In Praise of Density

Introduction: the Suburban Boom

Since the late 1930s mass-produced automobiles and housing made it possible for middle-class Americans to own their own homes. Unions ensured decent wages and benefits, and the FDIC insured 30-year mortgages. This combination of Federal policies, labor solidarity, and mass-production created more than two hundred million homeowners over the last three generations.
It was the most effective mass-housing program ever. Any critic of suburban development should acknowledge how effective suburbs were as a solution to a housing crisis. But like any dynamic system, the Suburban Boom has created new problems which need to be addressed: local inequity, energy use, and land consumption.

LOCAL INEQUITY shows up most clearly in the revenue available to school districts. Suburban growth was usually at the expense of urban jobs and urban tax revenue. Comparing census data on family income in different parts of any American city will reveal a pattern of segregation that looks an awful lot like Apartheid. On the ground, the situation feels a little different: like-attracts-like, and people choose to live among others like them. Even in America, the strongest common denominator is class, with racial differences acting as a close proxy only because race has been a basis for discrimination for centuries here. Skin color still is a huge issue, but wealthy people of any race tend to congregate in wealthy suburbs out of shared interest in opportunities for their children. That deprives all poor communities of property-tax revenue. And the segregation prevents children and adults from encountering others who are actually different. I hear it in the way Americans now speak: most public rhetoric is preaching to the choir of whatever common-interest group you already belong to. We are an estranged nation of non-citizens, only vaguely aware of what is going on in those other towns we never visit. Here I speak anecdotally, outside of my realm of expertise. But do I seem off-base? Search your own feelings, O Reader...
ENERGY USE, or more precisely, Profligate Energy Use, has several serious consequences. We are using up non-renewable fuels, creating air pollution, and generating a great deal of heat. Most energy is consumed in only a few ways: movement of people, heating and cooling of spaces, lighting of public and private spaces, and use of electric gadgets. Americans have radically improved the efficiency of all of these except the daily movement of people. Daily movement, almost exclusively by car, is a direct result of the pattern of suburban development over the last 50 years. Suburbs are not just sparse, but also segregated into single-function districts: all the houses go here, all the stores go there, and maybe a little industry downwind for tax revenue. This 'functional segregation by use' forces all of the residents to use cars for most trips. Consider the daily trips of a family: to jobs, to schools, to sports, to stores, to meals, to worship. In typical suburbs, each destination is too far apart for walking, and furthermore low density cannot support effective public transit. Therefore teenagers must drive. Elderly people must drive. Aside from downtown commuters and same-age schoolchildren, most trips are unique, making carpooling impossible. The result? Typical American households generate fourteen--yes, 14--car trips per day. The average number of vehicle occupants is 1.1, including the driver.
LAND CONSUMPTION is also a direct result of low density. Suburban belts around most American cites have become enormous, consuming prime farmland and open space that could have been reserved for public use. Furthermore, so much land has been consumed around cities that suburban growth itself is now impeded. The system as we know it is reaching its limit.