All my adult life, I've gravitated toward cities, and I've always lived in neighborhoods where I could walk or ride my bike a few blocks to stores, restaurants, and the shoemaker.

Which is one way to mark the sharp divide between those who are parents, and those who are not.

Suburbia is a giant land of strangers, and I really hate it. Suburbia is a giant land of strangers, and I really hate it.

That's not true at all.

I mean, it certainly CAN be, but it's not the rule.

I lived in an apartment complex stacked three high and four wide. I didn't know any of my neighbors.

I live in pretty much the definition of suburbia now. I know pretty much everyone on my block.

And I'm not even much of a people guy.

I grew up in a suburb and have no desire whatsoever to live anywhere else. What I don't understand is the constant desire to enforce one's preferences on others.

If walkable communities are so great, some genius will build one, especially if the asserted premium is true. If big cities mattered to me, I'd live in one, instead of visiting once a year or so.

Does anyone build brownstones anymore? The answer is no, because they are too expensive. Everything comes at some cost. I'd rather be farther away from my neighbors, but where I live now is a short commute. The yard is big enough for a pool, but not so large that taking care of it is onerous. The schools were decent. We don't have the big city crimes. I grew up in a home with more kids than bedrooms, and I'm thankful that I could afford to spare my kids that. Right now it's more space than we really need, but it is nice to have the room when the kids and granddaughter come to visit.

I grew up in the city. It's nice to visit occasionally, but I much prefer the lower density area I live in now. It's nice to live in a quiet area, with trees and grass and space. And it's much more neighborly too; we all know one another and are friendly on our street. There's a lot of snobbery implicit in the anti-suburb movement, as though the people in suburbs are dumb boobs who don't know what's best for them.

"There's a lot of snobbery implicit in the anti-suburb movement, as though the people in suburbs are dumb boobs who don't know what's best for them."

Agreed. If people want to live in higher density areas they will. If there is demand for higher density suburbs then there will be supply. I'm not really sure why this is an issue.

I grew up in a suburb but it was really close to Boston and our house was a nice stroll to the quaint downtown area. When you're 12 all you need is a drug store (to get teenie bopper mags) and an ice cream store near by. Basically, a main area where people can congregate.

Now that I'm older, and discussing marriage with my city-hating bf, I realize I need a good compromise. I need things within walking distance, but I don't want to live in an area so congested that driving is torture (like it can be in Boston). I also love actual driveways and two-way streets. If I can't live IN Boston or Cambridge then I want to be walking distance to a few nice restaurants, a coffee shop and the pharmacy I get my scripts at. And a couple nice food stores (like my regular grocer plus a specialty one with good fruit, meats, cheese and wine) that I can drive to in less than 10 mins. I need to be less than a 30 minute travel from the main city (rail access preferable).

So, in closing, I am exactly the person this guy is talking about and I agree with him 100%. I will find my own pimpin' penumbra!

supply and demand are much more dynamic than the article implies... how long people stay one place, how long and how many kids, geographic area, etc. are all very important but not spoken of. A person might drift in and out of an urban area over their lifetime, depending on need.

the newest walkable areas they've been building around Denver are nothing but marketing. They are mostly modern interpretations of what urban life once was. The catch is, they are no better built than any other new house, and the retail they serve are already closing because they arent enough of a destination to stay open.

The big issue is that people need a place to live and a place to shop. The maximization of retail in the last 40 years has made grocery stores large and a destination for example. This keeps the price down because of the economy of scale. Same for any other store. So the neighborhood markets that people used to be able to walk to are very difficult to replicate. The profit margin in grocery is based on volume, because of the pricepoint. If a small market only serves a limited number of homes [of whatever style] they have a difficult time starting up. With their smaller footprint, and smaller parking, they can't serve the large area as well. What they have done here is to have a large market with a ton of apartments above, integrated with other smaller stores in a walkable mall. But if you had kids, you would likely not wish to live there. There isn't anything outside for them to do, and very little greenspace that isn't heavily travelled...

There is a lot of nostalgia in this movement, but little care for reality. My first house was in Brookfield Il. and it was two blocks from the little town circle, and there was a little market there. We shopped there because the price tradeoff, convenience to gas and time worked. But even then 15 years ago, they were holding on by the skin of their teeth. If they hadn't been privately owned and been there a long time they couldn't have stayed in businees.

This is something that is very difficult to replicate now. It worked in Brookfield, because the town started out as a small town, and other towns grew to it...

There is a lot more going on than the article thinks about....

Sounds like there are few country-raised commenters so far. I grew up surrounded by farms and woodlands, with wide expanses between houses. I loved it. Lots of quiet and clean air. I had only one friend within walking distance, the rest - I could reach by bike.

I rode 10 miles to my summer job (caddying at a golf course), and a few more to a suburban strip-mall, and one more to the local zoo and amusement park. My needs were met.

Walkable neighborhoods are nice, but bikes greatly expand your radius - and are far more efficient modes of travel. Trikes are good, too.

I grew up in the country, and I hated it. I hated that it took 30 minutes to get to school, 20 to get to the grocery store... I hate gravel roads, too. That's not suburban, though, it's country.

I can see why someone would want to live in certain suburbs around Austin, but it's not for me. To start, I really don't like new construction unless it's super-modern, and you can't find that in the 'burbs. Also, I work downtown, and commuting sucks. My neighborhood would probably have been considered a suburb when it was built in the 50's, but now that the city has grown around it, it's officially central. The elementary school is a 10-minute walk from the house, as is a bakery and a gym. Pubs, grocery stores, restaurants and boutiques are within 1.5 miles. Plus, my yard is big enough for my great dane.
It's not cheap, though. I couldn't live in a condo... maybe a townhouse if it had a yard with a patio...

Agree with preceeding commenters. When I was single and carefree, I loved, loved, loved city life. When we made the choice to have kids, different things started to matter more.

SwissArmyD comments are all spot-on, IMO.

Also, re "no incentive for upkeep" in cheapie suburbs? Really? No suburbanite ever thinks of resale value, or their own comfort & enjoyment? That does sound a bit snobby.

A comment on the quality of new homes: I've lived in both old city houses and apartments and in new homes. I'll take a modern house any day. Plumbing, electrical etc.: The systems are much better.

We bought our first house 20 years ago. It was typical stick construction. We sold it a couple of years ago. It was in perfect condition. I see no reason it can't last 100 years, with the usual maintenance.

My issue with new construction is with the architectual style, not so much the quality. I know you can get a quality-built new house if you're willing to pay for it, I just would never buy a spec house. If I'm buying a brand new house, I don't just want to pick the countertops and tile, I want the whole thing designed for me from the beginning.
Commuting every day wouldn't be worth it to me unless I had acerage (not just AN acre... it would have to be 5 or more) and an awesome view.

When we first moved here to this town (which is now being billed as a "small city with a big heart" >,

WOW! I lost the whole rest of my post! Prolly cause I tried to make a silly face. Anyway, what I wrote was that when I first moved here, when I was 7, the population was around 4300, with a lot more wooded areas than there are now. And I could walk to the beach, the school, downtown and the train station, and pretty much bike anywhere else I wanted to go. Now the population here is around 52K, due to all the McMansions that were built on the other side of the tracks, where there is a lot less wooded area! Alot of changes but my neighborhood and others in this area are relatively the same. Downtown is pretty much the same too, and I can still walk to the train station and go to the Big City.

I live in a small township/village that had a population of less than 6,000 when we first moved here. We didn't know at the time that in the nearby city the school district had lost a discrimination lawsuit to the tune of $28,000,000. Where does the money come from? Not from the guilty parties in the school administration, but the taxpayers. It doubled city property taxes. Can you say mass exodus? People fled and headed for the good schools outside city limits, like my district, which is now the swamped lifeboat. So much for quiet village life. Then IDOT built a ramp to access I-90 where it previously blew by us. Now we're a so-called commuter suburb of Chicago (90 miles away?!?!?), and the McMansions have begun to threaten. You can get a house here for half of what you would pay in Elgin/ Arlington Heights so these city salaries come out here and go crazy with homebuilding. 5000 sq. ft.? Why not, or at least until we hit $3 or $4-a-gallon gas. Not such a deal after all if you're driving 800-900 miles a week.

As to friendly neighbors? Sure, we all know each other. I have a cookout once a month in the summer, 60-70 people come over, wandering in and out, stay until 1 a.m. with a bonfire under the stars. For a few, it's the only time we see them. That's their comfort level. Others, they know intimately where everything is in my fridge. And give me grief (good-naturedly) for not stocking their favorites. It's no Pleasantville (thank God) but we've got each other's backs.

The house I live in is over 100 years old and you cannot match the construction of the home itself in a modern suburban one.

The question to go with that is the majority of neighborhood over 100? If not, then what you are probably living in is the best constructed house on several acres.

I live in a very rural area -- we have about 1 in 10 that are 50+ years. They were the central farm houses in the area to 50-75 acres (or more) back then. We also have two de-incorporated villages in the area that some of the houses are original and others are gone back to field.

Realistically, a houses life expectancy is more dependent on care, maintenance and improvements that keep it viable from the past to future.

"There's a lot of snobbery implicit in the anti-suburb movement, as though the people in suburbs are dumb boobs who don't know what's best for them."

I didn't realize there was an anti-suburb movement, my preference for the city is only snobby in the sense that I'm there partially for the art and music scenes. One night a show, one night a museum, one night a warehouse party, and all a cab ride away. I'm currently in a very suburban area and the eternal sameness of it is slowly driving me crazy. Then again, as Hey Skipper noted, I'm single with no kids. My sister and brother-in-law love the same area, because their kids are safe and go to nice schools.

"If there is demand for higher density suburbs then there will be supply."

The article claims that 50% of us want to live in cities but only 20% of the housing is there.

Austin took their old airport land, pretty near into downtown, and tried to do what Amy suggests. We looked there, but with kids I am just not looking to cram ourselves into overpriced 1200 sq ft with a 10 ft sq "yard". I don't want to know my neighbors THAT well. I want my kids to be able to go out the backdoor and play, without me right up on their butts. So yeah, I think most parents want the suburbs. We want schools without metal detectors, with high graduation rates. We want yards and parks and block parties.

Were I childless, I'd probably want city, at least for a while. But with kids? No way.

"Agreed. If people want to live in higher density areas they will. If there is demand for higher density suburbs then there will be supply. I'm not really sure why this is an issue."

IMHO, it's an issue because housing is an area where there are limits on the market's ability to self-correct (e.g., consumption does not diminish long-term supply), where public policy has a huge impact on the supply side, and where current public policies are entrenching existing imbalances. But if you hadn't noticed there was something broken in the housing market, I don't think this post will help you much.

As the article quoted states, there is a price premium associated with living in high-density, walkable neighbourhoods because the demand for this type of housing outstrips the supply. Since most home buyers don't have the luxury of waiting for this imbalance to correct itself, they revert to their second-best option and buy where they can afford, which is often the suburbs.

This reinforces urban sprawl and all the undesirable things that go with it, including the subsidization of suburban service delivery by the downtown population, causing resentment and furthering the anti-suburb movement (I had never actually heard of this but I can understand why one might exist).

I expect arguments, but I have read enough reports that found street-frontage is the best determinant of cost of residential service delivery to be convinced otherwise. Plus it's intuitive to me that it's cheaper to service high-density than low-density living. So how do cities plan to upkeep these suburbs over the next century when downtown sewers haven't been replaced since the late 1800s...?

Guess that's another question for our kids to answer, but as long as everyone who wants 3500 sq. ft. has it, we should all rest easy at night...

my comments on new quality are based primarily on the way money is made in new construction projects. For example you don't build stairs from scratch, the builder buys them from a company that builds stairs in a factory. Sadly, among my frineds I have become the go-to guy for stair system repairs. In houses that are less than 10 years old, one of which was a custom job and is still worth a lot even after the bubble implosion. They are simply made like any other commodity, as chaeply as possible. Nobody really expects a stair tread to break underneath them, espcially when they only weigh 130, but I have repaired several. The designs where bad, and the build quality musta been a bunch of drunks. I see this a lot. I've had to replace doorlock that are only 7 years old, even in the interior. There is no difference in build quality between cookie cutter suburbia, and cookie cutter urban-walkable-condo-apartment. They are built by companies that are trying to maximize their ROI, and so they are doing it the cheapest possible way that will still work. They don't care if the house is there in 10 years, because most people haven't a clue who the builder is, and how many people look at a house and worry over the build quality as long as everything works?

It's not like there is a JDPower ranking for home quality. If there were Centex would probably be like Yugo.

Boston has great suburbs, a LOT of them have a nice town center... Cambridge, Brookline, Newton, Arlington, Wellesley, Concord, Salem, Rockport, Quincy, JP to name a few. These are all towns in and of themselves. I grew up in Newton, which was a short T-ride downtown, and easy access to any town along the T. Newton is made up of 12 little villages, many of which have a T stop or commuter rail stop, and little centers with stores and restaurants, many of which are locally owned.

Obviously people DO want to live in these places... housing prices are way up. There are not enough to go around. Even with a slight drop in prices, they are still extremely expensive now.

I may be moving to Baltimore. So far most suburbs I've seen are awful. I did think Catonsville was OK... it has an ok center, and it isn't too far from the city, and it had some nice houses.

I don't understand why they don't build more small city centers out in the suburbs. You could still have large grass yards, but with a little town, too. I guess Massachusetts spoiled me.

my comments on new quality are based primarily on the way money is made in new construction projects.

I'm not going to argue that, but if the owner just splashes some spackle and paint over an issue instead of taking the time to take a chunk out of the drywall and reinforce/repair/replace the value will naturally go down.

But I've also helped reconfigure some older places. You can see that at some point the person before you took the time to cut out bad wood and replace it with something newer and then put on the paint & plaster.

A spec house is probably doomed, but even they can be saved over time. If you do the work right, it should last for years.

A spec house is probably doomed, but even they can be saved over time. If you do the work right, it should last for years.

My first house was a spec. We maintained it well, and had no problems in almost twenty years. The new owner, whom I see now and then, hasn't reported any problems either.

NicoleK - I just moved out of my mom's place in Hingham and into a rental in Quincy. Quincy sucks in so far as everything is close if you take the bus or drive, but it's not really a nice "community." Quincy Center isn't anything to write home about. I'm being harsh, but I grew up in Hingham so there is definitely a level of snobbery here...But for the kind of place I get in Quincy I'd easily pay double if it were in Cambridge! So I do what I can.

That said, I'd love to live in Porter Sq. out in Somerville. Long-term Newton is exactly where I'd love to be!! It's got that small-suburb feel but it's got all the conveniences you'd ever need and it's a stone's throw from the city. Love it! Go Mass.

My first house was a spec.

It depends on the builder doing it right. There was a company that was building homes in our area starting in the late 60's and through the 70's. There are about five styles of these brick ranch homes. They came through and laid pipes, the next crew poured the cement, the next did framing, etc. The satisfaction with the houses is in the 95-98% range.

At the same time I saw a 60 Minutes report a few years ago on one builder: the crews were shoddy and in one house half the rear wall wasn't even attached to the foundation.

Some of it is the quality of the builder. And some is in the material.

To the Bostoners, isn't calling Cambridge, Brookline and Jamaica Plains "suburbs" a bit dishonest? All those places are part of the metro area and are accessible by a short subway ride from the Back Bay. Cambridge is considered a city in it's own right, JP is a neighborhood in Boston and so was Brookline until it incorporated itself in 1705. I'd think you'd need to be at least to Newtown, Sommerville or Braintree before you'd hit the 'burbs.

Jim: True. Our builder took real pride in the houses. Others in the neighborhood didn't and it shows in the product.

The article claims that 50% of us want to live in cities but only 20% of the housing is there.

I find this hard to believe.

I know a lot of people. And maybe because I live in the Northeast, there's an inbuilt bias. But pretty much everyone I know thinks that even the suburbs are too crowded.

In my ideal world, I would have to travel at least a mile to see another human. I cannot comprehend how anyone can WANT to live in a high-density situation. I always thought people lived in cities because they hated the commute to work. You couldn't pay me enough to live in a place like New York or Boston or LA.

"the penumbra"
Cool, I now have a name for my neighborhood.

I'm a gen X guy with a real small, real cute house real close to the real cool part of town. Well, it wasn't actually small until I had the kid. New urbanism has it's limits, and those sensibilities don't wear well.

Maybe it's a good thing that the planning process moves slowly.

Also, walking is for the weekend. That's part of what pisses me off about Leinberger: his advocacy of transit oriented neighborhoods. Urban dwellers resent suburbanites because they perceive suburbia as using more than its fair share of resources. SPRAWL. Yet light rail trains don't run on electricity, they run on subsidies. Any plan that does not account for the undeniable future of the automobile as the preferred mode of weekday travel is doomed to fail. In the end walkability will prove to be a luxury, and the price will be outweighed by needs* for most of his claimed 50%.

*Like a couple of parking spaces so you don't have to complain about the pinkberry, which you can walk to.

> Suburbia is a giant land of
> strangers, and I really hate it.

I think this is mistaken. I admire the spaces between people, and it's an indisputable if ironic truth that in our cosmopolitan cities, you can live like you want to, and no one will have anything to say about it. You have whatever sex you want, eat whatever food you want, and listen to whatever music you want, but neighbors won't bother to gossip.

But Amy, I understand what you're saying about the way suburbs isolate children. (See 10:27am comment.)

Part, large part I think, of the problem is the McMansion mentality: people paying fortunes not for a home, not for a nice place to live, but for a "Ain't I SOMETHING?!?" box. Which does not work well with a healthy community.

If I had the money I'd have one BIG piece of land with a house in the middle of it, and it would be a home, not a damn showpiece. Someone wants a showpiece, that's fine; but when they worry more about 'show' than 'home', they've got problems. And more coming.

I grew up 50 miles of dirt road from the nearest town. I've lived in big cities, medium sized cities and now in downtown LA. Pasadena, which is a small city some consider a suburb, was the nicest for neighborhoods. I don't understand why people are so hot to force others into their notions of what's appropriate.

Ever go out to those mega-suburbs in Santa Paula or near Riverside? Those houses are often inhabited by former residents of Mumbai or Mexico City who know from density.

"This place is a Craftsman home, and is just a wonderful place to live. "

A couple of years ago I stopped in to see a new development, apparently modeled on the perfect small neighborhood. Perfect "craftsman" reproductions, cute front porches (the best feature), everything planned just right. Cute yards. Cute fences.

It looked like a Twilight Zone set.

Maybe it was the lack of kids riding bikes, or the lack of trees, or the fact that it looked like it was designed decades ago but the paint and materials were brand-new ... but it was sterile and odd and creepy.

The only store I saw within walking distance was something the developers had built in the same style.

It was next to the only office building. Stepford Robotics Mfg., I think.

I'll check back in a decade and see how it looks and if the wives have aged.

Gretchen,

Yes, Quincy doesn't have the greatest downtown. I thought it was pretty crappy when I lived in MA. But now I don't live in MA, and I've seen more towns, and, believe me, compared to other places, Quincy is pretty nice. The downtown is nothing to write home about, but there IS one... there are so many places that don't have one at all, not even a little one along a main road like Quincy! Some of these towns are just miles and miles of developments with names like "Pleasant Acres" that are anything but... large houses that all look exactly the same, no trees, and no downtown... just a strip mall or two.

There are some places were even finding a microscopic sucky center like Weston's is difficult. (Weston is beautiful, but their center is pathetic. If you are rich, in Boston, and want a huge mansion with a yard, move to Wellesley, not Weston. They have a great little center.)

If you move to Newton, stay out of Waban and the Angier school... the kids there are famous for being nasty and mean. They feed into Brown. Go the Day/North route. I went to Mason-Rice which split between Day and Brown, and overall the ones who went to Day and then North were much happier. Also, West Newton is cool and has that great cinema, plus a commuter stop.

Hasan,

That's my point... a good suburb IS on the subway line. Some places don't even HAVE cute little "just outside" towns. And Newton is still on the subway line, too... but it definitely isn't the city. It is a suburb. Part of what makes a suburb a "good" suburb in my book is seperation from but easy access to the city.

I'm single and I'd love to live in the middle of Denver. However, I'm not rich, so I don't.

I find this compulsion to force all of America into ultra-high-density housing, where they have to arrange their entire lives around a train schedule, positively totalitarian. Some extistential "crisis" demands that we all give up our freedoms, our individual existences, and learn to exist as warehoused interchangable parts? How conveeeeeeeeenient for the self-appointed elites who seek to control us. Yeah, I'm sure they'd like it -- a locked-up population with no rights of movement and very limited access to transportation, is an easy to control population. Not that they are going to apply those same standards to themselves, mind you. After all, they are Important People.

As for whatever housing shortage exists in the big cities, it is caused entirely by the anti-development attitudes of the governments of those cities. Who wants to build in an area where the city will make you pay blackmail for permits, tax the shit out of your building materials, force you to use expensive union labor, blackmail you some more for your C.O., and then slap rent controls on what you build? And this is the typical attitude of nearly every large city government in the U.S., New York being Exhibit A. So if you are complaining about the cost of housing in the city, but then you vote for an anti-development city government, then when you go to blame someone, you can start by looking in the mirror.

Um... Cousin Dave, no one is forcing anyone to live in a nice small town. In fact, most people CAN'T live in a nice small town... the forcing is happening in the opposite way, with these crazy subdivisions that fine you if you put up a political sign or a flag.

And no freedom of movement? What are you talking about? Public transportation gives you MORE freedom of movement, not less!

Tell that to the guy that just missed the last train out.

While that sounds like my ideal, I have serious misgivings. First of all, what I like is not what what everyone (or even the majority, I usually am not in the majority in my lifestyle choices) would like, and we should have a choice of various living situations to choose from.

And there's nothing wrong with want a house in the country, have to work to achieve that. The country is no place for the poor -- high prices in markets due to no competition, few apartments and no public transit to speak of.

The burbs seems to vary in their affordability rates and, frankly, personality. I have always struggled to live in one precisely because of the schools. It's not impossible. There's affordable housing unless you do nothing more than flip burgers at McD's or something if you search. Of course, there are ones you couldn't find an affordable apartment or a bus line but anyone needing those would not be happy in them anyway. Can we say snobby to the nth degree? Anyone who does not have their own house, car and, usually, God of their choice is a hoodlum.

I also think that while I'd like to live in something smaller with everything in walkable reach, this is not a realistic dream and is not achievable. If I have a movie theater, grocer, doc, dentist, etc., etc., etc. in a small town, it is gonna be the one and only or one of two or three (any more would make it rather tough to keep it small). Hence, no real competition and no need to offer good service at a good price.

That said I do think it a shame that the burbs have gotten to be largely unwalkable. Even when they have a park, a kid has to have mom or dad drive him to it. Or his friend's house. Christ, that's just stupid.

EricK, lived in downtown Denver for a while. Right on 15th Street. Loved it, loved it, loved it, loved being kitty-cornered to work and a block away from the 16th street mall. But then 500,000 people moved to Denver in 6 months time (this was a dozen years ago) and it did horrible things to the cost of living. Even there I never stopped being homesick. So I went home to upstate NY.

"Um... Cousin Dave, no one is forcing anyone to live in a nice small town"

NicoleK, that's absolutely true. No one is advocating forcing everyone to live in the country. No one is advocating forcing everyone to live in the suburbs. However, quite a few people, especially on the Left, *are* advocating forcing everyone to live in the inner city, and accept substantial restrictions on freedoms that come from doing so. And their motivations for doing so are, prima facie, totalitarian. They advocate it because of their personal desire to exercise very restrictive control over a large segment of the population. There is no other possible motive.

Who on the left is forcing anyone to live in the inner city? All the left-wing people I know live in small suburban towns (with cute centers you can walk to), or in semi-urban areas like Cambridge (it may surprise you, but Cambridge actually has a lot of houses with yards that look quite suburban, especially around the Fresh Pond area, and between it and Porter Square), or in farms in places like Vermont, or Europe.

Who is forcing people to live in the inner city? Do you know of anyone being forced into the inner city?

This article doesn't sound like it wants people to live in the inner city, but to clean up small towns nicer.

I take it back... I do know one insane architect at ETH who thinks we should consolidate in large cities. But he doesn't have a lot of clout. And none of the other architects I know think that.

And Brian, the guy who missed the train CHOSE to take the train, he could have driven. I know of no towns that have rail service but no roads. Towns that have rail service offer a choice. Towns that don't offer rail service offer no choice... THEY are the ones that are forcing you to do certain things.