
U.S. Millennials Report They Are Happier in Cities, Not Small Towns - jseliger
https://www.citylab.com/life/2018/06/millennials-are-happiest-in-cities/563999/
======
jstewartmobile
Urban cheerleaders are too narrowly focused, and still don't get it. The
government subsidized the shit out of suburbia in the cold war days for a
reason.

Time is running out on this whole go-to-the-city-and-join-the-creative-class
thing--the same way (and for many of the same reasons) it is running out on
_pax americana_.

~~~
eesmith
You're leaving us hanging - what is that reason?

My understanding is that it was to support the building and car industry, and
based on a land-use planning style, including zoning, that was popular 100
years ago. It also had a strong racist component in how it promoted whites
over others, like with redlining.

For example, [http://www.theamericanconservative.com/urbs/we-have-
always-s...](http://www.theamericanconservative.com/urbs/we-have-always-
subsidized-suburbia/) says it was "to stimulate the economy, and to constrain
the market to only good investments. These goals—plus the social assumptions
of the time—were reflected in the FHA’s evaluation of a mortgage. The
standards included:"

* Large, new homes were given a higher score, because they increased demand for labor and materials. Older homes with small spaces didn’t create demand for new furniture. Features like long hallways and steep staircases lowered the rating, because they prevented easy moving of furniture.

* Homogeneity of neighboring housing stock was believed to indicate stable housing prices.

* It saw cul-de-sacs as the most desirable home locations, because they were most isolated from foot and auto traffic coming from outside of the neighborhood.

* The guidelines favored auto- rather than transit-oriented development. The idea was that this would increase demand for cars, which were a growing part of American manufacturing.

* Multi-use districts with “commercial, industrial, or manufacturing enterprise” were seen to threaten residential value.

~~~
jstewartmobile
Nukes. Putting your best and your brightest and your know-how all in the same
place--efficient... but not smart. The corporate welfare was just a "bonus".

~~~
eesmith
Ahh, I came across that argument in an old Heinlein essay.

I've never come across anything which demonstrates that there's a real
connection between the two. If that argument had any strong influence, I would
have expected something different than what we got.

To start, the suburbanization movement started before the atomic bomb was
development. The FHA started in the Depression, and it had a strong role in
shaping suburbia.

Levittown - as representative of the post-war suburban boom - started before
the Soviets had their first atomic bomb, back when we thought it would take
them 10-20 years.

Nor did the US suburbanization movement change once we developed H-bombs,
which are massively more destructive than atomic bombs. Nor did it change
because of Soviet arms build-up, either the boogey-man "missile gap" which
didn't exist, or the eventual buildup afterward to thousands of Soviet ICBMs.

For scale, the contiguous United States is 8M km² but most of it is
unpopulated or rural. The US census at
[https://www.census.gov/geo/reference/ua/urban-
rural-2010.htm...](https://www.census.gov/geo/reference/ua/urban-
rural-2010.html) (column UAAREALAND from "Changes in urbanized areas from 2000
to 2010") says that 88K mile² of the US live in urban or urban clusters with
at least 2,500 people. This includes suburbs. That's 226K km² across 500
distinct places.

The Soviets had 45,000 warheads, not all of which were on ICBMs. Each R-36M2
warhead has a yield of over 500KTons. Earlier models were in the megaton
range. But lets say it was only 100 KTon like the W-76. The air blast radius
for 100kTons is 33km². That's 7,000 nukes to destroy all non-hardened
buildings in all urban and suburban location in the US.

The USSR clearly had the capability of destroying all urban _and_ suburban
regions of the US.

Furthermore, the suburbanization plan we put into place decentralized people,
but not industry. (Heinlein pointed out the need to decentralize industry if
we are to use decentralization as an effective counter to nuclear war, so this
isn't a new observation.)

On top of that, zoning made the US less robust towards nuclear war. Once the
oil refineries are destroyed, the car infrastructure will break down because
the price of gas becomes exorbitant. If there were grocery stores, schools,
and medical care centers in walking distance of most suburban areas (as
promoted by the new urbanist movement) then those would help with the
transition to a post-war car-less life.

For that matter, how would the suburbs in the NE US get its food once the
transport hubs were destroyed? Why push people to the edges of the largest
cities rather than really distribute them around the country?

IMO, if nuclear war survival were the real plan, a better strategy would have
been to support small towns - really decentralize the country, and put people
closer to where the food is grown. Instead, we got a mass migration to the
cities (and suburbs), depopulating rural America.

Finally, the suburbanization plan was explicitly constructed to favor white
people, not the best and brightest. If the expectation was that the Soviets
would destroy the cities, but not the suburban populations who fled the urban
core ("white flight"), then it would not only have been a racist policy, but a
policy leaning towards of race genocide.

So, why do you think the US policy of subsidizing suburbia had any substantial
connection to a defensive strategy against nuclear war?

~~~
jstewartmobile
> _I 've never come across anything which demonstrates that there's a real
> connection between the two. If that argument had any strong influence, I
> would have expected something different than what we got._

Since when has our government taken the most efficient path? And who would
even know what that path should be without the benefit of hindsight? What
subsidy would be large enough to get the typical urbanite to _abruptly_ go
rural? It's not like a guy working at a bank is going to mount his horse, ride
over rugged terrain to a clearing, settle in, and start making soap out of
lard and ashes. There has to be a de-urbanization pipeline to gradually
diffuse people out of the major population centers.

The nuke stats are beside the point. Just looking back at the devastation
wrought in Europe (with conventional weapons) was reason enough to de-
concentrate. Industry is also beside the point. If we stumbled into a reality
where the US and the USSR were lobbing nukes at each other, gas and groceries
would be in the same bucket as netflix or nintendo. Keeping enough people
around to say that you still have a country would be the new gold standard.

" _suburbanization plan... to favor white people_ " is your phrase, not mine.
If I had to label it, it would be a lure-people-out-of-the-cities-with-
subsidies plan. As for the racial aspect, probably just another nth-order
effect. Those happen when you start throwing free money around. All I had to
say about the "best and brightest" was that concentrating them in the big
cities like New York and Seattle is not a smart move.

As for why I think this was driven by defense goals, I am not a sci-fi guy.
WWII militarized us, and we never de-militarized. Most of what happens here
(especially in tech, but also in finance) is seeded by one defense goal or
another. Whether those goals are desirable/sound/morally defensible/etc is
another story.

~~~
eesmith
You wrote "The government subsidized the shit out of suburbia in the cold war
days for a reason" and implied that it was to decentralize the US population
as a defensive strategy for survival after a nuclear exchange with the Soviet
Union.

Given the absence of any evidence for your hypothesis, and the mountain of
evidence which shows other reasons for the US subsidization of
suburbanization, why should I believe you?

You ask "What subsidy would be large enough to get the typical urbanite to
abruptly go rural?"

If there was a post-war goal to encourage the US population to decentralize,
as a defensive mechanism against a thermonuclear exchange, then that question
is irrelevant.

The question should have been "how do we prevent rural flight?", that is, "how
do we keep rural and small town residents from moving to likely targets?".

Instead, your question seems to concern how to get someone _now_ to go rural.
But I'm asking about the Cold War days.

You wrote: "gas and groceries would be in the same bucket as netflix or
nintendo. Keeping enough people around to say that you still have a country
would be the new gold standard."

Yes, that is my point. If you want people to survive a nuclear exchange, the
you should set up the infrastructure so it has a dual-purpose use once things
like gas and groceries are more dreams than anything else.

You want to encourage people to live in small rural towns? Have health centers
within walking distance. These are useful _now_ , because people leave if they
don't have health care, and they would become critical once there is no more
gas to go to regional hospitals.

Make sure there are schools, make sure there are local social centers. These
help keep towns alive, and will be the nucleus of the new life post-war,
because kids will still need an education (during the winter months when
there's nothing else to do), and a place to handle local politics and courts.

Did this happen? No. Instead of subsidizing the existing distributed
population, we subsidized living in more centralized target zones that were
less robust to even pre-nuclear fire bombing.

You wrote ""... to favor white people" is your phrase, not mine".

I don't follow your comment. It's not just my phrase. It's the standard view
of government and private housing industry practices during that time.
Levittown, for example, was a whites-only suburb. Quoting
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levittown,_New_York](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levittown,_New_York)
:

> William Levitt attempted to justify their decision to only sell homes to
> white families by saying that it was in the best interest for business.[12]
> He claimed their actions were not discriminatory but intended to maintain
> the value of their properties. The company explained that it was not
> possible to reduce racial segregation while they were attempting to reduce
> the housing shortage. .. They believed that potential white buyers would not
> want to buy a house in Levittown if they were aware that they would have
> black neighbors.

While Shelley v. Kraemer decided that those covenants were unconstitutional,
it took another 20 years for the Fair Housing Act to prohibit housing
discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.

In the meanwhile, practices like redlining, and the creation of interstates
through traditionally black neighborhoods, prevented the buildup of black
wealth that white neighborhoods got.

This isn't some "nth-order effect" but deliberate policy (that is, n == 1).

You write: "seeded by one defense goal or another"

We have a longer history of US goals - military and otherwise - being directed
by the interests of large capital owners, starting with the slave-holding
Founding Fathers.

~~~
jstewartmobile
> _" The question should have been "how do we prevent rural flight?", that is,
> "how do we keep rural and small town residents from moving to likely
> targets?"_

That had already been addressed by dust-bowl era ag policies. Until the 90s,
farmers were subsidized even harder than housing. So, money already flowing to
keep the rurals in-place, an interstate highway system under way, cheap money
for residential, and preexisting racial tensions. Without the benefit of
hindsight, that looks like a fairly sound recipe for migrating people to the
periphery.

> _" If you want people to survive a nuclear exchange, the you should set up
> the infrastructure so it has a dual-purpose use once things like gas and
> groceries are more dreams than anything else."_

In a nuclear exchange, job #1 is to not get vaporized. Gas and groceries are
much further down on the list. As for why there wasn't a more coordinated plan
instead of cheap money, it's the USA during the red scare. Getting too
specific looks too much like a " _five year plan_ ".

> _...Instead of subsidizing the existing distributed population, we
> subsidized living in more centralized target zones that were less robust to
> even pre-nuclear fire bombing._

That is not the pattern I've seen in any major US city. Until the end of the
cold war, and especially in the southeast, there were tree-rings of suburban
pushes radiating from the city centers. Rural became suburban, wilderness
became rural, city centers decayed. Then, with the fall of the USSR and the
"peace dividend", one huge reason for suffering suburbia had been removed.
Guess when urban renewal started taking off?

As for racism and capitalism, that's your biz man. I'm not disagreeing with
it, just not particularly impressed with it as a cause. It's like if I had a
headache, and my doctor told me it was because I have a pulse.

~~~
eesmith
I note that you still have not presented any evidence for your statement that
the post-war subsidization of suburban growth was driven in part by a
deliberate plan for decentralization.

I have presented much evidence pointing out that it was explicit coordinated
government plan to boost the building, auto, and furniture industries, among
others, and explicit policy to promote racial segregation.

Yet despite the evidence that these long-term plans existed, you say that the
government doesn't do coordinated plans because 'Getting too specific looks
too much like a "five year plan".'?

Let me quote from the Wikipedia article on the FHA:

> In the 1930s, the Federal Housing Authority established mortgage
> underwriting standards that significantly discriminated against minority
> neighborhoods.[13] Between 1945 and 1959, African Americans received only 2
> percent of all federally insured home loans.[14] As the significance of
> subsidized mortgage insurance on the housing market grew, home values in
> inner-city minority neighborhoods plummeted. Also, the approval rates for
> minorities were equally low. After 1935, the FHA established guidelines to
> steer private mortgage investors away from minority areas.

How is that simply "cheap money" being available, and _not_ something like a
coordinated plan across far more than five years?

You wrote: "Until the 90s, farmers were subsidized even harder than housing.
So, money already flowing to keep the rurals in-place"

The second part of that sentence - 'keep the rurals in-place' \- is not
correct. Quoting the Wikipedia page on "Rural flight":

> Post-World War II rural flight has been caused primarily by the spread of
> industrialized agriculture. Small, labor-intensive family farms have grown
> into, or have been replaced by, heavily mechanized and specialized
> industrial farms. While a small family farm typically produced a wide range
> of crop, garden, and animal products—all requiring substantial labor—large
> industrial farms typically specialize in just a few crop or livestock
> varieties, using large machinery and high-density livestock containment
> systems that require a fraction of the labor per unit produced. For example,
> Iowa State University reports the number of hog farmers in Iowa dropped from
> 65,000 in 1980 to 10,000 in 2002, while the number of hogs per farm
> increased from 200 to 1,400.

Where does the money from farm subsidies go? Quoting
[https://theweek.com/articles/461227/farm-subsidies-
welfare-p...](https://theweek.com/articles/461227/farm-subsidies-welfare-
program-agribusiness) :

> In practice, the program keeps food prices high, costing consumers billions,
> while funneling most of its aid to giant agribusinesses and wealthy farmers.
> About 75 percent of total subsidies go to the biggest 10 percent of farming
> companies, ...

You wrote: "Then, with the fall of the USSR and the "peace dividend", one huge
reason for suffering suburbia had been removed. Guess when urban renewal
started taking off?"

People are only listening now because the old ways, which started in the post-
war years, are no longer affordable. It was a "Growth Ponzi Scheme" \-
[https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-
scheme/](https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme/) \- and we
reached the end of the scam and discovered we've dug ourselves into a hole.
The new urban movement offers a way out of that hole. (Another is to raise
taxes on the rich, but our system is set up to keep that from happening.)

As that link points out, growth in America slowed in the late 1970s and early
1980s, so before the end of the Cold War. Instead, "one significant factor was
that our suburban cities were now starting to experience cash outflows for
infrastructure maintenance."

I keep on pointing to standard references about the origins of suburbanization
as a way to promote long-term business and racial policies. It would be nice
to see what your evidence is that your nuclear war hypothesis has any
justification beyond your personal beliefs.

~~~
jstewartmobile
My original point was that putting all of our eggs in the same basket is not a
good idea, and that our urban cheerleaders have quality-of-life tunnel-vision.
I do not believe it is necessary to quote chapter and verse to make that
point.

Where 75% of farm subsidies go or don't go, or what FHA claims as their goal,
or the yield and quantity of soviet armaments, is just extraneous information.
Playing with Google earth, or just being old enough to remember, will show
that there's hardly a piece of dry land in this country that hasn't had a
house, a road, or a gas station put on it.

As for intention, perhaps I am giving the government too much credit? I read a
lot of these 20th century memoirs and anthologies where some technocrat--like
a von Neumann or a Kennan--writes a missive, and a thousand wheels are set
into motion. Looking back on it, the sheer efficacy of it all looks more like
a missive than a popular movement. The popular movements, like prohibition or
Iraq, are often far uglier.

------
husamia
this is strongly biased

~~~
eesmith
Biased in what way? Is it a wrong bias?

