Didn’t the car industry have a lot to do with sprawl? I’ve heard lobbying pushed development outward to rely more on roads. I think a lot of issues society faces regarding cost of living would be solved by designing a more walkable society.
It was not lobbying that pushed housing outward. It is economics.
Contrary to widespread belief, denser cities have much more expensive housing. The problem is construction cost and land prices. The more floors you have in a housing unit, the higher the cost per square foot. It is simply impossible to build houses that are affordable in the middle of dense city centers without huge government subsidies.
The key to affordable housing is to enable housing to be built on the outskirts of metro areas where land is cheap. Density drive up land costs, which drives up housing prices.
Before the 1970s local governments did not restrict such building, so housing stayed affordable. Once they added the constraint of urban containment zones, then the prices started rising much faster than inflation.
I will go into more detail in later posts, but the simple answer is that we should not be trying to avoid sprawl.
Cities naturally spread out as they increase in population and trying to stop them from doing so pushes up housing prices for everyone. In the long run, this makes housing unaffordable. Young people and the poor are the primary victims of trying to fight sprawl with government restrictions on housing construction.
I would agree that within my lifetime (late 40s-present) the term "sprawl" began to increasingly acquire very negative connotation. Simply hearing the word "sprawl" was enough gain an instant consensus that any project that could be portrayed as adding to sprawl was a giant step backward so far as social benefit.
By implied definition, there could be no such thing as "beneficial sprawl".
The idea that personal residences should be an investment rather than a consumable is a distortion of its real purpose, ... and of true economic supply/demand markets. The nominal increase in value due to monetary inflation is not a real increase in net wealth (and of course you know this).
Value of housing is as subjective as most other wealth assessments, based on location, changing neighborhood demographics, size need vs. stage of life, remodeling expenditures, etc.
I think the tax laws around selling housing and husbanding the "gain" also recognize that "wealth" is only nominal -- one of the few places in tax law where this is recognized?
The goal of providing safe and secure shelter for families, and for family formation, is all to the good, but the debacle of the 2008 Great Recession brought on in part by the loans to subprime borrowers in defiance of sound banking / lending practice showed pretty clearly that some people do not have the financial discipline to buy a house. Pandering to that group was a flawed policy.
Conversely, when renting is the current or only option for some people, there should be close but not excessive (local?) governmental controls on the quality of maintenance, features provided, etc. Slum lords are a vile image, whether always true or not, as sometimes said controls are excessive.
Fortunately with work form home, and related ideas, some forms of "sprawl" can be accepted as a real value add.
"...there should be close but not excessive (local?) governmental controls on the quality of maintenance, features provided, etc."
I'm not attacking this per se, but as a landlord for the last 35 years--mostly small , urban apartment units--it would be *very* difficult for the government to do, and very expensive for them, as well. So what they'd like do, just as when they do a fire inspection, is to charge the landlord. Enough of these kinds of largely invisible (to the tenant) costs forces rents upwards.
Now, if the locale also institutes rent controls, you can see where this leads. An overall decrease in rental units, or attempts to gentrify an areas in hopes of extracting one's self from an increasingly difficult financial scenario.
I liked this article so much because it made me sit with myself and test some of my own bias. I fully support containment zones. They were purposed (in Canada at least) to protect some of the best agricultural land, with water access. If you cant feed a city it decays.
Housing inflation is such an odd thing to me. I understand the labor, materials costs increasing but as materials science, 3D printed homes, industrial manufacturing ramps up the Costs should come down. I totally agree with the supply/demand distortion but data is difficult to find on 2, 3rd homes that are vacant or investment properties. How much is foreign owned. I don't say any of this to be xenophopic. It's a constituency issue. If you're young people, want to have a family but are priced out of the market, they will delay having kids.
I'm generally a Yimby with some caveats. Pragmatic growth. Sprawl is ugly. Traffic sucks. People don't live where they work. Everything takes an inordinate amount of time to do. Sprawl always presuppose heat domes, not green space. Kids need green spaces, communites are better with parks, gardens, they just enhance quality of life. I've been a big proponent of outdoor preschool.
I am glad that my article made you check your own biases.
I encourage you to rethink your support of urban containment zone. North America has no shortage of agricultural land, and the percentage that is close to major metro areas is tiny.
Second and third-homes and foreign-owned properties should not drive up housing prices. They would increase demand which would then give incentives to build more houses. This would stabilize the price. Unfortunately, government regulations make this harder.
Why is sprawl ugly? A tall building can be just as ugly as a short building.
And if you dislike traffic, you should dislike density. Higher density always leads to higher traffic. Just compare the levels of traffic in the downtown versus the outskirts of suburbs.
Commuting times are shorter in suburbs.
And access to green spaces is much better on outskirts of the metro area.
I agree with over regulation. I like density, walkable density with green space. If prefered a society where you work where you live. Traffic is a cultural choice. We likely have different ideas of aesthetics for cities. I'm enamored with walkable cities.
You can live in whatever type of city that you prefer. Unfortunately, urban planners often try to force density without realizing that it drives up housing prices.
I am not claiming that second home and investment homes have not increased. I am claiming that they would not increase housing prices without zoning and containment zones.
I don’t see how urban containment zones help conserve water.
Much of the problem is outside of the building process itself. Rules, inspections, overly demanding specifications, local restrictions as Michael mentioned, etc. Permit costs go up to cover the social impacts of new people needing schools, roads, police, etc. Also, even when the technology to create the shell of the dwelling/ building is lowering that cost, it is only 20% or so of the total. Still need "systems" for wiring, plumbing, sanitation, water, appliances, flooring, wall and ceiling treatments, etc. etc. etc.
Replicating the same basic look and style can also lead to some economies of scale for a given builder/contractor, but some of the pictures show some really ugly little box houses, cramped small lots, etc.
A lot of the issues of housing can be solved by implementing a Land Value Tax and reducing property taxes. Taxing land more heavily would:
1) Reduce the purchase price of land
2) Force land use to be productive (fewer parking lots and golf courses)
3) Remove the punishment that developers received when build housing
It's like that tax reform would naturally force land use and zoning reform and allow more housing to be built to meet demand.
Didn’t the car industry have a lot to do with sprawl? I’ve heard lobbying pushed development outward to rely more on roads. I think a lot of issues society faces regarding cost of living would be solved by designing a more walkable society.
It was not lobbying that pushed housing outward. It is economics.
Contrary to widespread belief, denser cities have much more expensive housing. The problem is construction cost and land prices. The more floors you have in a housing unit, the higher the cost per square foot. It is simply impossible to build houses that are affordable in the middle of dense city centers without huge government subsidies.
The key to affordable housing is to enable housing to be built on the outskirts of metro areas where land is cheap. Density drive up land costs, which drives up housing prices.
Before the 1970s local governments did not restrict such building, so housing stayed affordable. Once they added the constraint of urban containment zones, then the prices started rising much faster than inflation.
So how do we avoid sprawl? Or is that not a goal?
I will go into more detail in later posts, but the simple answer is that we should not be trying to avoid sprawl.
Cities naturally spread out as they increase in population and trying to stop them from doing so pushes up housing prices for everyone. In the long run, this makes housing unaffordable. Young people and the poor are the primary victims of trying to fight sprawl with government restrictions on housing construction.
I would agree that within my lifetime (late 40s-present) the term "sprawl" began to increasingly acquire very negative connotation. Simply hearing the word "sprawl" was enough gain an instant consensus that any project that could be portrayed as adding to sprawl was a giant step backward so far as social benefit.
By implied definition, there could be no such thing as "beneficial sprawl".
I am buying the book now!
Thanks, Yaw! I have been enjoying reading your column as well.
The idea that personal residences should be an investment rather than a consumable is a distortion of its real purpose, ... and of true economic supply/demand markets. The nominal increase in value due to monetary inflation is not a real increase in net wealth (and of course you know this).
Value of housing is as subjective as most other wealth assessments, based on location, changing neighborhood demographics, size need vs. stage of life, remodeling expenditures, etc.
I think the tax laws around selling housing and husbanding the "gain" also recognize that "wealth" is only nominal -- one of the few places in tax law where this is recognized?
The goal of providing safe and secure shelter for families, and for family formation, is all to the good, but the debacle of the 2008 Great Recession brought on in part by the loans to subprime borrowers in defiance of sound banking / lending practice showed pretty clearly that some people do not have the financial discipline to buy a house. Pandering to that group was a flawed policy.
Conversely, when renting is the current or only option for some people, there should be close but not excessive (local?) governmental controls on the quality of maintenance, features provided, etc. Slum lords are a vile image, whether always true or not, as sometimes said controls are excessive.
Fortunately with work form home, and related ideas, some forms of "sprawl" can be accepted as a real value add.
"...there should be close but not excessive (local?) governmental controls on the quality of maintenance, features provided, etc."
I'm not attacking this per se, but as a landlord for the last 35 years--mostly small , urban apartment units--it would be *very* difficult for the government to do, and very expensive for them, as well. So what they'd like do, just as when they do a fire inspection, is to charge the landlord. Enough of these kinds of largely invisible (to the tenant) costs forces rents upwards.
Now, if the locale also institutes rent controls, you can see where this leads. An overall decrease in rental units, or attempts to gentrify an areas in hopes of extracting one's self from an increasingly difficult financial scenario.
I liked this article so much because it made me sit with myself and test some of my own bias. I fully support containment zones. They were purposed (in Canada at least) to protect some of the best agricultural land, with water access. If you cant feed a city it decays.
Housing inflation is such an odd thing to me. I understand the labor, materials costs increasing but as materials science, 3D printed homes, industrial manufacturing ramps up the Costs should come down. I totally agree with the supply/demand distortion but data is difficult to find on 2, 3rd homes that are vacant or investment properties. How much is foreign owned. I don't say any of this to be xenophopic. It's a constituency issue. If you're young people, want to have a family but are priced out of the market, they will delay having kids.
I'm generally a Yimby with some caveats. Pragmatic growth. Sprawl is ugly. Traffic sucks. People don't live where they work. Everything takes an inordinate amount of time to do. Sprawl always presuppose heat domes, not green space. Kids need green spaces, communites are better with parks, gardens, they just enhance quality of life. I've been a big proponent of outdoor preschool.
My 2 cents.
I am glad that my article made you check your own biases.
I encourage you to rethink your support of urban containment zone. North America has no shortage of agricultural land, and the percentage that is close to major metro areas is tiny.
Second and third-homes and foreign-owned properties should not drive up housing prices. They would increase demand which would then give incentives to build more houses. This would stabilize the price. Unfortunately, government regulations make this harder.
Why is sprawl ugly? A tall building can be just as ugly as a short building.
And if you dislike traffic, you should dislike density. Higher density always leads to higher traffic. Just compare the levels of traffic in the downtown versus the outskirts of suburbs.
Commuting times are shorter in suburbs.
And access to green spaces is much better on outskirts of the metro area.
Ag land yes water no. Second, third homes, rentals parked investments have assuredly increased.
https://wolfstreet.com/2022/11/22/investor-purchases-of-single-family-houses-plunged-32-in-q3-plummeting-the-most-in-pandemic-boomtowns/
Zirp facilitated this.
I agree with over regulation. I like density, walkable density with green space. If prefered a society where you work where you live. Traffic is a cultural choice. We likely have different ideas of aesthetics for cities. I'm enamored with walkable cities.
You can live in whatever type of city that you prefer. Unfortunately, urban planners often try to force density without realizing that it drives up housing prices.
I am not claiming that second home and investment homes have not increased. I am claiming that they would not increase housing prices without zoning and containment zones.
I don’t see how urban containment zones help conserve water.
Much of the problem is outside of the building process itself. Rules, inspections, overly demanding specifications, local restrictions as Michael mentioned, etc. Permit costs go up to cover the social impacts of new people needing schools, roads, police, etc. Also, even when the technology to create the shell of the dwelling/ building is lowering that cost, it is only 20% or so of the total. Still need "systems" for wiring, plumbing, sanitation, water, appliances, flooring, wall and ceiling treatments, etc. etc. etc.
Replicating the same basic look and style can also lead to some economies of scale for a given builder/contractor, but some of the pictures show some really ugly little box houses, cramped small lots, etc.
Thanks for your perspective. I suspected as much but have little inside knowledge other than permitting inspection.