A Tale of New Cities

Here’s a nifty stat that will make your fly-fishing uncle scoff: by 2050, around 70% of humans will live in urban settings, according to current UN estimates. The best time to reevaluate our building habits was yesterday. The next best time is now.

If we don’t, we’ll be stepping out on stage as a lead part in Hamilton, improvising our lightning-fast lines. We’ll be building the helicopter as it’s ascending. We’ll be mixing the batter as the cake sits in the oven. I have run out of metaphors.

Of course, definitions for “urban” vary. For instance, China does not consider a place “urban” until the population hits 100,000, while Greenland will stamp its approval at the 200 mark. For the purpose of this article, we’ll consider it to mean the “urban agglomeration”, which, according to the European Environment Agency is “a city or town proper and the suburban fringe or thickly settled territory lying outside, but adjacent to, its boundaries.” This differs from a metro area, in that it considers only the continuous urban area. It seems like the most sensible definition for the discussion at hand. Ain’t nothing wrong with living in the country, raising chickens and growing vegetables, so I’ll leave them out of it. This article is concerned primarily with people in that urban agglomeration.

What do I mean that we have to “get it right” when building new urban areas?

Well, the typical US city is plagued by skyrocketing housing prices, car dependency, an eroding sense of community, and a cookie cutter building philosophy. All of the issues discussed are related to each other, so it’s difficult to parse through them without involving another, but I’ll do my best. In the interest of simplicity, I’'ll narrow it down to two things that I think need reconsideration: zoning laws and car culture.

Zoning Laws - This may be the godfather of all the issues. The Razor. The Crux. The one that, if solved, could erase the issues we see with housing affordability, car dependency, and suburban sprawl. It’s hugely beneficial to affordability (and vibes) when neighborhoods can have a few stores and parks within walking distance of the houses, as well as the ability to build a mix of single-family houses, townhomes, duplexes, and apartment buildings. According to the article I’ve linked later in the paragraph, “local governments are increasingly recognizing that restrictive zoning and outdated land-use regulations can suppress housing supply, drive up housing costs, and widen racial and economic disparities...” To read more about the issues of current zoning laws, and some of the ways we can get out of this, check out this article from NAHRO (The National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials). Summer reading assignments in high school really put a damper on the written word for us, so if you’re not a reader, I get it. Here’s a comical-yet-informative YouTube video instead: The Suburbs Are Bleeding America Dry.

Car Culture - If you live in the US, you probably know this so well that you may have never even considered it an issue. It just seemed like the typical human experience. Traffic is something we live with, just like bad weather. Loud highways are as necessary as the water you drink when you decide “I can handle spice level 3” at a Thai restaurant. A $20,000 machine that depreciates every day is a totally normal adult expense, like rent, groceries, and health insurance. At its core, car dependency means that no one can get around town with ease or relative safety unless they’re at least 16 years old and own said machine within which they (dangerously) transport themselves around. It affects how we build, too. Communities get spread out. Nature is paved over, and the loud, drone of engines rarely ceases, seldom giving our souls a moment to breathe in the silence our ancestors knew so well. None of us made the active decisions for it to be this way, but in this beautiful game called life, we can decide our way out of it. Who wants to live in a suburban hell-scape dominated by highways, gas stations, parking lots, and soulless strip malls? Consider Tokyo vs. Los Angeles. Both are expansive behemoths of cities. However, Tokyo fosters walkability and public transport for their citizens, resulting in a city that doesn’t sprawl aimlessly through suburb after highway-dominated suburb. If you’ve seen an aerial view of Tokyo, you may be balking at this. Yes, Tokyo certainly goes on for a long way, but the difference here is the accessibility within that expanse. It isn’t the inefficient, low-density sprawl we see in Los Angeles, Atlanta, or Dallas. It’s just a huge city, with public transport to match the density. Anyway, enough reading. Here’s another video from the same guy as above, this one about car culture. It will educate you far better than my silly little blog will: How The Auto Industry Carjacked The American Dream.

Thanks for reading my take on all this. There’s a boatload of nuance, a million opinions to consider, and a lot of complicated contingencies when it comes to planning something as vast as a city, so I understand I might benefit from more perspective on certain topics, and I may be woefully short-sighted on others. I welcome opposition and discussion on it, because that’s real community, baby.

-John