
Suburban sprawl is stifling the US economy - prostoalex
http://www.vox.com/2015/3/26/8291889/suburban-sprawl-economy
======
tomazz
I'm from Glasgow, Scotland myself and I've never been to US but I've done a
fair amount of research. Our societies differ a lot if it goes to moving
around. I can normally walk around the whole town(600k people). I take the
public transportation when I'm lazy. I am always amazed when I hear from my US
friends "you have to have a car otherwise you can't get anywhere" or "there
are no sidewalks". Wow. In Europe most of the cities are a lot more densely
populated than in the US which cuts costs, but even though there is more
people packed in the same space(lots of people live in flats), they don't mind
bacause everything is close and they save their time. And green areas? Why
have a back yard when you have a park 5 mins away.

It's interesting how the standards of living differ between us. It seems to me
that a lot of people crave a suburbian house in the US. I'd love to live there
for a while to get a feel of the society and why it thinks in this way.

There's a TED talk I stumbled upon some time ago - only 5mins but perfectly
approaches part of the problem we are discussing here ;) "How to reinvent the
apartment building" \-
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-KnaYZJg48](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-KnaYZJg48)

~~~
stevep98
It's not necessarily that there are no sidewalks. Walking through
retail/commercial-zoned suburbia can be mind-numbingly boring.

Straight roads, boring 'architecture', giant parking lots between the sidewalk
and the retail buildings.

Compare Atherton, UK - nice, homely "typical UK" town with busy high-street.

[https://www.google.com/maps/@53.523623,-2.491372,3a,75y,92.9...](https://www.google.com/maps/@53.523623,-2.491372,3a,75y,92.91h,79.92t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1syXIRpfOyHa4wcDjYuz3_oQ!2e0)

Now, San Jose, CA, USA suburbia:
[https://www.google.com/maps/@37.323192,-121.972195,3a,75y,25...](https://www.google.com/maps/@37.323192,-121.972195,3a,75y,251.1h,82.98t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1s0MEXDG0d7IWP8J9vm13ykQ!2e0)

Boring. Thankfully planners seem to have recognized this, and now the trend is
to build high-density housing, and right out to the street.

James Howard Kunstler has a FANTASTIC Ted talk about this subject, which
cracks me up every time. Highly recommended:

[http://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_subu...](http://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_suburbia?language=en)

~~~
adevine
I remember the first time I came to San Jose how surprised I was. This was the
Silicon Valley of lore, and it basically looked like every other boring,
nondescript suburb in America.

------
hippich
I kinda have mixed feelings about it (and I plan to move out even further,
since my job allows remoting.)

The thing is, money "lost" are spend on wages for people building roads,
infrastructure, houses, etc. And this type of work more often done by local
workforce, not some international company with bank accounts in caymans.

So... how exactly money are "lost"? Lost by whom exactly? People found jobs,
which otherwise would not exists, and more infrastructure is built. Which in
turn bring more people to live there, which in turn brings more local jobs
(i.e. mom-n-pop AC/plumbing/electric company, Homedepot, etc)

And built roads are not quite wasteful too - as far as I know roads drive
economy, not subdue it.

~~~
javert
Your view is the broken window fallacy. [1]

All the man-hours and natural resources spent building all those roads and
paying for all that gas to move around on them could have instead gone to
expanding production.

For instance, funding new companies, scientific research, and so on.

That is the point of the article.

Of course, the article is fallacious in that expanding production is not
inherently better than consumption, so consumption is not necessarily
"wasteful."

If people had preferred to live in an apartment and invest their money, they
would have. Other things being equal, suburban sprawl reflects peoples'
economic preferences. People are _willing_ to pay for all the resources to
make suburban sprawl possible.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window)

edit: though living in an apartment will be more expensive, so that wasn't a
great example.

~~~
eropple
_> People are willing to pay for all the resources to make suburban sprawl
possible._

Except for the massive externalities involved, sure, they're willing to pay
for it. Urban dwellers largely subsidize your suburbia, and have since its
inception.

------
aaronchall
I live in NYC, but I grew up in the Florida panhandle, a mile down a road from
the main highway, at the beginning of which had no houses in sight, and passed
about 5 visible houses on the way home. There was one house visible from our
ranch-style house. To the side and back was swamp. To the front was all woods.
I walked in the woods, stepped on ant hills and got bitten, and found rattle
snakes, cotton mouths, mocassins, and garter snakes. Mosquitos, yellow flies,
biting gnats, and horse flies combined to ensure that I would always have a
few red splotches and bumps on my body when I came in. We even found gators
once in a while.

We made long-time friends with a family a mile away by road, but I could get
there in a quarter of a mile or so by woods and swamp. The trick to walking
through the swamp was to try to step on clumps of grass sticking out of the
muck. I would come across rotting tree trunks and knock them over to watch the
termites. Sometimes our outdoors cats would join me and follow from a
distance.

My dad drove 30 minutes to work, about 25 miles away, where he struggled to
run a discount auto-parts distributorship employing too many people to be
profitable. My mom stayed at home with me and my little brother.

My friends loved coming over. If we walked far enough past the swamp, we would
be on the bay, which smelled kind of funky for being fresh-water, too far from
the sea water to be even brackish though. It was just us, and maybe our
neighbors who mostly stayed indoors. We didn't worry about break-ins. We left
our door open a lot.

I currently pay a lot of money for a doorman for that kind of sense of
security in NYC. As for being able to walk in the woods by myself, that's just
about impossible, and you can't put a price tag on it. Unless I'm home alone,
there's almost always _someone_ in my field of view. I'm kind-of used to it,
but a lot of people have a visceral distaste for it. Seems like I can't even
get to work without getting into a subway car that smells like something died
in it.

An economist might not have a direct way to measure the value we created for
ourselves, but you might say we created a lot of value for ourselves by living
where we did.

~~~
dennisgorelik
Why do you live in NYC if you like being alone (at least occasionally)?

------
crimsonalucard
An individual with the choice of living in the city or in suburbia is faced
with a conundrum. Although you would think that by living in the city the
individual will save money by expending significantly less natural resources
and dramatically lowering his carbon footprint, it ironically costs him less
money to do the exact opposite by living in the suburbs. This is because if
the individual chooses to live in the city he must pay an extraordinarily high
commission in the form of capital gains or rent to land lords. From a
financial standpoint living in the suburbs is the only rational choice.

This type of counterintuitive behavior only occurs because we live in an era
where oil is dirt cheap. This is the only time in human history where living
farther away from the city is actually cheaper then living closer to it.
Before the advent of the automobile, urban infrastructure centered around
walkable cities as you will see throughout Europe. One day, as we start
running out of oil, the suburbs will become the new ghettos.

~~~
BrainInAJar
Only short-term. Once you factor in gas, ownership of multiple cars, etc it's
cheaper to live in the city. Doubly so if your time isn't worthless (time
sitting in traffic is working for free)

~~~
javert
As an American who prefers rural living, I prefer not living in a city because
my time is valuable. I like being able to go from A to B at 60 miles and hour
and not worry about parking. I don't like waiting for busses or subways.

I think suburban living is generally going to be less time-consuming than
urban living unless you're doing something dumb, like communting into Los
Angles or Washington, D.C.

~~~
jmspring
I'd love rural living, but I've opted for a walkable suburb on the coast. My
current job allows me to work at home full time unless I am traveling, and my
wife commutes but has a flexible schedule and gets to work at home regularly.

There are times where the diversity of a city would be great, but I don't like
the noise, traffic, or public transportation.

In the bay area, BART is _ok_ , Caltrain isn't bad, but Muni? Oy.

Just coming back from a business trip to Tokyo (my first time here), I can see
how public transport can be very efficient. That said, even here, I got to
over hear some google employees whining about their offices being moved to an
area that was mostly business park and not wanting to commute.

No matter where you choose to live, there are personal choices that are part
of the calculus.

------
ageek123
But NIMBYs who won't allow construction in cities have made cities
unaffordable.

~~~
m3talridl3y
And ironically they pay way more in taxes building excessively large public
transit systems.

~~~
pyre
> excessively large public transit systems

Because the "real" solution is for every single person to own and drive a car
that seats 4, but 99% of the time only has 1 person in it?

~~~
CamperBob2
People who can afford to do so usually avoid public transportation. Instead of
posting a new edition of the same self-righteous HN thread bewailing other
peoples' choices practically every single day of the week, it might be
interesting to examine the apparent dissonance between the way amateur urban
planners think things should work, and the way they actually do.

~~~
philwelch
That's a product of urban design, not a cause or a premise. Rich New York
bankers don't drive cars.

~~~
learc83
>Rich New York bankers don't drive cars.

But do they take public transportation? Or do they use a car service?

They're paying to avoid public transportation exactly like the OP said.

~~~
saryant
Yes?

John Paulson, architect of the largest trade in Wall Street history, takes
public transit to work every day.

~~~
CamperBob2
"Anecdote" is not the singular of "data."

------
xigency
This is not something I see in a city like Chicago. Even with a thinning
population in the city proper, there are a wide variety of jobs reaching out
from the city to the suburbs and more than adequate transportation with plenty
of "walkable" neighborhoods. This is an interesting idea to explore, and I
definitely have seen some more sprawling areas in this country (L.A., San
Jose), but New York and Chicago don't fit under this umbrella from my point of
view.

The article is also a little thin without concrete examples. Looking at other
countries, parts of Japan are almost completely connected but this somehow
works with the large amount of natural resources they have while also
supporting a huge population. Economic measures have to look at more than just
the monetary value of things. I know this looks at social and environmental
factors, but there are network effects to consider too.

~~~
wsxcde
I disagree. If you live in, say Westmont or Downer's Grove and want to get to
O'Hare or Midway by public transport, you might as well give up before you
start. It's a minimum two hour train journey that involves going all the way
to Union station and then to the airport.

It's not just the airports. My wife works at ANL. There are exactly two buses
a day which go from our place to the lab. And this is after a ten minute walk.
If you miss those, you either have to drive or take a taxi. There are no other
options whatsoever.

Maybe public transport works well in the city, but good luck surviving in the
suburbs without a car.

~~~
xigency
Is this a new problem? The article talks about growing cities creating
"endless commutes, growing pollution, and unwalkable neighborhoods." For
someone trying to commute to the airport regularly, it's best to live in the
NW suburbs. But Downer's Grove was established in 1873 so it's not as if this
is a new problem. Additionally, I agree that it is not entirely convenient to
travel between satellite areas of the city, but there are a number of
opportunities local to any one part of the city/metro area.

I live in a suburb and recently spent a large amount of time looking for a new
job, after living in a small part of California with limited opportunities,
and while I didn't have the best time looking for a position as a Software
Engineer, it's not as if there weren't jobs in any suburb or downtown that I
couldn't achieve. I'm not someone who would look to regularly commute downtown
but there are both Metra and L-stations that I could access and it's not as if
we don't have roads.

This sort of sprawl as an issue seems to be targeted towards growing cities
and suburbs that are undeveloped in terms of resources and infrastructure.
Many of Chicago's suburbs and surrounding areas have really deep histories and
local roots. In this sense they become their own neighborhoods, cities, towns,
and villages instead of just rows of houses without sidewalks or an endless
stretch of strip malls.

I think it's also easy to carpool or work around bus schedules if that's
really an issue to a commute, or buying an electric car for short journeys
like that.

The second city is also in a much better position than many other cities in
the midwest. Indianapolis and Minneapolis-St. Paul are a lot harder to get
around from outside the city, especially if you don't have a car, so I could
understand how moving further and further out could be a detriment.

------
rrggrr
Suburbs cannot compete with cities for fresh talent. Most businesses I know
are opening city offices to Broaden their candidat pool. Its worth noting that
sprawl legends like the Dc Metro area, San Fran and Boston lead the nation in
job openings. Suburbs are demographically and geographically disadvantaged.

~~~
javert
No doubt true, but surprising. I'd rather bag groceries somewhere else than be
a programmer in Boston or DC.

~~~
ggreenbe
Being a programmer in NYC, I love it and wouldn't trade living anywhere else
at the moment. I guess to each their own.

~~~
javert
I think I'd like living in NYC, actually.

------
happytrails
Suburbs are horribly designed, case in point Irvine CA. Worst place I have
ever been too. Giant 8 lane surface streets but still endless traffic. No
useful public transit so everyone is sitting in a car.

The future looks bleak for socal unless population normalizes.

~~~
acveilleux
My favourite part of suburbs is the grid of street maximally designed to make
driving over them less efficient than avoiding them.

Intuitively one would think this decreases traffic but instead it turns the
neighbourhood into a kind of watershed where all traffic quickly converges to
the same few progressively broader street.

The harder the grid planner tried to inhibit through-traffic, the worse the
effect.

~~~
jkimmel
I live in downtown Orlando, FL.

We have a perfect (pathetic) example of this phenomenon.

Most of the older buildings in the downtown core rest along brickpave streets
that are awful to drive on. Horrible for the suspension, tires, the works. I
believe the insistence on keeping them is an attempt to limit through traffic
from a nearby East/West interchange with the notorious Interstate-4
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_4#Orlando_area](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_4#Orlando_area)).

Through traffic is still a huge issue, and in addition, the poor brickpave
road is constantly riddled with pot holes from the heavy trucks and sheer
number of vehicles that detour through. I can't imagine what the maintenance
must cost relative to regular asphalt.

