> But it's our own determination to each get our personal patch of grass that leads to the unending expanse of roads and driveways and parking lots.
The US is large enough to give each individual (person, not household!) 7.4 acres all to themselves. There is plenty of space here.
The problem is that the collapse of manufacturing and automation of agriculture in the US has eliminated many of the jobs that were prevalent in small and mid-sized cities.
We have all the space we need. What we lack is a uniform distribution of work that lets people use it effectively.
>The US is large enough to give each individual (person, not household!) 7.4 acres all to themselves. There is plenty of space here.
But we don't live in 7-acre communities. We live in quarter-acre communities. Transportation, power lines, etc necessitate a certain level of density. And "small" metros with a million people already begin to sprawl in many places. The arrangement of that density is the hard part and ultimately if you want most people to be closer to green space it means you need to densify in some places.
Plus complaining about the distribution of work is not really useful; you might as well protest the weather! We can't change that in huge ways quickly and have to work with the economy (and, for that matter, often, the infrastructure) that we have.
Yes, your second paragraph is agreeing with my second paragraph.
> Plus complaining about the distribution of work is not really useful; you might as well protest the weather! We can't change that in huge ways quickly and have to work with the economy (and, for that matter, often, the infrastructure) that we have.
We certainly can! Look at how opening or closing a single large factory can radically change the surrounding cityscape. Look at how the Space Race created an entire hi tech industry out of the swamps of eastern Florida which continues to this day. Look at what the Public Works Administration in the New Deal did.
>We certainly can! Look at how opening or closing a single large factory [...]
The standard objection, I think, is to refer to the economic history of Argentina, but that's neither here nor there.
Here's a satellite image of an area near Chincoteague. This is a small town in coastal Virginia with a healthy but not skyrocketing tourist economy. In other words, it's the kind of economy most of our small cities "should have". It also happens to be next to a major government Space Race-era facility.
In the green circle is the original town of Chincoteague. It is built and designed like a town and like many towns in beautiful areas it has generally resisted transformation into something more like a city. Again, pretty standard Americana. It has a simple road layout, a mixture of development patterns, and is not too hard to navigate on foot.
In the red circle is Trail's End, a parody of a caricature of the epitome of a suburban cobweb. It is full of mobile homes and cheap plaster houses crammed as close together as county zoning rules allow. It exists because local municipalities and their constituencies did not want to accommodate housing demand within their usual town fabric. This pressure builds up and, eventually, some land development agency gets hold of a big parcel and chops it up in to what you see here.
The ongoing "carcinogenesis" of such developments ossifies municipalities. The layout and design of streets within and leading to the red circle is actively hostile not only to walkability and the adoption of transit, but also to the development of a connected regional culture, due to the access-limited (access both to and within) design:
This is by no means unique to northeastern Accomac County! It repeats in nearly every metro area in the United States that hasn't either banned it or surrounded itself with swamps (NOLA, Miami). It creates neighborhoods that everyone can survive in but nobody wants to live in. It creates an exclusion zone separating the city from the countryside, and the farmers from the city. Worst of all: it is practically impossible to reverse.
We will live with the Trail's Ends of the 20th century for decades if not centuries, and they will still be inaccessible, unwalkable, petrified replicas of Stepford, CT, with more mobile homes and fewer gardens. Why? Because we didn't want our Chincoteagues to change.
We all have skin in the game. We only have one country -- don't mess it up.
I think a big factor is also a generation or two (Millennials and Gen Z) that only are willing to do certain jobs. This is in part because they attended college in great numbers, often studying degrees that have limited economic value, and now they want a desk job. There are plenty of jobs that pay well and provide great benefits - things you might not expect like working in manufacturing, or as a garbage truck driver, or in the oil industry, and so on.
We do have work available - the BLS data shows 6.5 million openings (https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.nr0.htm). Many of the cities and towns across America that are often ignored in our societal discourse and in discussions like this one have both available, affordable housing and economic opportunity. It is simply not the opportunity that this generation wants. And instead, they complain that they don't have the type of job, the pricing conditions, and the type of pay that enables them to live in some of the most desirable cities on the planet, like San Francisco.
I find it hard to see this as anything but entitlement and envy.
The US is large enough to give each individual (person, not household!) 7.4 acres all to themselves. There is plenty of space here.
The problem is that the collapse of manufacturing and automation of agriculture in the US has eliminated many of the jobs that were prevalent in small and mid-sized cities.
We have all the space we need. What we lack is a uniform distribution of work that lets people use it effectively.