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Suburban character isn’t the result of consumer choice. In most suburbs, alternative kinds of development are literally illegal to build. Cities regulate the nu

Suburban character isn’t the result of consumer choice. In most suburbs, alternative kinds of development are literally illegal to build. Cities regulate the number of units, the heights of buildings, how far they must be setback from the street, how many parking spaces they require, and so on and so on. Landowners lobby for and enact these regulations precisely because they know that if people were allowed to vote with their wallets they’d choose to live in denser developments. You can’t make cheeseburgers illegal and then argue that nobody orders cheeseburgers in restaurants because they’re unpopular.

dionidium 5y ago
I hope no one will think it too unorthodox if I respond to my own comment just to add that given these constraints on land use patterns it’s obviously the case that Americans choose to drive automobiles. It’s fairly common to hear people describe this, too, as another kind of “revealed preference” for driving over the alternatives. But it’s a revealed preference in the environment as it exists today, which is the only environment that’s legal. If people were allowed to build other kinds of environments, then they would build other kinds of environments and in those other kinds of environments they would make other choices about transportation. If you only look at people on the beach, you’ll find a revealed preference for flip-flops. But in other kinds of environments, people wear other kinds of footwear. If you only looked at people on beaches, you’d draw some funny conclusions about what people like to wear on their feet. The big takeaway here is that the suburbs are the result of big government social engineering on a massive scale. You really can’t look at anything about land-use or transportation and conclude basically anything useful about “revealed preferences.”

dionidium 5y ago

I hope no one will think it too unorthodox if I respond to my own comment just to add that given these constraints on land use patterns it’s obviously the case that Americans choose to drive automobiles. It’s fairly common to hear people describe this, too, as another kind of “revealed preference” for driving over the alternatives. But it’s a revealed preference in the environment as it exists today, which is the only environment that’s legal. If people were allowed to build other kinds of environments, then they would build other kinds of environments and in those other kinds of environments they would make other choices about transportation. If you only look at people on the beach, you’ll find a revealed preference for flip-flops. But in other kinds of environments, people wear other kinds of footwear. If you only looked at people on beaches, you’d draw some funny conclusions about what people like to wear on their feet. The big takeaway here is that the suburbs are the result of big government social engineering on a massive scale. You really can’t look at anything about land-use or transportation and conclude basically anything useful about “revealed preferences.”