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I think suburbia might be a victim of its own success. As people moved out to more widely-dispersed communities, that caused commuting all the way downtown for

I think suburbia might be a victim of its own success. As people moved out to more widely-dispersed communities, that caused commuting all the way downtown for work to be increasingly problematic. So of course that encouraged demand for business to also move out to the suburbs. Eventually things got so dispersed that people had to start driving everywhere. Roads got congested. It became increasingly common for people to spend 1/5 or more of their free time behind the wheel. Attempts to relieve the congestion inevitably require frequent road construction projects, which only increases everyone's sense of frustration. I think it's pretty plain to see that nobody actually likes this state of affairs, and also that continuing the suburbanization trend would only continue to make it worse. Maybe there was a period back during the baby boom when the suburban lifestyle worked out really well (from a happiness perspective; let's forget about the economic and environmental cost for the sake of argument) for the first people to adopt it, but it's a lot harder to see the attraction now that the wide open spaces have become crowded with cars and parking lots.

skolor 11y ago
We've seen the reverse of this now. Everything I've seen has shown that newer generations are moving more into the cities, back to closer to their employers.
- erikj1321 11y ago
  Have to factor in population density and massive increases in the population overall. US pop in 1950 was less than half of what it is now. So I could see why it would work out back then.
- exstudent2 11y ago
  I wonder if increased urban demand pushing up housing costs in metro areas will eventually cause a reverse migration back to the suburbs (facilitated by telecommuting).
  - johnward 11y ago
    Increase telecommuting would solve a lot of the transportation problems. I've been full-time remote for awhile now. I turned down an offer that was almost double my current salary because I don't want to commute.
    - exstudent2 11y ago
      Agree, I'm the same way. I insist on being paid the same as people who live in the city though. My value doesn't change just because I live in a cheaper place.
      - johnward 11y ago
        I believe I'm paid a similar rate to other people in my city but I also believe I'm still underpaid. The market for my specific skills is starting to open up though and there is much more demand than there is supply of workers right now. I don't like when companies think they can get away with 1/2 salary for an expert just because it's a remote position.
  - jobu 11y ago
    There's also increased demand for "walkable" neighborhoods in suburban areas. Higher density housing with grocery stores, doctor's offices, restaurants, and bars all in a single development.
    - exstudent2 11y ago
      I think there's potential for all of that to come into the suburbs since it will eventually be so cheap to live there. Artists and squatters can turn these abandon office parks into co-ops and urban farms :)
    - VLM 11y ago
      I know they were building that in the early 60s because that's where I grew up and where I live today. Well, I grew up in a 1930 house in a suburb, but same zoning. Also I know there were awful exurbs built during the peak of the bubble, say a decade ago. Sometime between 1960 and "now" suburb designs went badly downhill. I have observed over my life that suburb street layout corresponds with this zoning trend. If you live in a subdivision/burb with straight lines and many connections to the arterial road, you probably have a grocery store, dentist, bars, and restaurants within short walking distance, but if you live in "bowl of spaghetti" subdivision/burb with exactly one connection to exactly one arterial road, then you probably need to drive at least five miles to buy a gallon of milk.
- tosseraccount 11y ago
  They always have. Then they have kids.
- VLM 11y ago
  I've heard that my entire life. "The city is coming back". "Its not like ten years ago when the cities were dead" I'm in my 40s. Same message for the last four decades. Think about that, four times in a row, the city has always been dead a decade ago but now its returned, no really, this time its true. I'm told by elders that sloganeering about urban renewal and return began around 1955, about 5 years after the burbs started getting built out.
  - waterlesscloud 11y ago
    Yep. They used to say every generation thinks they're the first to discover sex, but as I get older it seems like that applies to many, many things.
  - ocb 11y ago
    Since 2010, population growth has either restarted in many cities that lost inhabitants for decades, or has accelerated for cities that never stopped growing. New York, Boston, San Francisco, Seattle, D.C., Minneapolis, Miami, Philadelphia, Denver, and Chicago have all experienced this phenomenon, not to mention others, I'm sure. It's a huge trend.
    - refurb 11y ago
      City populations can grow without an actual trend of increasing desire to live in the city. It's the percentage that matters, not the absolute number.
    - _delirium 11y ago
      Some cities are growing a bit, but far more people, proportionally, are heading to the suburbs, which is where all the fastest-growing places in the US are. For example, between 2000 and 2014, SF added about 75,000 residents. In that same period, Irvine, CA added about 150,000 residents, and one quadrant of the Dallas suburbs, Collin County, TX (the northern suburbs) added about 400,000 residents. All of NYC put together in the same period added 500,000 residents, slightly beating out this one part of suburban Dallas. I personally like living in dense urban areas, but for there to be a sea change in that direction on the scale of overall American trends, people need to be moving into cities in much larger numbers. Here's a modest goal that would represent an undeniable change, even if still only for a small minority of the population: over the next 10 years, 2-3% more Americans live in dense urban areas than currently. That's ~6-9 million more people in dense urban areas. As far as I can tell, we're nowhere near being on track for that to happen.
Tiktaalik 11y ago
I'm not sure anyone really loves suburbia, but once in place, car oriented development has a way of being self sustaining. This "Cycle of automobile dependency" image shows it pretty well. http://imgur.com/Y9vxbNN http://imgur.com/Y9vxbNN Only recently, with huge effort and many setbacks, are we starting to see cities break out of car oriented development and this endless suburban sprawl creating loop. I'm a bit concerned that the advent of the self driving car could take us backward to more car oriented development and suburbia.
- LordKano 11y ago
  I'm not sure anyone really loves suburbia I would guess that has a lot to do with how one defines the term. I love living outside of the city. I wouldn't have it any other way. When I'm ready to retire, I plan to move even further away from the city. I grew up in the suburbs. I am raising my children in the suburbs. I detest going into the city. The traffic, the parking, the population density and the crammed nature of city living all irritate me to no end. Unfortunately, I have to go into the city for work. That is the primary reason why I'm waiting until retirement to move further away. Within the last 10 years we have had a real problem in the area. The gentrification of certain inner-city areas has made it impossible for the low income residents to remain there, so they've been moving out to the suburbs and bringing a lot of crime with them. Try as we might to escape the problems of city living that drove us out two generations ago, the city keeps sending its problems our way.
  - Tiktaalik 11y ago
    Yeah absolutely I'm critical of suburbia as I see it currently implemented. There's nothing wrong with the concept of living outside of the city, but the problem is the design and form of development that many suburban cities have taken.
  - mixmastamyk 11y ago
    > The traffic, the parking, That's the result of a poorly planned city, not intrinsic to cities. If you've been to Europe, or even NYC, you might have experienced the freedom of jumping on a train to downtown and back, with enough exercise to keep you healthy.
deleted 11y ago
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- bunderbunder 11y ago
  I think that is starting to happen. That said, I think there's a possible silver lining to gentrification that needs to seriously be considered: There's a lot of evidence to suggest that mixing people of different socioeconomic backgrounds has a large positive impact on social mobility for the less wealthy people in that community. This in turn has a large positive impact on the community's long-term economic growth. In light of that, I think we need to be very careful about not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. If gentrification takes the form of wholesale displacing entire communities then yes, that's a problem. But if things can be arranged such that wealthier folks moving back to the city leave their gated communities behind rather than bringing them along for the move, then the long-term outcome could be transformative.
michaelochurch 11y ago
The Car was supposed to kill The Landlord by increasing the supply of adequate housing and driving residential land prices near zero. It didn't work, for the reasons you described. First, driving itself is very expensive, especially if you include parking the damn thing. Second, the few suburbs that are desirable at all (near major cities, good public schools) are often similar in price to city housing-- and NIMBY laws keep housing scarce in them. Third, cars scale poorly (congestion). So none of that actually happened, and we're stuck with this ugly, polluting infrastructure.
- freehunter 11y ago
  Spot on. I live in a suburban town that is unique for my metro area in that it has a nice thriving downtown, great schools, 10 minutes from the downtown exit on the freeway, and really great quality of life. I have friends who want to move here and there are developers champing at the bit right to take some polluted and therefore useless and undeveloped property and clean it up to turn it into some nice condos.. it got shut down in a public vote. New houses haven't been built in the city in about 20 years, and the ones that are here are starting to show their age. The city has been in a boom, but that cycle is going to end if we don't get fresh money and new houses. The developers are moving further up the main artery to other, smaller towns, which leads to more congestion on the main roads. It used to be that the traffic started at my town, now it's starting at the next town up. But everyone is worried that their house value will go down if there is more availability. They don't realize the value will go down if the property becomes undesirable as well.
  - mjevans 11y ago
    Sounds like that situation isn't going to change soon, and you should probably sell out earlier rather than later.
bduerst 11y ago
Isn't this one of the goals of self-driving cars? Having vehicles that don't require human operation means that cars can spend less time in parking lots as depreciating assets and more time filling transportation demand. By reducing inefficiencies, it should free up traffic congestion and make it easier to commute to these office parks, right?
- Tiktaalik 11y ago
  Even supposing a high amount of self driving car sharing rather than ownership, you still run into the issue that cars fundamentally require a lot of space both in roads and parking and the sprawl creating results of accommodating this fact. Self driving cars are an example of doing the wrong thing (automobile oriented development) better. The right thing is developing cities around people, not cars. This means creating walkable spaces with cycling and public transit prioritized above automobiles.
  - bduerst 11y ago
    Automated cars require less parking than the manual cars we drive now, especially since they don't require to be parked near their passengers during off hours and can spend most of their product lives on the road. I'm not saying we shouldn't develop cities with pedestrians in mind, just that it's much easier to adapt a fleet of cars than rebuild an entire city.
    - potatolicious 11y ago
      This seems commonly stated but not actually examined. > "especially since they don't require to be parked near their passengers during off hours and can spend most of their product lives on the road." I'd argue that both of these points aren't actually true. The nature of on-demand cars (human-driven or otherwise) is that they be quickly available. Automated cars might eliminate the need for the car to be figuratively outside the door like they are today, but they still need to be nearby. Making cars automated will let you stretch out the distance between user and car a bit, but there will still be plenty of infrastructure necessary to ensure cars are near their potential users. Ditto the "spend most of their productive lives on the road" thing. This claim will likely be not true at all, considering how bursty transportation usage is. Figuratively every single mode of transportation (cars, trains, buses, you name it) is planned around massive bursts of usage, usually surrounding the working day. Automated cars are still subject to this - the reality is that if we move towards fleets of automated cars, they will be idle 80% of the time. So do you want rush-hour-traffic volumes of cars circling aimlessly for most of the day, or do you want to park them somewhere during non-peak hours? If the latter, you're back to the problem of provisioning tons of infrastructure for storing them... IMO the most likely consequence of moving to self-driving on-demand cars is that we eliminate large parking lots in front of stores (yay!) but in exchange we get massive parking structures tying up a lot of space, and not as far from people as we'd probably like. Height limits in construction for low-density areas will probably increase the amount of land these parking structures cover, and they'll likely be traditional ramp-based instead of some fancy robotics (that are way less reliable and can process less volume). In a sci-fi novel we'd stuff cars into hyper-efficient low-footprint parking structures when not in use, in reality we're probably just going to get gigantic, enormous versions of multi-floor parking garages in the center of the city.
fixxer 11y ago
I live an hour outside of Chicago and mostly work from home; I'm in the city maybe 1 day per week. I fought moving out of the city for a while, but I have really come to love it, especially when it comes to raising kids. When I have to head into Chicago, I take the train. It is weird how quickly you can go from yuppie to suburbanite. My property taxes are high, but my overall cost (and quality) of living is better than if I was living in Chicago. The housing market by me has been stable with small (tiny) growth and consistent demand. Turnover for new construction has been solid. Retail & office space, however, is suffering. If you're close to small downtowns with character, the story is different, but strip malls and shopping centers are amazingly screwed. Great example is the Charlestowne Mall in St. Charles. Just the anchors and a movie theater remain. That said, I look at that excess capacity and see opportunity more than peril. And, it is worth noting, that excess capacity for office/retail space is an issue in city centers as well. This phenomenon is as much a result of changes in consumer behavior as it is subprime aftershocks. It is reductionist to claim otherwise.
- bunderbunder 11y ago
  Good point. I've grown rather used to seeing mostly-vacant floors in office buildings in the Loop. I wonder if perhaps we're seeing the results of a shift to the service economy in addition to the shift back to the cities. If we need fewer people to manually perform clerical work in offices, and more people to run the restaurants that we increasingly eat at, then that's going to create a definite shift in demand for different kinds of commercial space.
  - fixxer 11y ago
    > different kinds of commercial space. And different uses for existing space. I'm not a big believer in any economic theory, but I see supply-side drivers abound. Case in point, there are so many vacant ex-Dominick's you can rent/buy for a song.
    - toomuchtodo 11y ago
      While those ex-Dominicks buildings are for lease ("rent/buy for a song"), I have yet to see anyone acquire them at their old Bartlett, Schaumburg, or Algonquin locations.
Balgair 11y ago
I'll caution that the situation that we came out of in the 1950s and today are very different. There are many things that are driving the congestion of the roadways in the US. One is, for sure, the move to more urban environments. Why that is depends on a multitude of factors. I'll caution that we have significantly more people in the US than we did when the Levitt-towns were being made. In `950, ~150 million americans were alive, today there are ~320 million, a 110% increase [0]. I'll also say that anecdotally, people are congregating in urban areas because there is more flexibility and agility there. You used to be able to live in a small rural town and work there just fine. Now, if that steel mill or logging operation goes out, you have to move very far. In a city, you can find another job somewhere, and possible through referrals. [0]http://www.demographia.com/db-uspop1900.htm http://www.demographia.com/db-uspop1900.htm
rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
Perhaps the problem is less suburbia, more "hyperbia." Mid century planners focused heavily on recreating mini-cities to feed expansion from a central core. Everything you'd need (hospitals, schools, etc) should be within the city limits. Reston, VA is a great example of this. Much of the workforce holds jobs elsewhere but the suburb is a community unto itself. One doesn't need to live in DC or make a long commute for a night on the town. Perhaps we can find in Reston a happy medium between distant exurbs and everybody on earth living in Manhattan.
- rayiner 11y ago
  The problem with places like Reston is that if you're a typical two-worker couple there is little chance you're both going to find work in the same suburb. And if that doesn't happen, you're stuck commuting between suburbs, which is usually the worst possible scenario (and a major reason why traffic in the DC metro is worse than in bigger cities). Better to have bedroom cities with stores and shops and shuttle everyone into the core city via regional rail. Reston would be a great bedroom city if DC had proper regional rail. Standing room only in the Silver line for 45 minutes sucks compared to regional express trains in places like Chicago or NYC.
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enjo 11y ago
For a whole bunch of suburbanites of those early years (50's-70's) the "happiness" they derived came primarily from not having to send their children to integrated schools.
debacle 11y ago
It used to be, the further you lived from the city, the better off you were. Mostly because the city had scary dark skinned people, little space, and pollution. Now, while I'm definitely a suburbanite, I'd take the 15 minute commute any day over having extra lawn to mow.
anthony_romeo 11y ago
I wonder how much of this is related to the increase of two-income households coupled with overall wage stagnation? I mean, if a family only has one breadwinner, and work is in the suburbs, it becomes trivial to find a location close to work. But it's harder for a family to live on one income now. If both spouses want to work or need to work to get by (and I'm not talking about a small part-time job on the side), it is plausibly more difficult for both to find substantial work in the same suburb, depending on their industry, demand, and so forth. Such people may only find work in distant suburbs, causing a long commute for one or to live in a place in between to share the commute time. I'm not claiming this is the cause of frustration, or even a significant factor. Just a thought I had.
- Domenic_S 11y ago
  Underrated comment right here. It should come as no surprise that it takes two solid incomes in the Bay Area to buy housing close to work, because that's what the market supports. Families didn't become "better off" when two incomes became the norm -- everything just got more expensive. I think this is one of the nasty secrets why remote work and public transit hasn't taken off like it should; who would support the crazy real estate prices if people could (more easily) choose where they live?
  - jseliger 11y ago
    It should come as no surprise that it takes two solid incomes in the Bay Area to buy housing close to work, because that's what the market supports Sort of, but not really. The market can't provide lower-priced housing because of intensive zoning restrictions: http://www.amazon.com/Rent-Too-Damn-High-Matters-ebook/dp/B0078XGJXO http://www.amazon.com/Rent-Too-Damn-High-Matters-ebook/dp/B0... or http://www.voxeu.org/article/causes-and-consequences-land-use-regulations http://www.voxeu.org/article/causes-and-consequences-land-us.... This: http://www.citylab.com/housing/2013/10/san-francisco-exodus/7205/ http://www.citylab.com/housing/2013/10/san-francisco-exodus/... pertains specifically to San Francisco and environs.
romaniv 11y ago
Rally? I always thought of large cities as victims of their own success. You get some good businesses going, they attract more people, they attract more businesses... and then you get overpopulation, air pollution, traffic jams and high prices. And difficulty of finding affordable housing.
femto113 11y ago
> nobody actually likes this state of affairs Car dealers.
jseliger 11y ago
Great post. Regarding the horrors of driving and especially commuting, the New Yorker's article "There and back again: Soul of a commuter" is excellent: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/04/16/there-and-back-again http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/04/16/there-and-back-....

skolor 11y ago

We've seen the reverse of this now. Everything I've seen has shown that newer generations are moving more into the cities, back to closer to their employers.

erikj1321 11y ago
Have to factor in population density and massive increases in the population overall. US pop in 1950 was less than half of what it is now. So I could see why it would work out back then.
exstudent2 11y ago
I wonder if increased urban demand pushing up housing costs in metro areas will eventually cause a reverse migration back to the suburbs (facilitated by telecommuting).
- johnward 11y ago
  Increase telecommuting would solve a lot of the transportation problems. I've been full-time remote for awhile now. I turned down an offer that was almost double my current salary because I don't want to commute.
  - exstudent2 11y ago
    Agree, I'm the same way. I insist on being paid the same as people who live in the city though. My value doesn't change just because I live in a cheaper place.
    - johnward 11y ago
      I believe I'm paid a similar rate to other people in my city but I also believe I'm still underpaid. The market for my specific skills is starting to open up though and there is much more demand than there is supply of workers right now. I don't like when companies think they can get away with 1/2 salary for an expert just because it's a remote position.
- jobu 11y ago
  There's also increased demand for "walkable" neighborhoods in suburban areas. Higher density housing with grocery stores, doctor's offices, restaurants, and bars all in a single development.
  - exstudent2 11y ago
    I think there's potential for all of that to come into the suburbs since it will eventually be so cheap to live there. Artists and squatters can turn these abandon office parks into co-ops and urban farms :)
  - VLM 11y ago
    I know they were building that in the early 60s because that's where I grew up and where I live today. Well, I grew up in a 1930 house in a suburb, but same zoning. Also I know there were awful exurbs built during the peak of the bubble, say a decade ago. Sometime between 1960 and "now" suburb designs went badly downhill. I have observed over my life that suburb street layout corresponds with this zoning trend. If you live in a subdivision/burb with straight lines and many connections to the arterial road, you probably have a grocery store, dentist, bars, and restaurants within short walking distance, but if you live in "bowl of spaghetti" subdivision/burb with exactly one connection to exactly one arterial road, then you probably need to drive at least five miles to buy a gallon of milk.
tosseraccount 11y ago
They always have. Then they have kids.
VLM 11y ago
I've heard that my entire life. "The city is coming back". "Its not like ten years ago when the cities were dead" I'm in my 40s. Same message for the last four decades. Think about that, four times in a row, the city has always been dead a decade ago but now its returned, no really, this time its true. I'm told by elders that sloganeering about urban renewal and return began around 1955, about 5 years after the burbs started getting built out.
- waterlesscloud 11y ago
  Yep. They used to say every generation thinks they're the first to discover sex, but as I get older it seems like that applies to many, many things.
- ocb 11y ago
  Since 2010, population growth has either restarted in many cities that lost inhabitants for decades, or has accelerated for cities that never stopped growing. New York, Boston, San Francisco, Seattle, D.C., Minneapolis, Miami, Philadelphia, Denver, and Chicago have all experienced this phenomenon, not to mention others, I'm sure. It's a huge trend.
  - refurb 11y ago
    City populations can grow without an actual trend of increasing desire to live in the city. It's the percentage that matters, not the absolute number.
  - _delirium 11y ago
    Some cities are growing a bit, but far more people, proportionally, are heading to the suburbs, which is where all the fastest-growing places in the US are. For example, between 2000 and 2014, SF added about 75,000 residents. In that same period, Irvine, CA added about 150,000 residents, and one quadrant of the Dallas suburbs, Collin County, TX (the northern suburbs) added about 400,000 residents. All of NYC put together in the same period added 500,000 residents, slightly beating out this one part of suburban Dallas. I personally like living in dense urban areas, but for there to be a sea change in that direction on the scale of overall American trends, people need to be moving into cities in much larger numbers. Here's a modest goal that would represent an undeniable change, even if still only for a small minority of the population: over the next 10 years, 2-3% more Americans live in dense urban areas than currently. That's ~6-9 million more people in dense urban areas. As far as I can tell, we're nowhere near being on track for that to happen.

Tiktaalik 11y ago

I'm not sure anyone really loves suburbia, but once in place, car oriented development has a way of being self sustaining. This "Cycle of automobile dependency" image shows it pretty well. http://imgur.com/Y9vxbNN http://imgur.com/Y9vxbNN Only recently, with huge effort and many setbacks, are we starting to see cities break out of car oriented development and this endless suburban sprawl creating loop. I'm a bit concerned that the advent of the self driving car could take us backward to more car oriented development and suburbia.

LordKano 11y ago
I'm not sure anyone really loves suburbia I would guess that has a lot to do with how one defines the term. I love living outside of the city. I wouldn't have it any other way. When I'm ready to retire, I plan to move even further away from the city. I grew up in the suburbs. I am raising my children in the suburbs. I detest going into the city. The traffic, the parking, the population density and the crammed nature of city living all irritate me to no end. Unfortunately, I have to go into the city for work. That is the primary reason why I'm waiting until retirement to move further away. Within the last 10 years we have had a real problem in the area. The gentrification of certain inner-city areas has made it impossible for the low income residents to remain there, so they've been moving out to the suburbs and bringing a lot of crime with them. Try as we might to escape the problems of city living that drove us out two generations ago, the city keeps sending its problems our way.
- Tiktaalik 11y ago
  Yeah absolutely I'm critical of suburbia as I see it currently implemented. There's nothing wrong with the concept of living outside of the city, but the problem is the design and form of development that many suburban cities have taken.
- mixmastamyk 11y ago
  > The traffic, the parking, That's the result of a poorly planned city, not intrinsic to cities. If you've been to Europe, or even NYC, you might have experienced the freedom of jumping on a train to downtown and back, with enough exercise to keep you healthy.

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bunderbunder 11y ago
I think that is starting to happen. That said, I think there's a possible silver lining to gentrification that needs to seriously be considered: There's a lot of evidence to suggest that mixing people of different socioeconomic backgrounds has a large positive impact on social mobility for the less wealthy people in that community. This in turn has a large positive impact on the community's long-term economic growth. In light of that, I think we need to be very careful about not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. If gentrification takes the form of wholesale displacing entire communities then yes, that's a problem. But if things can be arranged such that wealthier folks moving back to the city leave their gated communities behind rather than bringing them along for the move, then the long-term outcome could be transformative.

michaelochurch 11y ago

The Car was supposed to kill The Landlord by increasing the supply of adequate housing and driving residential land prices near zero. It didn't work, for the reasons you described. First, driving itself is very expensive, especially if you include parking the damn thing. Second, the few suburbs that are desirable at all (near major cities, good public schools) are often similar in price to city housing-- and NIMBY laws keep housing scarce in them. Third, cars scale poorly (congestion). So none of that actually happened, and we're stuck with this ugly, polluting infrastructure.

freehunter 11y ago
Spot on. I live in a suburban town that is unique for my metro area in that it has a nice thriving downtown, great schools, 10 minutes from the downtown exit on the freeway, and really great quality of life. I have friends who want to move here and there are developers champing at the bit right to take some polluted and therefore useless and undeveloped property and clean it up to turn it into some nice condos.. it got shut down in a public vote. New houses haven't been built in the city in about 20 years, and the ones that are here are starting to show their age. The city has been in a boom, but that cycle is going to end if we don't get fresh money and new houses. The developers are moving further up the main artery to other, smaller towns, which leads to more congestion on the main roads. It used to be that the traffic started at my town, now it's starting at the next town up. But everyone is worried that their house value will go down if there is more availability. They don't realize the value will go down if the property becomes undesirable as well.
- mjevans 11y ago
  Sounds like that situation isn't going to change soon, and you should probably sell out earlier rather than later.

bduerst 11y ago

Isn't this one of the goals of self-driving cars? Having vehicles that don't require human operation means that cars can spend less time in parking lots as depreciating assets and more time filling transportation demand. By reducing inefficiencies, it should free up traffic congestion and make it easier to commute to these office parks, right?

Tiktaalik 11y ago
Even supposing a high amount of self driving car sharing rather than ownership, you still run into the issue that cars fundamentally require a lot of space both in roads and parking and the sprawl creating results of accommodating this fact. Self driving cars are an example of doing the wrong thing (automobile oriented development) better. The right thing is developing cities around people, not cars. This means creating walkable spaces with cycling and public transit prioritized above automobiles.
- bduerst 11y ago
  Automated cars require less parking than the manual cars we drive now, especially since they don't require to be parked near their passengers during off hours and can spend most of their product lives on the road. I'm not saying we shouldn't develop cities with pedestrians in mind, just that it's much easier to adapt a fleet of cars than rebuild an entire city.
  - potatolicious 11y ago
    This seems commonly stated but not actually examined. > "especially since they don't require to be parked near their passengers during off hours and can spend most of their product lives on the road." I'd argue that both of these points aren't actually true. The nature of on-demand cars (human-driven or otherwise) is that they be quickly available. Automated cars might eliminate the need for the car to be figuratively outside the door like they are today, but they still need to be nearby. Making cars automated will let you stretch out the distance between user and car a bit, but there will still be plenty of infrastructure necessary to ensure cars are near their potential users. Ditto the "spend most of their productive lives on the road" thing. This claim will likely be not true at all, considering how bursty transportation usage is. Figuratively every single mode of transportation (cars, trains, buses, you name it) is planned around massive bursts of usage, usually surrounding the working day. Automated cars are still subject to this - the reality is that if we move towards fleets of automated cars, they will be idle 80% of the time. So do you want rush-hour-traffic volumes of cars circling aimlessly for most of the day, or do you want to park them somewhere during non-peak hours? If the latter, you're back to the problem of provisioning tons of infrastructure for storing them... IMO the most likely consequence of moving to self-driving on-demand cars is that we eliminate large parking lots in front of stores (yay!) but in exchange we get massive parking structures tying up a lot of space, and not as far from people as we'd probably like. Height limits in construction for low-density areas will probably increase the amount of land these parking structures cover, and they'll likely be traditional ramp-based instead of some fancy robotics (that are way less reliable and can process less volume). In a sci-fi novel we'd stuff cars into hyper-efficient low-footprint parking structures when not in use, in reality we're probably just going to get gigantic, enormous versions of multi-floor parking garages in the center of the city.

fixxer 11y ago

I live an hour outside of Chicago and mostly work from home; I'm in the city maybe 1 day per week. I fought moving out of the city for a while, but I have really come to love it, especially when it comes to raising kids. When I have to head into Chicago, I take the train. It is weird how quickly you can go from yuppie to suburbanite. My property taxes are high, but my overall cost (and quality) of living is better than if I was living in Chicago. The housing market by me has been stable with small (tiny) growth and consistent demand. Turnover for new construction has been solid. Retail & office space, however, is suffering. If you're close to small downtowns with character, the story is different, but strip malls and shopping centers are amazingly screwed. Great example is the Charlestowne Mall in St. Charles. Just the anchors and a movie theater remain. That said, I look at that excess capacity and see opportunity more than peril. And, it is worth noting, that excess capacity for office/retail space is an issue in city centers as well. This phenomenon is as much a result of changes in consumer behavior as it is subprime aftershocks. It is reductionist to claim otherwise.

bunderbunder 11y ago
Good point. I've grown rather used to seeing mostly-vacant floors in office buildings in the Loop. I wonder if perhaps we're seeing the results of a shift to the service economy in addition to the shift back to the cities. If we need fewer people to manually perform clerical work in offices, and more people to run the restaurants that we increasingly eat at, then that's going to create a definite shift in demand for different kinds of commercial space.
- fixxer 11y ago
  > different kinds of commercial space. And different uses for existing space. I'm not a big believer in any economic theory, but I see supply-side drivers abound. Case in point, there are so many vacant ex-Dominick's you can rent/buy for a song.
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    While those ex-Dominicks buildings are for lease ("rent/buy for a song"), I have yet to see anyone acquire them at their old Bartlett, Schaumburg, or Algonquin locations.

Balgair 11y ago

I'll caution that the situation that we came out of in the 1950s and today are very different. There are many things that are driving the congestion of the roadways in the US. One is, for sure, the move to more urban environments. Why that is depends on a multitude of factors. I'll caution that we have significantly more people in the US than we did when the Levitt-towns were being made. In `950, ~150 million americans were alive, today there are ~320 million, a 110% increase [0]. I'll also say that anecdotally, people are congregating in urban areas because there is more flexibility and agility there. You used to be able to live in a small rural town and work there just fine. Now, if that steel mill or logging operation goes out, you have to move very far. In a city, you can find another job somewhere, and possible through referrals. [0]http://www.demographia.com/db-uspop1900.htm http://www.demographia.com/db-uspop1900.htm

rm_-rf_slash 11y ago

Perhaps the problem is less suburbia, more "hyperbia." Mid century planners focused heavily on recreating mini-cities to feed expansion from a central core. Everything you'd need (hospitals, schools, etc) should be within the city limits. Reston, VA is a great example of this. Much of the workforce holds jobs elsewhere but the suburb is a community unto itself. One doesn't need to live in DC or make a long commute for a night on the town. Perhaps we can find in Reston a happy medium between distant exurbs and everybody on earth living in Manhattan.

rayiner 11y ago
The problem with places like Reston is that if you're a typical two-worker couple there is little chance you're both going to find work in the same suburb. And if that doesn't happen, you're stuck commuting between suburbs, which is usually the worst possible scenario (and a major reason why traffic in the DC metro is worse than in bigger cities). Better to have bedroom cities with stores and shops and shuttle everyone into the core city via regional rail. Reston would be a great bedroom city if DC had proper regional rail. Standing room only in the Silver line for 45 minutes sucks compared to regional express trains in places like Chicago or NYC.

deleted 11y ago

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enjo 11y ago

For a whole bunch of suburbanites of those early years (50's-70's) the "happiness" they derived came primarily from not having to send their children to integrated schools.

debacle 11y ago

It used to be, the further you lived from the city, the better off you were. Mostly because the city had scary dark skinned people, little space, and pollution. Now, while I'm definitely a suburbanite, I'd take the 15 minute commute any day over having extra lawn to mow.

anthony_romeo 11y ago

I wonder how much of this is related to the increase of two-income households coupled with overall wage stagnation? I mean, if a family only has one breadwinner, and work is in the suburbs, it becomes trivial to find a location close to work. But it's harder for a family to live on one income now. If both spouses want to work or need to work to get by (and I'm not talking about a small part-time job on the side), it is plausibly more difficult for both to find substantial work in the same suburb, depending on their industry, demand, and so forth. Such people may only find work in distant suburbs, causing a long commute for one or to live in a place in between to share the commute time. I'm not claiming this is the cause of frustration, or even a significant factor. Just a thought I had.

Domenic_S 11y ago
Underrated comment right here. It should come as no surprise that it takes two solid incomes in the Bay Area to buy housing close to work, because that's what the market supports. Families didn't become "better off" when two incomes became the norm -- everything just got more expensive. I think this is one of the nasty secrets why remote work and public transit hasn't taken off like it should; who would support the crazy real estate prices if people could (more easily) choose where they live?
- jseliger 11y ago
  It should come as no surprise that it takes two solid incomes in the Bay Area to buy housing close to work, because that's what the market supports Sort of, but not really. The market can't provide lower-priced housing because of intensive zoning restrictions: http://www.amazon.com/Rent-Too-Damn-High-Matters-ebook/dp/B0078XGJXO http://www.amazon.com/Rent-Too-Damn-High-Matters-ebook/dp/B0... or http://www.voxeu.org/article/causes-and-consequences-land-use-regulations http://www.voxeu.org/article/causes-and-consequences-land-us.... This: http://www.citylab.com/housing/2013/10/san-francisco-exodus/7205/ http://www.citylab.com/housing/2013/10/san-francisco-exodus/... pertains specifically to San Francisco and environs.

romaniv 11y ago

Rally? I always thought of large cities as victims of their own success. You get some good businesses going, they attract more people, they attract more businesses... and then you get overpopulation, air pollution, traffic jams and high prices. And difficulty of finding affordable housing.

femto113 11y ago

> nobody actually likes this state of affairs Car dealers.

jseliger 11y ago

Great post. Regarding the horrors of driving and especially commuting, the New Yorker's article "There and back again: Soul of a commuter" is excellent: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/04/16/there-and-back-again http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/04/16/there-and-back-....