Did highways cause suburbanization?

http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2009/09/did-highways-cause-suburbanization.html

by noheartanthony • 17 years ago

46 51 17 years ago

dangoldin2• 17 years ago

The invention of the car caused suburbanization. As soon as cars were invented roads and gas stations started springing up. It's natural that people followed those.

kingkongrevenge5• 17 years ago

Cars were widespread and affordable in the 20s and 30s. Car dependent suburbs without street cars didn't happen until the 40s and 50s. It's not as simple as just cars. It was the confluence of Eisenhower's interstate program and white flight from blacks as well as a crescendo of corruption and incompetence in the governance of the urban cores.

I think a major piece of the puzzle is that living in a car dependent area has been an effective way for the middle class to segregate from poor people. If you're not rich enough for the well policed part of the city, you can still get a car and live somewhere poor people have difficulty getting getting to.

dangoldin2• 17 years ago

My point was the highways were an indirect effect of cars. Highways were a secondary effect of cars and suburbs were a tertiary effect of cars.

What you say makes sense but I think suburbs would have sprung up over time without highways just because the population was growing and people would be willing to move further away from urban areas as cars became safer and more common.

mmt• 17 years ago

I would suggest that saying anything as substantial as an automobile being "widespread" or "affordable" during the 20s and 30s is overreaching, considering there was something of a worldwide economic instability at the time.

I think a major piece of the puzzle is that living in a car dependent area has been an effective way for the middle class to segregate from poor people.

For me, personally, this very much drives my choice to live in the suburbs and to drive a car instead of using public transportation: I'm unwilling to settle for the lowest common denominator.

gehant• 17 years ago

The influence of mobility in American society goes far deeper than just the physical mobility discussed in this article:

-land rights mobility

-class system mobility

-economic mobility

wallflower2• 17 years ago

“The cities will be part of the country; I shall live 30 miles from my office in one direction, under a pine tree; my secretary will live 30 miles away from it too, in the other direction, under another pine tree. We shall both have our own car. We shall use up tires, wear out road surfaces and gears, consume oil and gasoline. All of which will necessitate a great deal of work...enough for all.”

—Le Corbusier, The Radiant City (1967)

Quote is part of excerpt from an excellent book on the topic: "Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream" Also, "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" is a seminal work.

http://www.radicalurbantheory.com/misc/subnation.html

hanskuder• 17 years ago

See also: "The Geography of Nowhere" by James Howard Kunstler.

"The American highway is now like television, violent and tawdry. The landscape it runs through is littered with cartoon buildings and commercial messages. We whiz by them at fifty-five miles an hour and forget them, because one convenience store looks like the next. They do not celebrate anything beyond their mechanistic ability to sell merchandise. We don't want to remember them. We did not savor the approach and we were not rewarded upon reaching the destination, and it will be the same next time, and every time. There is little sense of having arrived anywhere, because everyplace looks like noplace in particular."

silentbicycle• 17 years ago

It's more complicated than that. Suburbanization existed before highways - there were streetcar commuters, after all. Most American suburbanization has its roots in the decade after WW2, however. The economy was running on its wartime momentum, and the GI Bill gave waves of veterans college tuition, money for housing, etc. They overwhelmingly migrated to new suburbs.

(Segregated universities, among other things, meant that black veterans had a harder time using the benefits from the GI Bill. This was a major factor in the "white flight" to the suburbs.)

I was a history major, did my senior year research on suburbanization, and still barely scratched the surface. It's a big topic. If you want to talk about suburbanization in the US, though, look at the postwar era. The gradual switch to a car-based society provided the infrastructure, but the postwar economic and civil changes funded it.

onreact-com• 17 years ago

They did not cause it they contributed to it as the original source says:

"This paper assesses the extent to which the construction of new limited access highways has contributed to central city population decline."

There were many factors involved in suburbanization. Emergence of a new middle class, white flight, proliferation of cars (thus highways have been built) to name just a few.

RyanMcGreal2• 17 years ago

>A longer and better Metro system -- most of all with better parking -- would have meant even more people moving to the suburbs.

Transit oriented suburbs are structured much differently from highway oriented suburbs.

There is a strong economic premium attached to proximity to the transit station - the closer you are to the station, the higher the premium. As a result, transit oriented development tends to produce dense nodes along the transit corridor. This leads to walkable, mixed-use neighbourhoods that enjoy economies of scale, density and association and can become economic engines in their own right.

On the other hand, proximity to a highway is an economic drain - the closer you are to the highway, the bigger the economic hit. As a result, highway oriented development results in sparse, low-density land use that generally separates uses and requires car ownership to perform any errand.

kingkongrevenge5• 17 years ago

The orange line train he's talking about runs down the middle of I-66, a major highway. There are dense, high price walkable areas all along the orange line corridor. They sprang up out of car dealerships and strip malls in the 25 years since the line was built.

rg• 17 years ago

> Transit oriented suburbs are structured much differently from highway oriented suburbs.

A critical insight. Look at the great Victorian suburbs around London, built along the railroads. These suburbs did not empty out central London, quite the contrary. And the rail connections resulted in dense walkable towns along the railroad lines, with often no car required at either end (in the nearer, denser suburbs).

Even today, people judge the price of homes in greater London by adding together the annual cost of rent or mortgage PLUS the cost of a railroad annual commuter pass into the London central zone.

wallflower2• 17 years ago

Cul-de-sacs where you'd have to cut through neighbor's yards are one of the reasons public transportation does not work in suburbs (straight line distance is not walking distance)

hristov2• 17 years ago

Also it should be noted that transit is much cheaper and much more efficient than highways. So if you are going to pay tax money to subsidize something transit is a much better choice simply because you get more bang for the buck.

Anyway you cut it it is cheaper to transport a single human than to transport a human traveling with a 2 ton metal shell around him.

RyanMcGreal2• 17 years ago

To this I'd add the argument that transit is a public good - i.e. it benefits everyone, not just those who directly use it, by reducing congestion, reducing air pollution and GHG emissions, and encouraging the efficient, productive use of land and materials.

Highways, on the other hand, are a public bad (I think that's the technical term...) - i.e. they produce net negative externalities that must be borne by society as a whole.

Tangurena3• 17 years ago

In the early parts of the 20th Century, developers had to build tramways to their developments because there were no cars back then, and prospective customers needed some way to get to work (note that these neighborhoods would now be considered urban, although they were suburbs 100 years ago). That's why LA had over 1000 miles of tramways by 1910, and Devner had 300+ miles of tramways at that time as well. Some of the more upscale neighborhoods are ones along the tramways which had been dug by by the late 50s/early 60s.

bpyne4• 17 years ago

I'm not sure if highways caused or simply enabled suburbanization.

One commenter expressed confusion about why suburbs seem to be hated. I'm not sure suburbs themselves are hated or the design of them for the last 40 years is hated.

From ages 30-38, I lived in a suburb. Prior to that I lived in a variety of places but mostly urban areas. What I came to dislike greatly about suburb design is the need for a car to do simple things like buy a pint of half and half on Saturday morning for coffee. It seemed absurd that I couldn't walk out to a convenience store and be back in 5 minutes to enjoy my freshly brewed coffee.

What often develops in a suburban area is the next irritant: strip malls. They seem like a godsend to a new suburb. But, as traffic increases, a simple Saturday afternoon errand - e.g. buying groceries for the night's dinner - can easily take an hour due to wading through mall traffic.

When my wife and I visited Sonoma County 5 years back we were drawn to the setup of the towns like Sonoma and Healdsburg. They were setup to have a town center that was totally walkable and acted as a community center. If suburbs were designed more like small towns, with mixed residential and commercial use, I think they would be more palatable.

nathanwdavis3• 17 years ago

Why is suburban living so evil? For me, living in the suburb just makes sense. The cost of living is far less, the schools are better, I can enjoy the outdoors more, and crime is lower too.

Mint says I spend a total of about $270 per month to fuel and maintain two cars. Even if I were able to get rid of owning both cars altogether and move into the city, it would still cost me much more for a lower standard of living (by most people's standards).

ntownsend2• 17 years ago

The environmental impact and culture of waste are enough to make suburban-living evil to me. It's not just about the cost to you in driving your ass around.

nathanwdavis3• 17 years ago

Of course, it's not "just about the cost". However, you could say it is "mostly" about cost of living and standard of living. It's cool if you think suburban living is evil, but don't just say it is evil. Instead work to create a better city with better schools and lower crime. Basically what I'm saying is: Stop whining and do something.

roc2• 17 years ago

Zoning.

By itself, the suburbs are fine. But it's the zoning that goes out of its way to pave all that greenery you theoretically move out to see, that causes the problems.

No mixed-use zoning clusters the lower-income together into apartment complexes and neighborhoods that have a net negative social effect. Parking lot requirements spread everything out to nigh-unwalkable distances. Varying or non-existent sidewalk requirements finish off any chance of walkability, or even bike-ability. All that space makes efficient mass transit implausible, forcing poorer/younger residents to lock up a significant chunk of their expenses in their cars, and making car trouble a near-catastrophic point of failure. All that space and all those cars also create traffic-related waste that's largely impossible to avoid and very expensive to scale with growth. Cul-de-sac neighborhoods kill any chance at efficient traffic flow. The spacing leads to higher infrastructure costs per resident (higher taxes) which retards or suffocates competition and advancement in the infrastructure space. Etc.

In short: suburbs are great place if you're relatively wealthy and they aren't too big yet. But they're not self-sufficient or healthy socio-economic communities.

bretthoerner• 17 years ago

> But they're not self-sufficient

In what way are urban areas self-sufficient?

bct4• 17 years ago

There's a lot of waste involved, and a lot of suburbs get free rides on the infrastructure of the urban areas they're attached to.

I don't know if they're evil, but it looks to me like they combine the worst aspects of urban living with the worst aspects of rural living (surrounded by people but isolated from them; at the same time you can have isolation, but not solitude).

yalestar• 17 years ago

It's not really that your living in suburbia is evil, it's the fact that suburban development is a hugely wasteful, inefficient, costly, and completely unsustainable mode of development.

kingkongrevenge5• 17 years ago

Every day car accidents kill a jet liner worth of Americans, and maim many more. Driving is arguably more dangerous than moderate smoking. Yet unlike smoking driving is subsidized and encouraged.

hachiya3• 17 years ago

And unlike smoking, driving has practical benefits, i.e. getting from point A to point B, enabling one to have a job, social outings, vacations, etc...

Smoking has no real benefits. It has a short term plus of making one "feel good"; but nobody claims smoking is "good", while the above goals of driving are.

So I don't really know what point you are trying to make. People all know the dangers of driving, but are willing to trade those for the benefits. People know the dangers of smoking, and are willing to trade those because they are addicted, and for no real benefits. There's a big difference.

skushch• 17 years ago

I'm confused about the "driving is subsidized part".

Last time I checked nobody helped me pay for my car, my registration or my gas taxes. Which do help pay for public transit...

Am I missing something?

bpyne4• 17 years ago

You're entitled to your own choice. Your decision points about what constitutes a "lower standard of living" are completely your own. I'm not sure the "most people's standards" part is supportable. I'd like to see some research about 20 and 30 somethings, since they are the ones making decisions now about where to settle and form families, and their distribution.

What constituted a "higher standard of living" for us was a short commute, walkable area, cultural activities near our house, diversity in every sense of the word, and an area with a sense of community.

For raising our daughter, we balanced the quality of public schools with the education received by being around different people from different walks of life. Our goal as parents is to raise not only a reasonably intelligent child, but one who can understand and empathize with people different from her.

Btw, despite being < 1 mile from what would be considered the inner city, we have very little crime. I think this is due in part to neighbors all being close. We know when someone is out of town and what work schedules are. We also have a decent contingent of people who work from home. Add to that my own impression, from being raised in a poor working class area, that inner city crime certainly exists but has taken on a boogie-man hype factor.

youngian• 17 years ago

Right on all counts. I wish everyone had these kinds of priorities and that sensible outlook on life.

I wouldn't trade my education at a broke-ass, shoddy, prison-like public city school for any private or suburban school with vaulted ceilings and brand new textbooks and everyone else looking and acting exactly like me.

And sure, there is crime in cities, but it's not like us city dwellers live in constant fear, scampering from one blue telephone to the next. My parents have had one break-in in the almost thirty years they've lived in the city. I've never been mugged or otherwise attacked. But I've met so many suburbanites who have ridiculous ideas about city life - all city dwellers carry around guns/knives, getting shot at is a frequent part of city life, etc.

angstrom• 17 years ago

I was raised in a rural area and grew up on a dairy farm, but I've lived in a suburb for the past 5 years. There is nothing natural, beautiful, or interesting about the environment to me. Its just an enormous waste of what used to be prime farmland that actually served a purpose. Turning that land into tracts of manicured lawns and parking lots created more problems than it solved.

People moved out to the burbs because it was the affluent thing to do and was supposed to guarantee a rewarding lifestyle. It's not for everyone. There are those, myself included, that find neither the relaxing solitude of the country, nor the engaging diversity of the city in the suburbs. It would have been a better use of resources to create a green city environments that would have served everyone.

nathanwdavis3• 17 years ago

Good points. I think if I were single, I would want to live in the city because the disadvantages I referred to just wouldn't matter if it was just me.

However, my inner city is apparently not as nice as yours, so for me the desire to live in the city and not have to drive as much is out weighed by my father/husband desires (whatever those are).

If I lived in the same city area as you I may have made the decision to be in the city even with my family.

jcdreads• 17 years ago

The original paper claims that highways are about 1/3 of the reason.

hristov2• 17 years ago

I don't agree with this article. He basically says that highways should not be called a subsidy because he does not feel good about calling them a subsidy. Sorry but this is not good reasoning.

Then he points out other reasons for suburbanization. Well, these reasons may exist but even so their existence does not prove that the other major reason -- the highway subsidy -- did not exist. In other words, if it wasn't for the highway subsidy the other issues, white flight etc., would not be as big, because only the richer could afford white flight.

gojomo• 17 years ago

The suburbs can't be all bad; Silicon Valley often surprises visitors with how suburban it is.

antonovka• 17 years ago

Note how many of the larger technology and biotech companies are now bussing a very sizable number of their employees in from San Francisco -- Apple, Genentech, Google, etc.

Smaller companies in the field are also buying into these shuttle services, eg, Genentech shares their shuttles with some smaller biotech/drug companies.

The Silicon Valley suburbs are a very unfortunate accident of available land and timing. Personally, the very first thing I did when I moved to Sunnyvale was start looking for an apartment in San Francisco -- I thought I could handle it, but found that I couldn't stand living in the area's suburbs.

Did highways cause suburbanization?

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