‘Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design’ by Charles Montgomery (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux; November 12, 2013)
i. Introduction/Synopsis
PART I: THE ROAD TO THE MODERN CITY: COMPARTMENTALIZATION, CARS, AND SUBURBIA
1. Compartmentalization: The Separation Project
2. Laying the Groundwork for the Suburbs
a. The Beginning of the Suburbs
b. The Rise of the Automobile
3. The Rise of the Suburbs
a. From Concept to Reality: ‘Futurama’ and Government Spending
b. The Design of the Modern Suburb
PART II: THE PROBLEMS WITH LIVING IN THE SUBURBS
4. The Suburban Commute
5. The Miserable Commute
6. The Impact on Leisure Time and Family Life
7. Detachment from the Community
8. Driving Is Expensive!
9. Retreat to the City!!
PART III: THE PROBLEMS WITH THE CITY
10. The Price of Sprawl (and the Underfunded City)
a. The Price of Sprawl
b. The Underfunded City: Less Services in the City, More Traffic, More Pollution etc.
11. Compartmentalization Revisited
PART IV: FIXING THE CITY
12. A Vision for the Happy City
13. Repairing Suburbia
a. The Sprawl Repair Manual
b. The Benefits of Sprawl Repair
c. Sprawl Repair in the Community of Lakewood, Colorado
14. The Fight to End Compartmentalization
a. Code Wars
b. The Form-Based Code
15. Converting the City’s Streets to Make Them More Bike- and Pedestrian-Friendly
a. The Inefficiency of Cars
b. Converting Copenhagen’s Streets
c. The Joy of Cycling and Walking
16. Reintroducing Sociability into the City: The Intelligent Town Square
17. Reintroducing Nature into the City: The Joy of Parks
18. Conclusion
i. Introduction/Synopsis
The modern city owes much of its current design to two major trends or ‘movements’ that have emerged since the time of the industrial revolution. The first trend traces back to the industrial revolution itself, when the appearance of smoke-billowing factories (and egregiously dirty slums) necessitated new solutions to the problem of how to organize city life. The answer—still reflected in cities all over the world—was to compartmentalize functions, such that industrial areas, shopping areas, office areas, and living areas were separated off from one another into distinct blocks of the city.
The second trend in urban design took full hold in the post-war era, with the rise of the suburbs. In a sense, the suburbs represent a continuation and intensification of the compartmentalization movement, as the living areas of the upper classes were separated-off still further from the other areas of the city—out into sprawling districts miles away (as automobiles made it possible for certain city dwellers to escape to an idealized haven away from the hustle and bustle).
While the suburban movement has had the bulk of its impact on the landscape outside of the city proper, the city itself has not been spared of its influence. For indeed, the city was gutted of many of the inhabitants that formerly occupied it; and, what’s more, it has been reshaped by the roads and freeways introduced to shuttle-in the suburbanites from their faraway destinations.
Now, it may well be the case that all this compartmentalization and suburbification was originally intended to benefit (most of) the city’s inhabitants. Unfortunately, however, the longer we live with these trends in urban design, the more it is becoming clear that this way of organizing the city leaves much to be desired.
Let us begin with the suburbs, and work our way inwards. In the first place, those who have fled to the suburbs have found that there is a steep price to pay for escaping the hustle and bustle of the city, and that price begins with all the driving. And the hellish commute is only half of it: virtually nothing that the average suburbanite wants and needs, and no place they want to go, is accessible without a car trip. Obviously, all this driving is unpleasant in itself, but this is just the beginning. Second, and even more important, it leaves less time for other things—including family life. Also, the piling up of time spent behind the wheel is just plain unhealthy, as it leads to both obesity and—by extension—several other health problems. Additionally, having to drive everywhere is expensive, and is only getting more so as the price of oil continues to rise. Finally, because suburbanites spend so little time actually walking through their neighborhoods, they tend to have little casual contact with neighbors, which at least partly explains why they tend to be more detached from their communities.
With all the negative consequences of suburban life, it is no surprise that many of those who had formerly fled to the burbs are now fleeing back to the city. Actually, in many cases, suburbanites have had little choice, as the rising price of oil—together with the housing crash of 2008—has left them with no way to afford their suburban nightmare regardless (thus many of the suburbs have become as abandoned as the inner city once was).
Unfortunately, life back in the city has seldom been much better. For one thing, outdated compartmentalization in the city has interfered with accessibility in a manner that is similar to the way that sprawl has interfered with accessibility out in the suburbs. Second, since transportation networks in the city have been rearranged to suit cars, alternative forms of transportation have largely been compromised, thus leaving citizens with less real choice when it comes to getting around. Also, because it has been so expensive for cities to service the suburbs (they being so far away, and so spread out), there has been less money to fund public goods that serve the city, such as public transit, parks and sociability-inviting squares—thus the city has actually become a less livable place in the suburban era.
Thankfully, at least some cities around the world (from Bogota to Copenhagen to Vancouver etc.) have begun taking efforts to remedy these issues, and are beginning to embrace a vision of the city which (according to the research) is both better-functioning and leads to happier citizens. In broad outline, the happy city is composed of multi-use, multi-income communities; laced with parks and public squares of varying sizes; and tied together with transportation networks that reintroduce walking, cycling and public transport as real options. (This vision of the city is often referred to as the new urbanist movement.)
In his new book Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design urbanist and writer Charles Montgomery takes us through the history of the modern city, and the latest efforts to reform over a century of ill-conceived design decisions.
*To check out the book on Amazon.com, or purchase it, please click here: Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design
PART I: THE ROAD TO THE MODERN CITY: COMPARTMENTALIZATION, CARS, AND SUBURBIA
As mentioned in the introduction, the modern city owes much of its organization to two trends that emerged since the time of the industrial revolution. The first of these trends sprang up in the late 19th and early 20th century, and consisted in the compartmentalization of the city; or, as Montgomery refers to it, the separation project.
1. Compartmentalization: The Separation Project
The separation project was primarily a response to the pollution caused by the new variety of industrial factory, as well as the dirt and squalor associated with many of the poorer areas of the city. Specifically, the separation project was meant to compartmentalize the various functions in the city, so that its dirtier elements might be avoided by those who wished (and could afford) to. As the author explains, speaking of the separation school, “it’s central belief is that the good life can be achieve only by strictly segregating the various functions of the city so that certain people can avoid the worst of its toxicity… with crowded cities chocking on soot and sewage, it was reasonable to wish to retreat from—or at least isolate—the city’s unpleasantness” (loc. 1106).
One of the most influential proponents of the separation project was a Swiss-French architect named Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris (better known as Le Corbusier). As Montgomery explains, Le Corbusier believed that “most urban problems could be fixed by separating the city into functionally pure districts arranged according to the simple, rational diagrams of the master architect. Le Corbusier’s Radiant City plan exhibits this philosophy in all its wondrous simplicity: on this quadrant are the machines for living; on that quadrant, the factory zone; on another, the district for shopping—urban units stacked neatly like packages you might see in an IKEA warehouse” (loc. 1126).
Le Corubusier’s Radiant City:
In America, the movement towards compartmentalization began in earnest in the early 20th century, in New York, but quickly spread to other municipalities all over the country. As the author explains, “retailers in Manhattan demanded that properties be zoned to keep industrial interests from sullying the shopping areas along Fifth Avenue. In 1916 the city did just that. Hundreds of municipalities followed. Zoning was intended to reduce congestion, improve health, and make business more efficient. But most of all, it protected property values. Perhaps this is why we so enthusiastically embraced it” (loc. 1138).
Still, the separation project was not without its opponents, and it wasn’t long before zoning laws were challenged in court. This occurred in 1926, when an American real estate developer found that the zoning laws in Euclid, Ohio, ran afoul of his industrial ambitions. The developer took the issue all the way to the highest court in the land. Sadly for him, though, the Court ruled in favor of the city—and with this a new precedent was established that set up compartmentalization for good. As Montgomery explains, speaking of the developer’s case, “that fight went all the way to the Supreme Court. The village won, and shortly thereafter, the federal government gave all municipalities the same power. Since then, it has been illegal in most American jurisdictions to deviate from very narrow sets of rules governing how cities should be built or altered. Zoning laws and development codes specify what you can build and what you can do on your land… Most powerfully, they strictly separate places for living, working, shopping, and recreation” (loc. 1144).
Nowadays, emissions controls and sewage systems have largely done away with the need to separate the various functions of the city (loc. 1126). Still, though, compartmentalization lives on—partly through inertia, and partly because land developers like the fact that it makes it easier to manage and control large tracts of land. As we shall see later, however, this is rather unfortunate, since compartmentalization makes city living much more awkward (and much less walkable) than it needs to be.
2. Laying the Groundwork for the Suburbs
a. The Beginning of the Suburbs
The second major movement that has shaped the organization of the modern city is the rise of suburbia. Suburbia truly took off following World War II; however, the idea behind the suburbs had actually been around as long as that of compartmentalization. Indeed, the dream of escaping the city emerged at the same time as the city sprouted elements that made compartmentalization look appealing (loc. 425, 1114). In the late 19th century, for example, “English reformers led by Ebenezer Howard planned utopian towns around train stations in the country side” (loc. 427).
Interestingly, the first wave of suburbs (which began popping up during the interwar years), were in fact designed to be accessed by various forms of public transit (mainly street cars). In this, then, they were far different than the automobile-driven suburbs of the post-war era that dominate the landscape today. Indeed, as is clear, the modern suburb simply could not exist without a large portion of the population able to afford a car, and this would not occur until the economic boom of the post-war years.
b. The Rise of the Automobile
Even before automobiles became widely accessible, however, many of the richest of the rich did own one, and they (together with the American Automobile Association) had already succeeded in having city streets re-organized to suit their needs.
This was no easy task, since, at first, only the wealthiest individuals owned cars; and, even more importantly, it was blatantly obvious how inefficient cars were in terms of transporting people—and how dangerous they were to everyone else on the road. As Montgomery explains, “it did not take an engineer to see that the most efficient way to move lots of people in and out of dense, crowded downtowns was by street car or bus. In the Chicago Loop, streetcars used 2 percent of the road space but still carried three-quarters of road users. The more cars you added, the slower the going would be for everyone. / At first, all levels of society banded together to protect the shared street. Police, politicians, newspaper editors, and parents all fought to regulate automobile access, ban curbside parking, and, most of all, limit speeds to ten miles per hour. But drivers joined with automobile dealers and manufacturers to launch a war of ideas that would redefine the urban street. They wanted the right to go faster. They wanted more space. And they wanted pedestrians, cyclists, and streetcar users to get out of the way. The American Automobile Association called this new movement Motordom” (loc. 1206 / 1200).
By hook and by crook, Motordom eventually won the day. As the author explains, “the industry and its auto club supporters pressed their agenda in newspapers and city halls. They hired their own engineers to propose designs for city streets that served the needs of motorists first. They stacked the national transportations-safety conferences staged by U.S. commerce secretary Herbert Hoover in the 1920s, creating model traffic regulations that forced pedestrians and transit users into regimented corners of the street such as crosswalks and streetcar boarding areas. When the regulations were published in 1928, they were adopted by hundreds of cities eager to embrace what seemed like a forward-thinking approach to mobility. They set a cultural standard that has influenced local lawmakers for decades” (loc. 1223).
3. The Rise of the Suburbs
a. From Concept to Reality: ‘Futurama’ and Government Spending
Having won the battle for the streets of the city, it now remained for the automobile (and Motordom) to dominate the countryside: in the form of the modern suburb.
The vision for the modern suburb was sparked by an ambitious exhibit at the World’s Fair in New York in 1939. Called ‘Futurama,’ the exhibit was sponsored by none other than General Motors (loc. 1244). As Montgomery explains, “Futurama showed people the wondrous world they would inhabit in 1960 if cities embraced the Motordom vision. Visitors were transported in moving chairs over a football-field size diorama where automated superhighways shuttled toy cars between city and country. At the end of the ride, visitors strolled out onto an elevated pedestrian walkway above a perfect street packed with new automobiles. It was a life-size version of the motor age city: the future made real, thanks to the exhibit’s sponsor, General Motors” (loc. 1244).
Futurama:
The exhibit was a smash hit, and received enormous exposure, as it was not only experienced live by over 24 million people, but also enjoyed widespread coverage in newspapers and magazines across the country (loc. 1249). The public’s imagination was officially lit, and, by the time the war was over and the post-war economic boom had begun, the demand for new (and now more affordable) automobiles reached a fever pitch.
With the economy, automobile sales, and the population all booming, the conditions were ripe for the federal government to take action to make the suburban dream a reality. This it did beginning in the mid 1950s, when it started pouring enormous amounts of money into laying down new freeways and roads, and also subsidizing the development of new car-accessible suburbs. As the author explains, “the final assault on the old city arrived via the interstate highway system. In 1956 the Federal-Aid Highway Act funneled billions of tax dollars into the construction of new freeways, including dozens of wide new roads that would push right into the heart of cities. This—along with federal home mortgage subsidies and zoning that effectively prohibited any other kind of development but sprawl—rewarded Americans who abandoned downtowns and punished those who stayed behind, with freeways cutting swaths through inner-city neighborhoods from Baltimore to San Francisco. Anyone who could afford to get out, did” (loc. 1262).
b. The Design of the Modern Suburb
The ‘anyone who could afford to get out’ aspect of this scenario is important. For part of what lured many city-dwellers out into the suburbs is that not everyone could afford to move there. And it was not just the price of a new car that stood as a barrier to entry. The fact is that most suburban developers intentionally neglected to build housing that was within the price range of the lower classes (which, importantly, also meant minorities). As Montgomery explains, “it is impossible to decouple America’s suburban spread from race and class tension… So-called exclusionary zoning, which on the surface bans only certain kinds of buildings and functions from a neighborhood, served the deeper purpose of excluding people who fall beneath a certain income bracket. The tactic still works today. If you want to keep poor people out of your community, all you really need to do is ban duplexes and apartment buildings—which is exactly what new suburbs were permitted to do” (loc. 1156).
As for the layout of the new suburbs, it is perhaps no surprise that the compartmentalization that had held sway in the city for the better part of half a century also sprang up here (loc. 1144). The only difference is that the various aspects of the suburb were spread out even further apart. Why not? There was more room outside the city; and besides, automobiles made anything instantly accessible anyway.
Though the specific layout of the suburb evolved somewhat in the beginning, it eventually settled on a very particular pattern—one that is now familiar to us all. Here it is in outline: “over here are the residential zones, generally distinguished by detached homes, broad lawns, and wide, curving streets, each zone anchored by an elementary school. Over there are the commercial districts, or power centers, where national retailers occupy warehouse-size boxes clustered like islands in dark oceans of parking. And over there are the office and industrial parks, with their own ample surface car-storage zones. All of these distinct urban units are connected by high-speed freeways and arterial roads so generous that they have obliterated the once-meaningful metric of proximity. They loop around the various distilled districts, skirt the old city center, and shoot across farms and mountains until they pierce the heart of the nearest metropolis. Distance is reduced to an abstraction. Home is simultaneously far from and close to everything else, depending on the number of cars on the road at any moment” (loc. 787).
Just how influential has this design-pattern been? Incredibly so; for, as the author points out, a full three-quarters of the construction in the United States over the past 30 years has followed this general plan (loc. 781). And it’s not just in America where the suburbs have spread: the design pictured above has been highly influential throughout the developed world. The result of this is that, today, “this is the environment that, more than any other, defines how Americans and millions of people in wealthy cities across the globe move, live, work, play, and perceive the world… If you are going to talk about the modern city, you have to begin out here, at the edge of the urban blast radius” (loc. 799).
PART II: THE PROBLEMS WITH LIVING IN THE SUBURBS
4. The Suburban Commute
Unfortunately, the meteoric rise (and spread) of the suburbs is partly to blame for its problems. To begin with, as the number of suburban developments multiplied, and the sprawl stretched further and further from the city center itself, the number of cars on the road has grown right along in pace. As a result, the commuting distance for the average suburbanite has not only steadily increased, but the commute itself has also become bogged down with an ever-increasing amount of traffic.
The obvious solution to all this grid-lock, of course, is to just make more roads, and increase the width and carrying capacity of the existing freeways. Not surprisingly, this solution has been tried on numerous occasions. Unfortunately, every time it is tried the same thing happens: the increased carrying capacity gets filled up almost as quickly as it is introduced, putting commuters right back into gridlock.
Take the experience of Atlanta, for example. As the author explains, “Atlanta was encircled by a new beltway—known as the Perimeter—in 1969, and highway expansion programs continued for more than thirty years. The problem was that new asphalt changed the collective mind of the city. It caused thousands of people to regard the road differently and behave differently. Nondrivers saw open lanes and stated driving. Existing drivers altered their routes. Other drivers were inspired to move their homes or work farther away. Meanwhile, property developers took advantage of newly proximate land, offering everyone what seemed like a chance to live or work in the land of dispersal… The more highway Georgians built, the more thinly people… spread their lives across the Georgia hills. Then, like dry stream-beds in a storm, those new highway lanes filled up. The region came to exhibit a classic case of what transportation analysts call induced traffic, a phenomenon in which new highway lanes invariably clog up with hundreds of thousands of cars driven by new drivers on their way to new neighborhoods fed by new road capacity, a tendency that creates entirely new traffic jams faster than the time it takes to finish paying off a new car. The average time it takes for new urban highway capacity to fill up with new demand? Five to six years” (loc. 1655).
So much for building more roads, but what about connecting the suburbs with public transit? The problem with this is that most suburbs lack the population density needed to support a viable public transit system. As Montgomery explains, the low-density of the typical suburban community “helps explain the vicious cycle of crummy transit service out in suburbia. Dispersal makes frequent service just too costly to provide, but infrequent service sends potential riders back to their cars” (loc. 3332). Elsewhere, the author adds that “the human density now required to support transit frequencies of ten minutes or less is estimated at around twelve people per acre. But the average suburban lot over the past two decades… averages from .5 to 1.2 acres” (loc. 2425).
The long short of it, then, is that so long as suburban sprawl continues to exist and spread in its current form, the average suburbanite will be stuck with an increasingly long and slow commute. And, frankly, the suburban commute is already long and slow enough, thank you very much. To be precise, “the average American now spends more than fifty minutes commuting. Return commute times have shot past sixty-eight minutes in the New York megalopolis, seventy-four minutes in London, and a whopping eight minutes in Toronto” (loc. 2996).
And these numbers include all city-dwellers, not just suburbanites, who tend to have much longer commutes than those who live in the city proper. Indeed, the experience of the typical suburbanite is captured much more accurately by people like Randy Strausser, who lives in a suburb called Mountain House, in San Joaquin County outside of San Jose (loc. 845, 852). Here is Montgomery to tell the story of Strausser’s commute: “At dawn on any given weekday, Randy; his septuagenarian mother, Nancy; and his daughter, Kim, would all be out on the highway, often driving alone from their respective homes, crossing two mountain ranges and speeding past half a dozen municipalities to their jobs in the Bay Area, each racking up more than 120 miles round-trip. Randy gave the highway three or four hours a day” (loc. 854).
And not only does Randy give the highway 3 to 4 hours day, but his entire schedule needs to be reorganized to escape the worst of the traffic. Here’s Randy’s schedule: “smack the alarm off at 4:15 a.m. Shower. No breakfast. Hit the highway at five to beat the traffic. Arrive by 6:15 a.m. Eat at work. Try to be back on I-680 by 5:30 p.m. It was harder to beat the rush in the afternoons. He was lucky to get to his front door by 7:30” (loc. 861).
5. The Miserable Commute
This type of commute, and schedule, holds a whole plethora of negative consequences. In the first place, the driving itself is stressful and miserable. And it’s not just Randy who thinks so. A good amount of research has been invested in this issue, and the results are clear and unequivocal. Specifically, the studies tell us that “people who endure long drives tend to experience higher blood pressure and more headaches than those with short commutes. They get frustrated more easily and tend to be grumpier when they get to their destination… Bruno Frey and Alois Stutzer compared German commuters’ estimation of the time it took them to get to work with their answers to the standard well-being question: ‘How satisfied are you with your life, all things considered?’ Their finding was… straightforward: the longer the drive, the less happy people were… In fact, Stutzer and Frey found that a person with a one-hour commute has to earn 40 percent more money to be as satisfied with life as someone who walks to the office. On the other hand, for a single person, exchanging a long commute for a short walk to work has the same effect on happiness as finding a new love” (loc. 1404).
And, of course, all this stress and misery affects one’s physical health as well—leading to chronic health problems and an early grave. As the author explains, “driving in traffic is harrowing for both brain and body. The blood of people who drive in cities is a high-test stew of stress hormones. The worse the traffic, the more your system is flooded with adrenaline and cortisol, the fight-or-flight juices that, in the short term, get your heart pumping faster, dilate your air passages, and help sharpen your alertness, but in the long term can make you ill… if you bathe in these hormones for too long, they can be toxic. Your immune system will be compromised, your blood vessels and bones will weaken, and your brain cells will begin to die off from the stress… This is part of the reason why urban bus drivers get sick more often, miss work more frequently, and die younger than people in other occupations. One stress-medicine specialist, Dr John Larson, reported that many of his heart attack patients had one thing in common: shortly before their hearts gave out, they had been enraged while driving” (loc. 2988).
And the knock-on effect of stress is not the only reason a long commute is hard on our physical health. The very fact that a lengthy commute keeps us sitting for long stretches (and with less time to hit the gym), means that it it’s also making us fat—and is also burdening us with a host of other conditions associated with obesity. Just consider the following: “in a study of more than eight thousand households, investigators from the Georgia Institute of Technology led by Lawrence Frank discovered that people’s environments were shaping their travel behavior and their bodies. They could actually predict how fat people were by where they live in the city. Frank found that a white male living in Midtown, a lively district near Atlanta’s downtown, was likely to weigh ten pounds less than his identical twin living out in a place like, say, Mableton, in the cul-de-sac archipelago that surrounds Atlanta, simply because the Midtowner would be twice as likely to get enough exercise every day” (loc. 3067). Elsewhere, the author adds that “public health experts have even invented a new word—obesogenic, or fat-making—to describe low-density neighborhoods… This is one of the reasons that, aside from sedentary Saudi Arabians and some South Pacific Islanders, Americans are now the fattest people on the planet. Fully a third of Americans are obese… More than three-quarters of obese adults have either diabetes, high blood cholesterol levels, high blood pressure, or coronary artery disease. The Centers for Disease Control warn that lifestyle-related diabetes has reached epidemic proportions. At the same time, living in low-density sprawl puts residents at greater risk of arthritis, chronic lung disease, digestive problems, headaches, and urinary tract infections. Some of these effects come from the toxic air we breathe while we are driving our cars or living amid their fumes. But, most critically, they result from living in communities that force people to drive. Just living in a sprawling city has the effect of four years of aging” (loc. 1591).
6. The Impact on Leisure Time and Family Life
The stress and health issues associated with long commutes are just the tip of the iceberg. Second, long commutes rob us of our leisure time. You will recall Randy Strausser’s commute detailed above: out the door by 4:30 in the morning, and back by 7:30 at night. How much time does this leave Randy for his family? Not much. And Randy’s situation is not unique. Everybody seems stressed for time these days; however, the problem is particularly acute for those who must endure long commutes from the suburbs.
And the effect on families has been devastating. As an indication of this, consider that “a Swedish study found that people who endure more than a forty-five-minute commute were 40 percent more likely to divorce” (loc. 924).
But it’s not just the adults who are suffering. Indeed, as parents spend more time on the roads, and less time at home, their children suffer too. As Montgomery explains, “teens from the suburbs—even affluent suburbs—have proved to be more prone to social and emotional problems than their urban counterparts. When she studied teenagers from affluent suburbs in the Northeast, Columbia University psychologist Suniya Luthar found that despite their access to resources, health services, and high-functioning parents, these teens were much more anxious and depressed than teens from inner-city neighborhoods who were faced with all manner of environmental and social ills. The privileged suburban teens smoked more, drank more, and used more hard drugs than inner-city teens, especially when they were feeling down. ‘The implication,’ explained Luthar, ‘is that they are self-medicating.’ Unhappy youths in these studies all seemed to have one thing in common; they lacked the peace of mind that comes with strong attachment to parents. Kids who actually get to eat dinner with at least one parent get better grades and have fewer emotional problems. Lots of things keep parents busy these days, but it stands to reason that marathon commutes, long-distance shopping trips, and the stringing together of distant appointments unique to the dispersed city can starve children of those crucial parental hours” (loc. 1012).
7. Detachment from the Community
In addition to compromising health and family life, the particular set-up of the suburbs also tends to erode the relationships suburbanites have with their neighbors and communities. Indeed, the research indicates that “people who live in monofunctional, car-dependent neighborhoods outside of urban centers are much less trusting of other people than people who live in walkable neighborhoods where housing is mixed with shops, services, and places to work. They are also much less likely to know their neighbors” (loc. 929).
Why is this the case? At least part of it has to do with the fact that suburbanites tend to do far less walking in their own neighborhoods (there being nothing around that is remotely accessible by foot). Because suburbanites do less walking, they have less opportunity to meet and get to know their neighbors—which then also helps explain why they are less trusting of them (loc. 888-95).
This is no small problem. As much as we may take the relationships we have with our neighbors for granted, studies indicate that they play a big part in contributing to our overall happiness—and even our health. As Montgomery explains, “a study of Swiss cities found that psychotic disorders, including schizophrenia, are most common in neighborhoods with the thinnest social networks. Social isolation just may be the greatest environmental hazard of city living—worse than noise, pollution, or even crowding. The more connected we are with family and community, the less likely we are to experience colds, heart attacks, strokes, cancer, and depression. Simple friendships with other people in one’s neighborhood are some of the best salves for stress during hard economic times—in fact sociologists have found that when adults keep these friendships, their kids are better insulated from the effects of their parents’ stress. Connected people sleep better at night. They are more able to tackle adversity. They live longer. They consistently report being happier” (loc. 927).
8. Driving Is Expensive!
The final problem with the car culture of the suburbs (at least when we confine ourselves to those who actually live there) is that it’s downright expensive! And the cost is only increasing as the price of gas goes up and up (which it seems bound to keep on doing [loc. 241]). As the author explains, “moving to the edge committed real estate migrants to a massive, sustained investment in automobiles and fuel. The average exurban family needs at least one more car than do families who live close to where they work, shop, study, and play. That family also spends twice as much just getting around in order to meet its daily needs. It’s very, very hard for people in the dispersed environment to cut back on driving. This is one reason that by 2011, the average family of four spent more on transportation than on taxes and health care combined” (loc. 833).
By the time 2008 had come around, many suburban families were already stretching themselves to the limit in order to keep up with the steep rise in the price of gas that had taken hold over the previous 4 years. And this played no small part in the housing crash of that same year. As the author explains, it was the rise in the price of fuel, “as much as climbing mortgage rates, that broke commuter’s back. After holding steady for nearly fifteen years, gas prices doubled between 2004 and late 2006 to past $3 per gallon, then spiked to more than $4 in the summer of 2008. Suddenly the folks who commuted to the Bay Area from San Joaquin County [including Randy Strausser] were forking out more than $800 for fuel each month—for some, more than a quarter of their wages, and in many cases, more than people were spending on their mortgages” (loc. 828).
It’s no surprise, then, that by 2008 home owners were beginning to default on their mortgages en masse. There was simply too little money left over to afford the mortgage with the price of gas so high. Given these considerations, it’s no small wonder that “the farther a house was from a vibrant city center, the more likely it was to experience foreclosure during the crash, the deeper its price collapsed, the less likely that price has bounced back since, and the less analysts now expect it to be worth in the future” (loc. 835).
Hence the exodus back to the city… (loc. 215-19, 1042-44)
9. Retreat to the City!!
Actually, the retreat back to the city began well before the crash of 2008—stretching back to the early 2000’s. As Montgomery explains, “in the past decade the tide of dispersal has slacked. Central cities from Manhattan to Vancouver to Mexico City have seen an influx of new residents willing to give proximity another shot” (loc. 1043; see also loc. 222).
Since this movement coincides precisely with when the price of oil took a steep jump, we may surmise that the cost of the commute has much to do with this trend. However, we should not discount the other reasons mentioned above: while the bottom line may be the straw that broke the camel’s back, the disadvantages of suburban living run deep and wide.
Still, it cannot be said that city living is a great big bowl of cherries. City life has its problems too, which we shall now look at.
PART III: THE PROBLEMS WITH THE CITY
10. The Price of Sprawl (and the Underfunded City)
a. The Price of Sprawl
Ironically enough, at least some of the problems with the city are a direct result of the rise of the suburbs, and the car culture that goes right along with it. By far the biggest problem here is that government funds that might otherwise have gone to improving the city have gone instead to freeway construction, as well as servicing the faraway and sprawling burbs. Indeed, the price of servicing sprawl is one of the strongest arguments against it—especially in an age when governments everywhere are struggling with their budgets (loc. 4301-09).
The relative price of servicing the suburbs cannot be overstated. As the author explains, “not only does sprawl development cost taxpayers more to build, it costs more to maintain, because each home in a typical community of dispersed single-family homes on big lots needs so much more paved street, drainage, water, sewage, and other services than a home in a denser, more walkable place. A neighborhood of detached homes and duplexes on small lots can be serviced for about a quarter of the cost of servicing typical large-lot detached homes. Dispersed communities also need more fire and ambulance stations than dense neighborhoods do. They need more school buses. The waste is astounding: in the 2005-06 school year, more than 25 million American children were bused to their public schools. The country spent $18.9 billion getting them there—that’s $750 for each bus-riding student, which could have been spent on actual learning” (loc. 4299).
And suburban sprawl not only costs more to build and maintain, it also brings in less in tax revenue. For example, the architect and urban planner Joseph Minicozzi conducted a study wherein he compared the property tax revenue and job-generating capability of different varieties of buildings characteristic of different neighborhoods. Minicozzi first compared a Walmart on a sprawling site just outside of Asheville, North Carolina, with a mixed-use building at the center of town, and here’s what he found: “Adding up the property and sales tax paid on each piece of land, Minicozzi found that the Walmart contributed only $50,800 to the city in retail and property taxes for each acre it used, but the JCPenney building [a six-story steel-framed 1923 classic once owned by JCPenney and converted into shops, offices, and condos] contributed a whopping $330,000 per acre in property tax alone. In other words, the city got more than seven times the return for every acre on downtown investments than it did when it broke new ground out on the city limits. When Minicozzi looked at job density, the difference was even more vivid: the small businesses that occupied the old Penney’s building employed fourteen people, which doesn’t seem like many until you realize that this is actually seventy-four jobs per acre, compared with the fewer than six jobs per acre created on a sprawling Walmart site. (This is particularly dire given that on top of reducing jobs density in its host cities, Walmart depresses average wages as well.) Minicozzi has since found the same spatial conditions in cities all over the United States. Even low-rise, mixed-use buildings of two or three stories—the kind you see on an old-style, small-town main street—bring in ten times the revenue per acre as that of an average big-box development” (loc. 4347).
When you take into account how little tax revenue the suburbs bring in, together with how much it costs to build and service them, it is often the case that cities aren’t even breaking even on the proposition. As Montgomery explains, “what’s stunning is that, thanks to the relationship between energy and distance, large-footprint sprawl development patterns can actually cost cities more to service than they give back in taxes. The result? Growth that produces deficits that simply cannot be overcome with new growth revenue. ‘Cities and counties have essentially been taking tax revenues from downtowns and using them to subsidize development and services in sprawl,’ Minicozzi told me. This is like a farmer going out and dumping all his fertilizer on the weeds rather than on the tomatoes’” (loc. 4352).
b. The Underfunded City: Less Services in the City, More Traffic, More Pollution etc.
And herein lies the problem: as cities have redirected resources from the city to the suburbs, city life itself has suffered. For every dollar sent out to the suburbs, it is one less dollar that could be spent on improving the city (on things like public transit, parks and plazas), and over time, this has had a big impact.
Meanwhile, giving the city streets over to cars—first for the sake of wealthy early-adopters, and then for the sake of commuting suburbanites—has only detracted further from the quality of life of city dwellers. As Montgomery explains, “dispersal has drawn cities into a zero-sum game: as it distilled and privatized some material comforts in detached suburban homes, it off-loaded danger and unpleasantness to the streets of dense cities. It reverberates in the car horns that wake Brooklynites at dawn, and it gets sucked into the lungs of Manhattanites who choose to walk to work. It seeps into once-quiet neighborhoods in suburban Los Angeles, where long-distance commuters barrel through residential streets to avoid now-congested freeways, and children have been banned from playing street ball. It exists in the forgotten schools, neglected public spaces, and anemic transit services endured by residents of some unfavored ‘inner-city’ neighborhoods abandoned by governments and prosperous citizens alike more than half a century ago. Meanwhile, dispersal starves the budgets of cities forced to spend sales tax dollars on roads, pipes, sewage, and services for the distant neighborhoods of sprawl, leaving little for the shared amenities that make central-living attractive” (loc. 1295).
11. Compartmentalization Revisited
Then there is the persistent compartmentalization of city neighborhoods. As mentioned earlier, the compartmentalization of functions in the city sprang up in the late 19th and early 20th century as a response to the pollution and filth associated with certain aspects of the city. Even after these negative aspects of the city were solved, however, the compartmentalization pattern continued to be mandated by city codes (loc. 1140-44). And this despite the fact compartmentalization has certain inherent disadvantages—including the fact that it cuts down on the ease of navigating the city, and reduces the walkability of communities.
This is not just a problem when it comes to efficiency. The fact is that the majority of Americans report wanting to live in mixed-use, walkable communities. As Montgomery explains, “in 2011 a survey by the National Association of Realtors found that six in ten Americans say they would rather live in a neighborhood that has a mix of houses, stores, and businesses within an easy walk than one that forced them to drive everywhere” (loc. 4540).
Meanwhile, due to compartmentalization (and suburban sprawl), only a small fraction of communities in cities are developed in such a way that incorporates a mix of uses. Take Atlanta, for example. As the Author explains—speaking of the features of the walkable community mentioned above—“in places like Atlanta, only about 10 percent of homes can access such wonders” (loc. 4540). And this pattern is repeated in cities throughout the country (loc. 3191).
If the demand for walkable communities is there, and the conditions that favor compartmentalization are gone, just why does the pattern continue to be mandated by city codes? As mentioned above, part of this has to do with simple inertia. The pattern is so embedded in the fabric of our culture that it is often simply taken for granted and perpetuated without a thought (loc. 1269-71, 4630-32).
Also at play here, though, is that there is at least one group of people who remain largely in favor of compartmentalization, and that is the wealthy land-owners who own many of the single-use parcels—since parcels confined to a single use are both easier to manage and control. As Montgomery explains, “the vast majority of real estate developments in the United States are controlled by a handful of huge Wall Street-controlled real estate investment trusts. Wall Street traders are not interested in the complexity of urban life. They are interested in easily tradable commodities” (loc. 4756).
PART IV: FIXING THE CITY
We have now been introduced to many of the problems that continue to plague the citizens of both urban and suburban communities. Our next task is to see how these problems might be remedied by new ways of organizing the city, and how at least some municipalities have begun implementing these measures.
12. A Vision for the Happy City
Before we do so, however, it is necessary that we lay out a vision of just what and who the city is for. The purpose of the city may seem like a no-brainer; however, given how city planners have handled urban design to this point, it seems it must be made explicit. The most reasonable vision of the city is this: the city should strive to maximize human flourishing—and for as many people, and as fairly as possible.
This broader goal may be broken down into a series of sub-goals, as laid out by the author: “I propose a basic recipe for urban happiness drawn from the insights of philosophers, psychologists, brain scientists, and happiness economists. What should a city accomplish after it meets our basic needs of food, shelter, and security? The city should strive to maximize joy and minimize hardship. It should lead us toward health rather than sickness. It should offer us real freedom to live, move, and build our lives as we wish. It should build resilience against economic or environmental shocks. It should be fair in the way it apportions space, services, mobility, joys, hardships, and costs. Most of all, it should enable us to build and strengthen the bonds between friends, families, and strangers that give life meaning, bonds that represent the city’s greatest achievement and opportunity” (loc. 684).
So, what can be done to reorganize our cities to better meet these goals? It just so happens that various scientists and urban designers have been exploring this question for the better part of half a century. And the consensus view among those who have taken their findings to heart (who call themselves the new urbanists) is this: “the New Urbanists… wrote a manifesto calling for compact, mixed-use, mixed-income neighborhoods of walkable street networks, with transit and attractive public spaces, all framed by buildings that responded to the local culture and climate” (loc. 4667; see also loc. 4661-70).
At least some cities around the world have begun to take this vision of the city to heart, and have begun to take measures to make it a reality. Thus what remains for us to do is to see in what ways this is happening (and, of course, to give a more thorough account of how these measures help achieve the goals mentioned above).
Now, given that the suburbs are to blame for many (if not most) of the problems that confront the city, it is fitting that we begin here.
Actually, given how many disadvantages the suburbs incur, we may be tempted to just abandon them altogether. However, when we take into account how much the population stands to increase over the coming decades, and that the vast majority of this population growth will occur in cities, it becomes clear that abandoning the suburbs is simply not an option. As Montgomery explains, “the U.S. population is projected to grow by 120 million by 2050. Where will those people live? Downtowns and first-ring, streetcar-style suburbs will be able to accommodate only a fraction of the new demographic tidal wave. Most jobs have already moved out beyond city limits anyway. The masses… will still need suburbia” (loc. 4559).
13. Repairing Suburbia
a. The Sprawl Repair Manual
However, the suburbia that the masses will need is not the suburbia of today (this much, at least, should be clear by now). Rather, the suburbia we need is one that looks a lot more like the community laid out in the new urbanist manifesto mentioned above. And, in fact, one architect (Galina Tachieva) has already taken the liberty of writing the blueprint on how to convert the modern suburb into a new urbanist haven. As the author explains, Tachieva’s “how-to guide, the Sprawl Repair Manual, offers some wildly ambitious prescriptions: Business parks can be fixed by inserting streets and shops onto their tarmacs. Urban highways can be morphed into main streets by putting them on diets and slowing them down with narrower lanes, streetlights, and crosswalks. Disconnected tangles of cul-de-sacs can be made walkable by strategic grafting of new roads and lanes between them. Huge, unaffordable McMansions can be divided into apartments. Gas stations can be humanized by wrapping their parking lots in new street-front businesses” (loc. 4570).
The following video exhibits illustrations of how sprawl repair works:
b. The Benefits of Sprawl Repair
This sprawl repair plan has numerous benefits. To begin with, introducing multiple-uses (including shops and offices) and a variety of housing options to single-use districts (and also connecting the community with walkways), means that shops and jobs are moved to within walking distance (and also made more accessible). The walkable community, as we have seen, is better for navigability, health, and neighborly relations (which also helps explain why the majority of Americans want to live in one).
Second, slimming down the highways that cut through town, and cutting out the sprawling parking lots that surround big-box stores, adds to the walkability of the community, and the safety of pedestrians and cyclists.
Third, introducing apartment buildings and other alternatives to single-lot homes bumps up the population density of the community. This has several benefits. First, the increased density makes public transit more viable, which gives residents new options for navigating the community, and also for making the commute into the city. This is not only a win for freedom, though: more public transit means less cars on the freeway, which means less congestion, so it redounds to the benefit of all commuters (and the environment). (Some cities, such as Bogota, have even created bus-only lanes on freeways [pictured below]. This dramatically cuts down on commute-times for busers, drawing even more public transit users, and shortening the commute for everyone [loc. 3770-81]).
Which lane would you rather be in?
Within the city itself, less cars coming in from the suburbs means that the city will be freed up to devote more road space to other forms of transportation, such as public transit, cycling and walking. And again, this is a win not just for greater freedom in choosing how one will get around. It’s also win for safety, and greater efficiency in moving people through the city. (Several cities have chosen not to wait for measures like sprawl repair to reduce the number of cars on the road so that they can allot more road space to other forms of transportation, but are in fact already beginning to force the issue—and we shall look in on two such experiments below).
Finally, bumping up the population density of the suburbs makes them cheaper to service, and increases the amount of tax revenue that they yield (as detailed above). This saves the city money, and opens up more funds for community development (for such things as public transit, parks, and plazas).
Of course, there is one obvious drawback to all this added density, and that is that it undercuts one of the main reasons why people choose to move out to the suburbs in the first place: to escape the crowded city.
The new urbanist solution to this issue is to make sure that denser communities (whether in the suburbs or in the city itself) are laced with parks of varying sizes. This ensures that people are afforded plenty of places to retreat from the madding crowd, as well as plenty of exposure to nature—which has been shown to have a salubrious and calming effect (loc. 1818-23, 1842-48). (The topic of introducing parks into urban spaces is an important one, and will receive its own section below).
c. Sprawl Repair in the Community of Lakewood, Colorado
With all the benefits of sprawl repair, it’s no surprise that at least some suburbs around the country have begun to adopt it. Take the community of Lakewood, Colorado, for example. As Montgomery explains, “one of the most striking retrofits is growing on the former site of a vast mall surrounded by parking on 104 acres in Lakewood, southwest of Denver… Some suggested turning the superblock site into a big-box power center. But what people in Lakewood really wanted was a downtown. The city worked with a developer to turn the superblock into twenty-three smaller blocks, with streets woven into the network of the surrounding neighborhoods, combining shopping, offices, housing, and public space. Larger buildings and parking structures were ‘wrapped’ with small street-fronting retail spaces, keeping streets active and slow… The site is anchored not by its national retailers but by a block-size town green and a central plaza where people come and hang out without any need to shop. More than fifteen hundred people now live on the unfinished site in town houses, apartments above stores, lofts, and houses built up against the streets” (loc. 4580).
Here are some before and after pictures of the mall in Lakewood (now the community of Bel Mar):
Before:
The Plan:
Street View:
Apartments:
The Plaza:
Not bad!
Here’s a great video about a development outside of Atlanta (called Glenwood Park) that follows the same principles of new urbanism (and also touches on the price of sprawl)–be sure to watch the credits too, as it gives a nice introduction to our next topic:
14. The Fight to End Compartmentalization
a. Code Wars
The success of the mixed-use developments in Lakewood and Glenwood Park is certainly an encouraging sign. Still, these types of developments remain the exception rather than the norm. Part of the reason for this is that, as mentioned above, compartmentalization continues to be mandated in the zoning codes of most counties—and is also favored through other types of regulations—and it is not always straightforward or easy to have these codes and regulations changed, particularly when it requires the consent of multiple levels of government (as is often the case [loc. 4744]).
Given these obstacles, many urban designers have begun the work of advocating for new codes and regulations, and are also doing their best to make it as easy as possible for municipalities to change their codes and regulations should they wish to. For example, Tachieva “and other sprawl-repair activists are taking the lead by writing model sprawl-repair acts as unsolicited gifts for state governments. The acts enable states and municipalities to change infrastructure-funding rules, tax incentives, and permit requirements to make it just as easy to retrofit dead malls into dense, walkable, mixed-use town centers as it is to build big-box deserts. They allow fast-tracked permitting for sprawl repairs and tax incentives for the kinds of places people actually love” (loc. 4750).
b. The Form-Based Code
At the heart of this effort to help repair sprawl is the zoning code that makes it all possible: the form-based code. Unlike most codes, which specify what can (and cannot) be made where, the form-based code is open-ended and allows for mixed uses. As the author explains, “there are many fronts in the code war, but the New Urbanists’ favorite weapon has become the form-based code, a set of rules that prescribes the shape of spaces and buildings without necessarily dictating w