed.

thenewwazoo• 5 years ago

That's an impossible conundrum. Who's going to pay for increased mass transit if there's nobody to ride it? Who's going to pay for more parks if there aren't enough people to use them? (Wider roads are counter-intuitive: dense development needs fewer, narrower roads, not wider).

One thing or the other has to happen, and there is demand for more development now. Let the development happen and the demand for infrastructure will follow.

zip12344• 5 years ago

The infrastructure is not the problem. Cities can build this easily with increased tax base. Most roads are way overbuilt anyways.

jltsiren3• 5 years ago

In my experience, the same people who oppose new housing due to the lack of infrastructure often also oppose building that infrastructure. They don't really oppose the housing itself but changes in their neighborhood.

kaibee2• 5 years ago

are opposed to high density housing because it is built in places that lack infrastructure to support high density housing.

I've seen this objection a few times now but never actually seen it sourced. Do you have a source?

I feel like there's some kind of conflict between that being true and the fact that suburbs can't afford to maintain the infrastructure that they _do_ have.

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/4/8/weve-built-citi...

Eextra9534• 5 years ago

I am active in my community and I engage with NIMBY groups to try and better understand their motivation. The top reasons they give are more traffic, less parking, more noise, less park and trail space.

To add, my experience is limited to living on the edge of a mid sized city that is currently seeing lots of growth in sections that were rural (think 2 lane roads and wide open meadows and creeks). I have no idea why people oppose HD housing in big cities or rural areas.

giantg222• 5 years ago

Is this some new phenomenon? The abstract doesn't really provide any shocking or new info. I don't see any relation to tech either.

bentice• 5 years ago

Automobiles are the main factor. Cars made it possible for single family home culture -> cities were designed around cars -> now this culture is the ideal as it is what cities are explicitly designed for.

Self driving will be an interesting addition to the mix. We will probably come up with new cultures around that technology.

tomlagier• 5 years ago

Morally, I'm very pro-high density housing. Just like I'm pro-public transit. But in reality, my expressed preference is a single-family house with a yard and the convenience a car brings. I'm not sure how to square these things.

jeffbee• 5 years ago

That's fine if it you prefer it. The question is whether you can use the force of law to prevent other people from realizing their preference on their own property.

6gvONxR4sf7o6• 5 years ago

The problem is that some of people's preferences include externalities. I prefer that my neighbor upstream not dam or pollute the creek that runs to my yard. I prefer that my neighbor behind me not put up a 100 foot concrete wall that blocks my view of nature. But it's their property, as you say. So people band together and decide that they want to live in a community that abides by certain rules and pass zoning laws, getting us where we are today. Externalities are a thing, and surely at least some zoning makes sense.

oxymoran3• 5 years ago

But the answer is obvious: if the force of law can be applied over home design preferences, there is no longer such a thing as private property.Yes, there is a clear need for building regulations related to safety, but that’s an entirely different argument.

kiba2• 5 years ago

Cars are only convenient when there's infrastructure everywhere for cars, including parking spots.

NoGravitas• 5 years ago

It's also the case that adding infrastructure for cars makes everything else (walking, forms of public transit other than bus) less convenient, by taking up space and making everything far apart.

6gvONxR4sf7o6• 5 years ago

Because I know half the people won't read it if it takes the extra click, here's the abstract:

Virtually every city in the United States bans multifamily homes in at least some neighborhoods, and in many cities most residential land is restricted to single family homes. This is the case even though many metropolitan areas are facing skyrocketing housing costs and increased environmental degradation that could be alleviated by denser housing supply. Some scholars have argued that an unrepresentative set of vocal development opponents are the culprits behind this collective action failure. Yet, recent work suggests that opposition to density may be widespread. In this research note, I use a conjoint survey experiment to provide evidence that preferences for single-family development are ubiquitous. Across every demographic subgroup analyzed, respondents preferred single-family home developments by a wide margin. Relative to single family homes, apartments are viewed as decreasing property values, increasing crime rates, lowering school quality, increasing traffic, and decreasing desirability.

My personal values make "decreasing desirability" is the biggest factor, but I can't read the article to see if I'm representative.

hdesh2• 5 years ago

Here's the free version of the article from the author's webpage - (hopefully the same as sagepub)

https://faculty.ucmerced.edu/jtrounstine/Skittles_UAR_ALL.pd...

6gvONxR4sf7o6• 5 years ago

It's a shame that the question was about what effect density will have on different factors, rather than about what factors people care about. I'd rather know if people oppose density because it affects desirability than know if people just think density will make their place less desirable.

at_a_remove2• 5 years ago

Here we have the eternal struggle between people who know what they do and do not want, and other people who want to know better for the first group.

People who want to live in a single-family residence, they hate the noise from inconsiderate neighbors, and weird smells (cooking or otherwise). They hate fighting for parking. Technically, it is possible to construct multi-family buildings with good noise insulation and decent venting. In reality, people who have had a lot of miserable experiences in apartment buildings and dorms know that this will emphatically not happen. It could! It really could! But it won't.

It would be great if we were angels, but we are not. The people who construct apartment buildings cut so many corners, and we have ongoing evidence of issues with maintaining those buildings, which sometimes do things like collapse. Some people are not a lot of fun to live near, and people who recognize this want to put them at arm's length.

Daishiman3• 5 years ago

This would be great if it weren't for the fact that suburbanites that want to avoid all these problems were paying for the externalities of their massive road usage, massive land usage, and a host of other issues.

Suburban life is far, far more expensive for it to be sustainable than it is currently priced in most American suburbs. This issue cannot be overlooked.

at_a_remove2• 5 years ago

That's not really what we are discussing here. What we are talking about are preferences, and people "talking over" those preferences, for the "good" of the other party.

We can have a conversation about the costs, but we should really focus on the conversation on hand -- people have real preferences.

uberman9• 5 years ago

I pay taxes on my car and gas and licensing as well as tolls. If you believe I don't pay enough by all means propose how I should pay more in a way that both the affluent and less fortunate would support. I will be happy to entertain how I might "pay for the roads I use".

In a similar light, I pay property taxes on the land I ranch. I'm a software developer but I raise beef cattle and horses. Please let me know how you propose I pay for my massive land use outside of the taxes I already pay. Just keep in mind, that it would probably be best if other small business owners also agreed with your tax proposals.

adlorger2• 5 years ago

in the past, local voices did not have power to organize or constrict local development. its a form of social technology that has enabled this around the world over the past 80 years.

when people look at urban sprawl they see the culprit as cars, which is maybe true, but the real cause is democracy.

throwaway0a5e3• 5 years ago

Society didn't used to be rich enough to afford to waste resources entertaining arbitrary meddling into what people did on their private property. If you didn't like that the carriage shop next door made hammering noises all day tough luck, society was not going to impede that business owner's ability to feed his family for no reason other than the abutters' luxury.

The problem is wealth. We've solved our other problems so now we have nothing better to do than complain about what nearby landowners do on their own damn private property.

adlorger2• 5 years ago

I dont think the concern for what our neighbors are doing has gone up so much as our ability to make noise about it. Dealing with conflicts between neighbors is ancient.

999900000999• 5 years ago

Density is great if you can't afford a big house + a car.

Back in my younger days I had a 600$ apartment in LA right next to the train. Moderately safe area, and I didn't need a car. 10$ an hour was livable. Hell it was downright nice. 3$ bottles of Soju and 4$ Tortas. LA used to be a great place.

Now that same apartment is 1300$. In most of LA, really America, you need a car. With a car you're out like 500 to 800$ a month on the low end.

Before you know it even making good money your very very poor. If I get fired I don't need to keep making my car payment, having a car loan puts you in a bad spot.

throwaway55421• 5 years ago

Sometimes people just want a medium density city.

I like my medium density neighbourhood and I like being in a city that has them.

If I wanted to live in a tower block I'd move more centrally or to another city.

I also don't think that people who don't live somewhere, or are temporarily staying somewhere, should have a say in this over established families.

ZoomerCretin3• 5 years ago

In these discussions, people always seem to keep the discussion limited to lifestyle preferences. I prefer to live in a suburb, so we should keep this suburb encased in amber! I prefer to live in an urban area, and obviously it's better to decrease rents and per-capita tax burden by increasing density and the supply of housing.

There are many enormous negative externalities associated with suburban development: that this kind of forced restrictive zoning is responsible for GDP being _50% lower_ than it otherwise would be (https://www.theregreview.org/2018/06/14/somogyi-zoning-codes...), that it vastly increases carbon emissions by necessitating that everyone drive everywhere for every trip, and that it is responsible for the vast majority of the housing affordability and homelessness crisis.

The laws of supply and demand are simple, yet people seem to think it can't apply to housing.

"South Korea says it will boost available housing nationwide with a positive supply “shock” as President Moon Jae-in struggles to tame soaring home prices that are weighing on his approval ratings." (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-04/south-kor...)

In Tokyo, a huge megacity with a population of 37 million people, apartment rents can be incredibly cheap (https://twitter.com/IDoTheThinking/status/139141180481584743...), $400/month in an area only a 20 minute train ride from the center of town. There is not one city in the United States where this is true, because every city makes affordable housing illegal to placate rich NIMBYs.

Suburban NIMBY aesthetic and lifestyle preferences that are forced on everyone are causing middle-income and lower-income people to cut back on food, transportation, healthcare, and retirement savings. (https://twitter.com/aaronAcarr/status/1460393017639153673)

If it is wrong to force someone who prefers a suburban area to live in a dense urban area, is it not also wrong to force people who prefer cheaper rents, walkability, and the amenities of urban life to pay 3-6x as much to live in a desolate, anti-social, car-centric suburb?

adameasterling• 5 years ago

Relative to single family homes, apartments are viewed as decreasing property values, increasing crime rates, lowering school quality, increasing traffic, and decreasing desirability.

The problem is most cities only allow two kinds of development: Low density or high density. We're missing the middle!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_middle_housing

I've really enjoyed these two YouTube channels on the subject.

"Oh the Urbanity" has a great video on Montreal's "missing middle" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYCAVmKzX10

And "Not Just Bikes" discusses a "missing middle" neighborhood in Toronto: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWsGBRdK2N0

bradgranath• 5 years ago

Conservative political interests went nuts this elections season breathlessly exclaiming that we need to keep "Keep Mukilteo a Small Town!" as if it wasn't already next door to the Boeing Factory Buildings, and a Naval Complex that usually has a Nimitz-class carrier docked.

Opposition to High Density Development

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