The Neighborhoods Americans Want

The latest survey on neighborhood preferences was released this week by the National Association of Realtors and Smart Growth America. The press release had the headline, "Homebuyers Favor Shorter Commutes, Walkable Neighborhoods." Of course the pro-sprawl contingent can not let this inflammatory statement stand without a rebuttal. Sure enough, a counter-editorial titled "Let's Pretend" was penned by Joel Schwartz, visiting scholar at the AEI.

[I say "pro-sprawl" because, while these folks profess to support a level playing field, somehow it's always Smart Growth and new urbanism that inspires their animus. The subsidies, regulations, and institutional practices that overwhelmingly tilt the playing field in favor of sprawl are ignored or dismissed as nearly irrelevant. The net effect is pro-sprawl.]

It's notable that Schwartz fixates on one question in the survey, and ignores the other 15-plus questions that demonstrate very intriguing and deep support for walkable, mixed-use communities.

For instance, in terms of preferences for NU, survey respondents said the following were "very" or "somewhat" important in deciding where to live:

Sidewalks and places to take walks 72%
Living in a community with people at all stages of life 65%
Being within walking distance to stores and restaurants 51%
Living in a community with a mix of people from various racial and ethnic backgrounds 47%
Being within walking distance to schools 46% Being within walking distance of public transportation 46%
Living in a community with a mix of people from various income levels 45%
Church, synagogue or religious place of worship within walking distance 40%
Living in a community with a mix of different types of housing 38%

These percentages are much higher than the 33 percent that's usually cited as the market segment that wants NU -- more than twice as much in some cases.

The one question that Schwartz rants about could be phrased in a more balanced way, it is true. (It compares a lively urban neighborhood with a large-lot suburban neighborhood and asks which you prefer.) Even acknowledging the bias in that one question, however, the responses (and the associated demographics) are informative food for thought.

Schwartz says it's "misleading" to provide hypothetical choices that aren't commonplace. That argument makes no logical sense. So what if 13 percent of households are on half-acre lots or larger? How does that make peoples' preferences less valid? And even if 15 percent of workers' commutes are 45 minutes or more, that represents a daily experience for millions of people. It's no fantasy, I assure you.

Schwartz claims the Smart Growth community can't exist as it is described in the question he dislikes. But there are hundreds (if not thousands) of neighborhoods that fit the criteria listed in the question, including dozens of mature NU communities. He repeats the familiar canard -- that Smart Growth is about activists "imposing their vision" on the rest of us -- but it's the suburban, auto-based lifestyle that is imposed right now on a sizeable segment of the market. Just look at new residential construction. How much is walkable, diverse, and mixed use? Less than 10 percent, if that much, and compare that to the percentages in the NAR survey.

Comments

[Glen Raphael]

David, I think you missed the point of the AEI critique, which is that this survey was rigged to get the results they wanted to announce. Their key claim is item #2 under "The Dream": "More Americans prefer a smart growth community over a sprawl community." The way they got that result was by associating "sprawl" with 45+ minute commutes and "smart growth" with under 45 minute commutes. If you want to claim this was a reasonable thing to do, please present your evidence that "sprawl" communities have significantly more 45 minute commutes than do "smart growth" communities. Or at least some plausible argument that they are /likely/ to have that characteristic, since that's the factor Mr. Schwartz is challenging.

Another question that struck me as similarly rigged was the one that led to public policy prescription #2. They compared "improve public transportation" with "build more roads". Those aren't parallel propositions. "improve roads" would be the analogous survey item. Building "more" roads -- as in, additional roads besides the ones already present -- tends to be very costly and rarely yields much as much immediate benefit as does widening existing roads, improving intersections and that sort of thing. Besides, who could be opposed to "improving" something -- there's bias right there in the assumption that spending more on public transportation would in fact produce a significant improvement.

So if AEI wanted to skew the result in the opposite direction, they'd ask whether people wanted to "Build more public tranport lines" (implying we leave the existing lines in their current state) or "improve roads."

[Glen Raphael]

Correction: "improve the public roadway system" is probably the closest analog to "improve public transportation". (the problem with "improve roads" is that it slants too far in the other direction in seeming to entirely exclude the possibility of building new roads as /part/ of the improvement project.)

[Laurence Aurbach]

Glen, I wrote the post so blame me, not David.

Your question is unanswerable until we agree on definitions. For instance, a "sprawl community" in the NAR survey question is by definition one with a 45+ minute commute.

In general, the time people spend commuting by automobile is related to the degree jobs are geographically concentrated in a central business district. The correlation of large-lot, exurban homes to long commutes is more significant when cities are more monocentric. The NAR survey didn't address regional development patterns; it just presented a choice between two hypothetical, yet plausible, neighborhoods.

If you think reasonableness depends on how prevalent those neighborhood types are, then the question is not reasonable. If you think it's simply a way to learn about people's desires and the hypothetical tradeoffs they will make, then it is reasonable. Although, as I said, it should have been phrased in a more balanced way.

I actually believe the focus on commute time is misplaced. For quality of life, the more relevant question is commute quality. Some people enjoy long commutes if they're cruising on free-flowing parkways; other people like the freedom to read or sleep on a long transit commute.

Good point about the transit/roads question -- it is also tilted. Maybe a more neutral and informative question would be "Build more roads and widen existing roads" vs. "Build more transit lines and provide more trains/buses on existing lines."

[Glen Raphael]

Sorry, David - my mistake.
Lawrence: I think both sides in this argument are operating from unstated assumptions that might be better stated. For instance, if you /assume/ that all the jobs have to be in the big city and people have to go there to work, then low housing density in the suburbs loosely implies long commutes. But is that a reasonable assumption? Maybe you live somewhere that it is (either for historical reasons or due to current political realities), and people with contrary intuitions don't. For instance, I live in a relatively low-density part of Silicon Valley, about halfway between the major cities San Francisco and San Jose, and all the jobs I've ever had have been in nearby low-density parts of Silicon Valley. My shortest commute was 5 minutes, my longest just over a half hour. (I cheat a little by commuting outside peak hours - I tend to work 10 am to 7pm).

People on what you call the "pro-sprawl" side tend to be vehemently opposed to the sort of zoning restrictions that /keep/ all the jobs in the city, in favor of allowing mixed-use neighborhoods just about everywhere. If a small, low-density city includes business parks as well as housing, people can choose to live near where they work and work near where they live if short commutes are important to them. Even if they live on lots of a half acre or more.

[Glen Raphael]

s/lawrence/laurence/

[Laurence Aurbach]

I'm seeing precious little vehemence from the pro-sprawl folks in favor of allowing mixed-use neighborhoods just about everywhere. As far as I can tell, they are accomplishing no effective action to liberalize zoning and allow more mixed-use neighborhoods.

It's the new urbanists, Smart Growth advocates and those with allied interests who are reforming the practice of land development and planning, and who are providing more choice of neighborhood types in the marketplace.

[Glen Raphael]

I think you don't notice the vehemence because you agree with it. And the "pro-sprawlers" are maybe a little fatalistic on the subject by now, having been mugged by political realities in the past. But the issue is out there, even if they aren't making much headway on it. For instance, consider this little nugget from the next-to-last paragraph of the AEI editorial you linked above:

"To be sure, policies such as minimum parking requirements encourage driving, while minimum-lot-size and other zoning requirements can discourage or prevent high-density or mixed-use housing, even when demand for such developments exists. Ideally, we could say good riddance to such meddling."

I read that last sentence as vehemence in favor of allowing mixed-use neigborhoods just about everywhere. How did you read it?

[Reg Cæsar]

A pregnant comment, so to speak, by Mr Aurbach: "The subsidies, regulations, and institutional practices that overwhelmingly tilt the playing field in favor of sprawl are ignored or dismissed as nearly irrelevant. The net effect is pro-sprawl."

True, but the "smart growth" side is equally guilty here, as when activists on both sides in Denver and Minneapolis/St Paul (and no doubt other conurbations of their size) proclaim that "there will be over a million more people in our metro area in 2020" without telling us why, and whether this is necessary or avoidable. Almost all our growth is now imported. (And increasingly skipping the urban-jungle phase of traditional assimilation by going directly to the suburbs.)

The 800-lb. sword of Damocles hanging quietly over the whole discussion is what the Constitution calls "an uniform Rule of Naturalization". Imagine four scenarios where net inflow is a)kept the same; b)increased by 100%; c)decreased by 100%; and d)decreased by 200% (by encouraging emigration). How can Smart Growth to a billion be any smarter than Dumb Shrinkage to a quarter thereof?

The pro-growth forces, both pro- and anti-sprawl, make this question a lot more personal than it needs to be. As if one's feelings toward, say, the Japanese has a bearing on how many of them can fit into a Tokyo subway car at six o'clock.

[Brian Miller]

I agree with Reg Caesar.

Given global warming/climate change, I don't care if they are all living in a studio apartment in a walk-up building, but 60 million Californians is a frightening thought that says" ecological disaster" to me.

Furthermore, the argument is made we "owe" newcomers the right to move here because we are the children of immigrants. True-but must we uniquely privelge newcomers?

Further, given that we consume way beyond our "share" of resources, why is it good policy/environmental justice to vastly increase our population?

I guess I'm not as liberal as I claim. :/