
The myth of revealed preference for suburbs - oftenwrong
http://cityobservatory.org/the-myth-of-revealed-preference-for-suburbs/
======
Isamu
>If so many people live in suburbs, it must be because that’s what they
prefer, right? But the evidence is to the contrary.

This article makes its point from the book "Zoned Out" (2005.) Correct me if
I'm wrong, but I think the argument is that zoning policies make suburban
sprawl, not free markets. They argue that if zoning restrictions were lifted
and development responded to free market forces, higher density housing would
result and more people would prefer that to sprawl.

I think that might be true - moderately. You might get a relative increase of
higher-density housing.

But I think sprawl just represents a long tail of real preferences among the
population. It may be relative price, it may be having a yard, it may be the
suburban school districts, it can be all kinds of things. And yeah, if people
had control, the suburbs wouldn't sprawl forever. It would be just their nice
suburban neighborhood and everybody else could be jammed into the city.

~~~
exelius
I would hold up Houston as the counterexample. It has zero zoning policies
whatsoever and is one of the most sprawled cities in the country, and everyone
lives in low-density single family ranch homes with huge floor plans and
drives an hour to work each way.

Developers still basically just plop large single-family residential
developments on random plots of land with few ways to stop them. In the
absence of zoning, developers will not build denser properties because they’re
riskier.

~~~
graeme
I just did a cursory search, and houston has mandatory parking minimums. Those
are one of the most sprawl policies you can find.

It also mandates setbacks from the street, wide roads, and long blocks.

Overall Houston does a lot of stuff right! But, I think they have still baked
sprawl into their system.

From what I can see, my dense Montreal neighbourbood would be illegal in
Houston. (It's illegal almost everywhere in North America, of course)

[https://marketurbanism.com/2016/09/19/how-houston-
regulates-...](https://marketurbanism.com/2016/09/19/how-houston-regulates-
land-use/)

~~~
so33
The aerial picture of downtown Houston with all its parking lots is a favorite
to show the deleterious effects of mandatory parking minimums:
[http://www.cdandrews.com/2014/09/surface-parking-lot-
design-...](http://www.cdandrews.com/2014/09/surface-parking-lot-design-in-
downtown.html)

~~~
graeme
In the same blog I linked (different article I think) they actually noted that
the downtown has no mandatory minimums, but it needs lots of lots because
there are mandatory minimums elsewhere and everyone has cars as a result.

~~~
exelius
Part of my point is that I think the cause-effect relationship may be reversed
anyway. Texas is also so hot in the summer that people will not be walking
outside for any appreciable period of time; it becomes a health risk after a
certain point when temperatures can be above 100F / 90% humidity for months on
end.

It’s not an accident that Texas looked more like Montana in 1900 than
California. The mass adoption of automobiles and air conditioning made large
cities in Texas _possible_ ; and the low population density made land cheap.

The centers of most big southern cities were _never_ walkable. Most of those
cities would never have existed without cars. I don’t know how you introduce
density into a situation like that, and I don’t think zoning rules would be
able to undo the damage of the last century. These cities were built around
cars, and you can’t just roll that back without remaking the whole city and
displacing many, many people.

------
ars
I suspect that the people wanting "an urban zone", want one without all the
drawbacks.

Once you include the drawbacks that can not be removed, you will find they are
living exactly where they want to live.

The kind of analysis in this report is one of those "lying with statistics"
things, because I don't think it's measuring what the authors think it's
measuring.

~~~
imaoreo
care to explain what those drawbacks are?

~~~
Turing_Machine
Let's see:

Drunks/junkies/mentally ill people shitting, pissing, and vomiting everywhere,
while verbally (and sometimes physically) abusing the passers-by.

Noise.

Breathing the stench of exhaust fumes, week-old garbage, and someone else's
idea of cooking.

Having no place for your children to sit on the grass without worrying about
them finding someone's discarded needle or excrement.

Having no space for gardens, hobbies, or gatherings of family and/or friends.

Bad schools with apathetic parents.

The inability to leave personal property unattended for even a moment.

The need to have extensive home security (bars on windows, etc...)

The much higher likelihood that you or one of your loved ones will be mugged,
raped, or killed.

Those are just a few that come to mind.

~~~
squirrelicus
+1

My favorite part of the suburbs is that my kids are physically incapable of
walking or biking to an urban area. When they have grown to acquire the sense
to look out for themselves, then they coincidentally will have the freedom
(e.g. drivers license) to go to an urban place. Until then, I love that I can
let them just go outside without supervision and dick around. American
urbanity is just not for families.

~~~
jacobolus
I grew up in a suburb and I am sure glad my kid will be growing up in the city
with access to transit and a wide range of amenities within walking distance,
and streets/neighborhoods actually designed for walking around. American
suburbs are awful for anyone under the age of 16 or anyone without a car. Kids
can't do anything without being babied around by a parent.

~~~
tokyodude
I grew up in the suburbs. I guess I don't know what I was missing. There were
parks, hobby stores, shopping centers, open lots where people made bike ramps
and burms, we launched model rockets, went to arcades, raced slot cars, flew
RC planes. Would also semi regularly ride bikes 2-4 miles away from home and
sometimes 6 or 7.

My impression of most high density cities would be that my options would be
more limited as a kid. Sure there's a lots of shopping, restaurants, and bars
but what is there for kids?

Of course I only have the places I've experienced to go on.

~~~
kraigie
Berlin has all of those,(albeit it is one of the highest open space cites
there are) hell London has over 20 skateparks that is just for skating that is
before you consider a lot of the Thames bank serves as open parkside. With the
only traffic pedestrians and boats on the water. High density doesn't have to
mean no space, it does have to mean no space for autos though, they simply
take up too much space. If you have mass transit that reduces carparks and
roads to say 10% space opens up a lot more. Playing in the streets or cafes
using sidewalk for tables is a lot more compatible with trams running on fixed
rails and electric overhead than with massive auto traffic.

High density doesn't me

~~~
IWeldMelons
Why are you saying "no space for cars"? You need to build multistory and
underground garages here and there and you are all set.

~~~
kraigie
Because that is a fundamental point that seems to often be missed in density
discussions. Cars are great for low density areas and appealing at high
density areas where as mass transit is great at high density but awful at
low.density this why park and ride stations outside the city are a thing.

Even if you could build miltistory underground car parks you still need
roadway space. German narrow gauge trams quite happily chug Elon in two
directions on 10 feet carry highway capacity traffic one highway lane is 12
feet. They don't need the space. So car traffic takes up much more space that
means you can't have the same density. If you don't have those cars you could
put all the factories and warehouse space underground and you would have even
more surface room this would allow a higher density of people. To imagine this
take a look at your closest city on Google maps and how much space is taken up
by car parks and roads now if you can reduce that use to 20% while keeping the
same city boundaries, the density of the city hasn't changed but a lot more
land is available. How much bigger can your house be if the highway is only
one lane wide? How many more people can you add in?

You would also have the issue of getting people to and from the miltistory
underground but that is exactly what happens on car free areas. You take the
tram/bus/train pick up your car/rental/rideshare/uber at the multi story car
park and continue on from there. If it's right on the major highways around
the area you reduce a lot of the traffic headaches.

~~~
kraigie
Terrible not appealing, a synonym was autocorrected

------
neilwilson
Interesting to note that there is only two choices - city or commuter suburb
with cars. The third choice is villages and towns where people live with their
own front door onto the street and still walk to work. Move the work where the
people are. Decentralise

~~~
rdl
Something like downtown Palo Alto would be my choice; you could probably do a
lot in Palo Alto without a car, although you'd still want to have one
available. The problem with Palo Alto is just that it costs 10x too much.

------
DannyBee
"The myth of drawing conclusions from one isolated data source that happens to
support your own ideology"

------
cozzyd
I wonder if preferences are correlated or anticorrelated with how one grew up
(maybe people who grew up in suburbs might think it's too boring, but people
who grew up in the city might think it's too loud).

~~~
mrep
I grew up in the suburbs, now live in downtown seattle, and my girlfriend and
I 100% plan to move to the suburbs once we get married/start having kids for
the reasons Turing_machine stated:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17379068](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17379068)

------
liveoneggs
this article is a little strange since Atlanta has something like a 20 year
supply of condos in midtown/surrounding for very affordable prices. Single
family in-town homes, however, are scarce.

~~~
smileysteve
The basis for the 14? New apartment buildings in Atlanta is that we are
drastically understocked, also why rents are climbing to $2k for a luxury 1br.

Most evidenced by new luxury apartments at West end station with surprising
rents for a studio (targeting pilots)

Most single family homes seem unattainable (going over ask price, quickly) in
the North of the city, but South and West are still cheap and attainable.

~~~
liveoneggs
buying a condo seems to be cheaper than renting the same amount of space (per-
month, anyway).

------
dsfyu404ed
In the Boston area the less dense neighborhoods are scarce so only the rich
can afford them. In Atlanta the denser neighborhoods are scarce so they cost
more so the rich go there. Of course if you ask people what their preference
is a huge chunk of them will describe the features of whatever more upscale
place that the place they currently live is compared to.

~~~
galago
_In the Boston area the less dense neighborhoods are scarce so only the rich
can afford them._

I live in the Boston area and that doesn't sound right. I guess you could say
Brookline is low density and rich. But you have to consider the Back Bay,
Beacon Hill, South End (north of Mass. Ave)--really the densest areas are the
most expensive. Places like Chelsea, Roxbury, are cheaper and lower in
density. Proximity to jobs, transit, and amenities is the driver of cost, and
density goes with it.

~~~
Finnucane
Right now, a house in Revere or Everett probably goes for about half of what a
condo in Somerville or Cambridge would cost. So it is very location dependent.
And of course, that was true in Somerville twenty or thirty years ago. The red
line extension, the end of rent control in Cambridge, and the conversion of a
lot of rental apartments into condos during the housing bubble changed
Somerville a lot.

------
VLM
There are several severe issues with the study.

The first is confusing want with what you're culturally conditioned to say
based on style of question. We don't know how the questions were led or if
they attempted to be neutral, they made a huge logical leap from asking people
what they want to declaring thats what they actually want, real world doesn't
work that way. We know from prior propaganda issues that people can be led to
claim almost anything, when questioned correctly to lead to it. Its a
universal part of human existence that what people are socialized to say to
get along, generally has nothing to do with what they'll actually want (or do)
in private or semi-private, which also generally has nothing to do with whats
best for them (and good luck finding a fair and unbiased judge of whats best
for them, LOL). The study actually abstracts to "I know from intensive
propaganda my whole life that a good person would say they want X, therefore
I'll say I want X, but I actually want and will execute plan Y". What could be
more pithy than "do as I say not as I do?" The study doesn't even scratch the
surface of "what should they do" which is a totally orthogonal third
dimension. The study is willfully and intentionally ignoring a major component
of human psychology to push a propaganda point; this really does not look good
at all.

To help non USA people, there's a large aspect of group affinity and
identification going on. Essentially a non-metaphysical religion, complete
with proselytizers and those who define whats holy and who is or is not. So
for the "new urbanists" for over half a century, fervent belief in returning
to the cities after white flight from the 60s race riots is the definition of
what a good person is, in a simplistic 1 to 1 mapping. Trying to argue
rational logic merely strengthens their beliefs, like trying to reason about
fossil records with a creationist Christian. If your worldview is defining
being a good person as holding a set of beliefs X, Y, Z, regardless if those
are good or terrible ideas, then someone trying the atheistic rational
argument against those beliefs "just think about it", well, a good person
would NOT think about it, they would believe, wouldn't they? That type of
argument will just strengthen the belief set; look here is a bad person who is
defined as bad by not having matching beliefs, being bad by making
sacrilegious statements, why look how great my beliefs must be? People who
don't understand this try to interact with urbanists on a rational level which
certainly doesn't work. No Christian ever lost their faith by a pagan
nostalgia along the lines of "My childhood as a pagan was not so bad, I don't
understand the hate". Likewise its a waste of time to tell an urbanist that
suburbs are not that bad why all the propaganda. You'd have better luck trying
to convert a Christian Fundamentalist by telling them that Satan guy gets a
lot of bad press but he's not all bad all. Trying to talk a urbanist out of
the city is literally on a psychological level like trying to talk a devoted
missionary out of going on a mission. It is the same thought process. Please
don't waste everyone's time trying to convert them, merely wish them well on
their pilgrimage and hope they survive, etc.

Everyone on both sides should understand and accept the group affinity issue.
There is absolutely no moral, ethical, medical, technological, or rational
argument that black tennis shoes are worse or better than white tennis shoes.
None the less, the cool kids have proclaimed one or the other is cool this
year and the only choice you have in the issue, the only reason for discussing
it anywhere including here on HN, is to declare your group affinity with the
cool kids for todays fad, or try to be that cool apostate rebelling against
"the man", or just be confused about the social dynamics of the whole thing
and make the huge mistake of thinking the discussion is actually about
sneakers or ethics or anything other than declaring your allegiance or
opposition or cluelessness. Are tattoos rebellious or conformist today? Well,
fundamentally they're neither, they're art ink on skin. If the argument is
about enforcement of conformity, such as devout belief in new urbanism, don't
get in weird side arguments about tattoo ink toxicity or stretch marks, thats
totally not the point of the discussion. This incredibly boring topic boils
down to are you an new urbanist conformist or a rebellious suburbanite, and
the only thing that matters is the conformity or rebellion. Forest for the
trees and all that.

If you can't tell I think "new urbanist" stories are pointless and should
probably be globally banned on HN, they're just trash, fibrous filler, the low
formaldehyde particle board of furniture, as a discussion topic, but others
disagree, sometimes with strong arguments that I admit may be strong but none
the less disagree with. So the article is this weeks two minutes hate on the
burbs, oh well, whatevs.

------
benjaminmarks
For those interested in the topic, I'd also highly recommend Richard
Rothstein's "The Color of Law." Rothstein discusses there how explicitly
racist zoning policies contributed to the segregation of suburbs. I found it
to be a fascinating read.

------
screye
The Boston suburbs are what my ideal neighbourhood looks like.

Extremely close to the city and well connected through transit. Safe, with
great schools and communities. All this while downtown is never more than 30
minutes by transit and the neighbourhood is still extremely walkable.

Parking is still an issue, and the NE weather can be terrible at times. But
that apart, I really like those areas.

------
tomatotomato37
I'm not sure what this article is trying to prove. They say that local
ordinances should follow the demands of the citizens, but then use a case
where the auto-oriented fans have a majority over the pedestrian-friendly
fans, which in the fun world of two-choice democracy means their demands are
overridden.

------
JJMcJ
Read Kunstler's book "The Geography Of Nowhere" \- our suburban system is not
an accident

------
djrogers
Yet another article claiming that I, every member of my family, and all of my
friends don’t actually want to live in our horrible susburbs.

It’s not possible that we actually love it here, that we like the clean air,
wide open spaces, huge yards, non-crowded downtown, small family friendly
parades, and our rodeo.

Nope, we’re all just lying to ourselves and really want to love in a cramped
arcology.

~~~
sanderjd
That doesn't sound like a suburb to me, it sounds like a town. The suburbs I'm
familiar with don't have a downtown to be non-crowded or in which to have a
small family friendly parade. I like towns too, but the ones where I live are
still expensive akin to the cities in the area, whereas the non-town
residential + strip mall only suburbs are where it is cheaper to live.

~~~
CM30
Probably depends on the area and country. In parts of the US I suspect the
average 'suburban' area doesn't have a downtown or local shops or what not,
but in much of Europe and other parts of the US it often does, with 'suburb'
often being taken more to mean 'smaller town just outside of a city'.

------
rhapsodic
For entertainment, I like cities better than suburbs. Hands down.

At home, I like parking in a driveway better than parking on the street.

At home, I like parking in a garage better than parking in a driveway or
alley.

At home, I like parking in an attached garage better than parking in a
detached one.

I like living in my own house better than an apartment.

I like living in a free-standing house better than a duplex or row house.

I like a large yard where my young kids can play with their friends and I can
keep an eye on them out the window.

I want to be able to make some noise without disturbing my neighbors, and
vice-versa. I don't like living cheek-by-jowl with my neighbors.

I like living in a neighborhood that has virtually no violent crime or
burglaries. I don't want to have to run a gauntlet of panhandlers when I go
for a walk around the neighborhood.

I prefer to live in a house built since 1978, so I don't have to deal with
lead paint, asbestos, knob & tube wiring, wood lath walls, lead (water)
service lines, buckling foundations, damp moldy basements, rotting, leaking
box gutters, or cheap, chalky aluminum siding that was installed in 1968 over
Insulbrick that was installed in 1938. Unfortunately, those houses tend to be
relatively rare and exorbitantly expensive in my local city.

I don't know why so many city dwellers seem to obsess over the fact that there
are many people who simply prefer living in the suburbs. But there are.

~~~
TheCoelacanth
I'm fine with people making different lifestyle choices than me. I just want
them to:

1\. Not outlaw my preferred lifestyle choices. The vast majority of the
country makes it illegal to build walkable urban neighborhoods.

2\. Don't make me pay for your lifestyle choices. Car use is heavily
subsidized in the US via road and parking infrastructure, laws that require
private citizens to build parking at their own expense to be able to build
buildings and by car users being able to externalize the cost of their
environmental damage.

You are free to live in your preferred type of neighborhood; just let me do
the same.

~~~
rhapsodic
This is how democracies work. You don't always get what you want. Sorry to
break it to you.

~~~
iamnothere
This is sort of an ironic response, given your initial post.

"Live and let live" has to go both ways, or the party getting the short end of
the stick won't put up with the arrangement for long.

------
cheeseomlit
What a load, I've never been to a city that wasn't a disgusting concrete
nightmare. God forbid you want to raise kids, say goodbye to playing outside.
I'll take my cozy yard and breathable air, thanks

~~~
twblalock
Millions of children grow up in cities (in apartments, no less!) and they turn
out just fine.

~~~
Turing_Machine
And millions of them don't.

Educational outcomes, crime (both as victim and perpetrator), and mental
health are all worse for those who grew up in cities, and not just slightly
worse. Much worse.

~~~
watwut
The worst are rural areas, currently. It has nothing to do with housing layout
and a lot to do with availability of jobs etc.

~~~
Turing_Machine
No, it absolutely is not.

And even if that were true, we're talking about suburbs, not rural areas.

