City or Suburb?
Not all cities look like this. Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/haljackey/3889938545/
I’m a little late to the game on this one, but last month Joel Kotkin had a widely-panned Wall Street Journal article attempting to debunk what called “the myth of the back to the city migration.” He did this by way of pointing out that the downtown condo markets in Los Angeles, Miami and Las Vegas have been downright abysmal since the start of the housing bust, and just as abysmal as suburban markets, if not worse.
This theory has an obvious, and fatal, flaw: as many have pointed out, those three downtown condo markets are hardly representative of the nation’s urban areas as a whole. The Miami and Las Vegas metro areas were each hugely affected by the housing bubble – so it stands to reason that their respective condo markets would plummet. Los Angeles was not too far behind in that regard.
Still, that’s not the main rub with Kotkin’s argument. As Christopher Leinberger points out, downtown condos are not the only kind of urbanity that exists. This is a major problem in the way that we talk about cities (and suburbs, for that matter). Far too many Americans fail to remember that there are many kinds of neighborhoods between downtown high-rises and suburban tract lawns.
Leinberger draws a different, and quite useful, line: “walkable urban” versus “driveable suburban.” Many driveable suburban areas are in cities, and many walkable urban areas are in suburbs, as he notes. That’s true, but there are many differences even within each category.
Personally, I’ll posit a rather simple classification scheme familiar to anyone who has ever played Sim City: high-density, mid-density and low-density. All too often, we in America forget about the mid-density, which comprises of a large portion of our cities, but typically those beyond the showcase downtown (and so did Sim City’s developers, for a time: the high/low split appears in Sim City 2000, but mid-density zoning does not appear until Sim City 3000. Still, that was 11 years ago, and you’d think Joel Kotkin would’ve heard about brownstones by now). The “mid-density” neighborhoods happen to be my favorite parts of most cities. I have no desire to live in a skyscraper.
Of course, within that, there are even finer-grained distinctions. In New York City, Yorkville and Midtown are both high-density, but quite different. There are also any number of differences between mid-density Williamsburg and Kensington, and low-density Staten Island and Middletown, New Jersey. Still, dispensing with the bright lines separating downtown condo and suburban lawn is a good idea. Cities and suburbs are not static concepts, but ever-changing places.
Predictions for 2010: Round Two
JamesR in Bronx, NY on Thu, Aug 12, 2010 at 1:03pm
I agree with your overall premise, but I have to dispute your definitions of low/medium/high density. The density of New York City can have a way of distorting one’s perceptions of density relative to the rest of the Tri State Area and to the country at large. Staten Island, for example, has a population density of over 7,500 people per square mile and I would estimate its dwelling unit density at somewhere around 5 or 6 units per acre on average. There are plenty of inner suburban communities within the metro area with similar densities, like much of Lower Westchester and Nassau County. 7,500 people per square mile is much denser than most of what you will find in the outer suburban rings of New York and in the US at large. It’s worth mentioning that Williamsburg would be a high density area in any other metro area and Manhattan’s density is, of course, sui generis within the US.
Vincent Valk on Wed, Aug 25, 2010 at 2:56pm
James:
Point taken. I’m aware that NYC-style density is somewhat unusual in the U.S., and even in outer NYC suburbs. This is a bit of a tangent, but I believe Staten Island has about the same density as Los Angeles, and the LA metro area is actually the densest in the U.S. (even denser than NY). I suspect this is because is fairly consistent, and about the same as inner-ring NYC suburbs like Staten Island and Nassau County - which, by U.S. standards, are really quite dense.
Matt in Moscow, Russia on Tue, Aug 31, 2010 at 8:52am
As someone who grew up near Philadelphia, lived part time for a few years in Seattle, and now lives in Moscow, I can attest to these differing definitions of urbanity. It’s hard, actually, to think of three cities more dissimilar (I like them all!). Coming to Seattle with expectations based on what is “urban” in Philadelphia, I was struck by how… suburban it looked. The major residential areas (with the exception of Belltown) all look very much like New Jersey with steeper hills and a better view. Seattle breaks the walkable/driveable rules a little because the public transit situation there is so abysmal outside of three or four of the neighborhoods surrounding downtown: the city itself is mostly not “walkable,” and most people have cars. My sense is that the West Coast cities, except San Francisco, are in similar situations. So does one count Queen Anne or Fremont as “suburban” because of their lack of decent bus service and low density, despite their proximity to downtown (only a mile or two)? What, actually, does “sub-urban” mean?
Living in Moscow has thrown these issues into sharp relief for me; coming to Russia (except St. Petersburg) with Western expectations of what a city looks like and the logic of its layout geometry, it is impossible not to feel completely unmoored. Moscow is a city of 10.5 million census residents (Russian citizens residing in the city for 6 or more years), and somewhere between 6 and 8 million others. The salient point about Moscow, and Russian urban centers in general, is that almost the entire population lives in high rises, and the population density increases dramatically the further from the city center you are. My apartment building, 40 minutes on the metro from downtown, and very modest by Moscow standards, has 650 units; the buildings around it are all considerably larger. My block houses some 20,000-30,000 people. This is not endemic to Moscow; Russians are amongst the most “urbanized” people in the world: about 80% of the population live within the limits of major cities.
So, is someone living in the Novoyasenevo neighborhood of Moscow - with a density of many thousands per square mile, a 10-minute bus ride from the metro and another hour and twenty minutes from downtown on the metro - “more urban” than someone living in a neighborhood of Seattle who lives in a house with a yard and drives 10 minutes to downtown out of necessity? I don’t know.
American city layout is what it is, but I think it might be useful to put a little pressure on the terms “urban” and “suburban” as perhaps facile and not representative of the many different ways in which people come together to live and work in groups, which is what a city is everywhere.
Matt
Urban Mechanic in Boston, Massachusetts on Wed, Sep 15, 2010 at 5:05pm
LA, Las Vegas, and Miami do not constitute the fabric of mainstream urbanism anywhere; even in their downtown areas. Kotkin is a quack if he thinks otherwise!
Plus, the most dense places are rarely those dominated by skyscrapers, but rather long-slung, multi-story places that feature brownstones, town-homes, and triple-deckers. Of course few people are actually devoted to an ideology of place. If you asked most folks they’d say it’s a gut thing. Sure they would love to have a bit of privacy and green space…and yes they would love to be able to walk and drive. I live in such a neighborhood in Boston and thanks to the likes of ZipCar and good transit, I haven’t had to own a car since moving here more than a half decade ago. Yet, I very much live a rather pleasant, urban existence that is not in a downtown condo, but in a dense, walkable, and drivable neighborhood!