During the Summer, Opponents of Density Go on Vacation
Matt Wanamaker | Thu, Jul 24th, 2008 | Category: Commentary | Tags: matt wanamaker, jersey shore, nimby, density
After fighting density at public meetings throughout the year, even NIMBYs need a vacation. When the weather is right and they feel like escaping their one dwelling-unit-per-acre suburban subdivisions for some rest and relaxation, these neighborhood activists often head for places like the Jersey Shore. Although known for wide beaches, lively boardwalks, and amusement activities, a deeper look reveals that a good deal of the vibrancy in resort towns like those at “The Shore” may be attributed to something that many visitors would claim revulsion to in their hometowns: density.
A case in point is Wildwood Crest, where even the quietest blocks have a typical residential density of around 12 dwelling-units-per-acre. A mid-July license plate check of any hotel in Wildwood Crest shows that for whatever reason, hundreds of families from Quebec to Virginia have chosen to spend a week or two here rather than anywhere else. However, a majority of those plates are from Pennsylvania or New York, and the dealership stamps (and the Honor Student bumper stickers) infer that suburban counties have the greatest representation. Most planners will tell you that those areas are usually the least likely to support things like infill development, multifamily housing, public transit, alleys, or even the addition of traffic-calming devices. So why, then, are they OK in Wildwood Crest?
Parents who fight ordinances permitting “dangerous” alleys at home let their children ride bikes alone through them at The Shore. Every block has a sidewalk used for short walks to shops, schools, churches, and of course the ocean. If the walk is too far there are trolleybuses, provided at low cost as a quasi-public transportation amenity. Single-family homes sit snugly next to each other or next to townhomes, which often sit close to lowrise hotels. Sandwich shops without dedicated parking spaces are full of patrons all day. Most homes have porches and families wind down the day by sitting in them and waving to anyone who walks by. Nearby Cape May was America’s first seaside resort town, and is now an international destination where the most treasured homes and restaurants front the busy sidewalks. Front yards are small and side yards even smaller, yet nobody seems to mind. Each of these features is part of a good planner’s urban design “toolkit,” and they help increase quality of life and set the stage for neighborly interaction (even among “shoobies,” or daytrippers.) They are things that planners struggle to convince towns to allow, yet are often denied by citizen groups who protest, citing concerns including…reduced quality of life.
Maybe the solution is for planners to show summertime images of Jersey Shore family fun during suburban planning and zoning meetings in the dead of winter. However, is educating the public about urban design principles the issue, or is it something else? A simple answer would be that the lure of the sea is strong enough to make us overlook the built environment along its shores, but that sure doesn’t explain the decay of Asbury Park, or the vacant townhomes one block from the Atlantic City Boardwalk.
Are the more urban features of beach towns something that is subconsciously sought out by disconnected suburbanites longing for community, or are they nuisances that are merely tolerated for a weekend or the season?
Matt Wanamaker, AICP, works for Brown & Keener Urban Design in Philadelphia.
Steve Thorngate in Washington, DC
Thu, Jul 24, 2008 at 9:21am
Interesting questions, but I think you let the beach town folks off too easy. Isn’t the main reason that density (and multi-family housing, transit, kids riding bikes in alleys, etc.) seems to be okay in a beach town the strong sense people have that they’re not going to run into anyone too poor to afford a beach vacation?
Matt in Philadelphia, PA
Thu, Jul 24, 2008 at 1:42pm
Good comment, and that is something I may develop further if I ever grow this in to a full article.
Beach towns in New Jersey have historically been more accessible to those with lower incomes than those in, say, Cape Cod is to those in the industrial cities of Southern New England. Much of this originated with their early development as destinations along the Pennsylvania and Reading Railroads...who marketed them heavily to urban Philadelphians who otherwise could not afford a vacation at all. The term “shoobie” originated as a derogatory term for poor urbanites who took the train to the beach for the day carrying their lunch and a change of clothes in shoeboxes. It still refers to those who come in for the day. The completion of the Atlantic City Expressway and Garden State Parkway opened the shore to working class Philadelphians and New Yorkers (respectively) in the second half of the 20th Century. With this easy access for day trips (including continued direct service via NJ Transit buses) and relatively affordable motel rooms in abundance, the Jersey Shore is hardly the Outer Banks or The Hamptons. In fact, it is increasingly becoming (again) the location for those “too poor” to go anywhere else.
Wildwood Crest was also chosen, and a longer article may have developed this more, because it blends seamlessly with Wildwood, which has a significant number of full-time residents on public assistance...some of which reside in a Housing Authority tower that is among the tallest and most prominent in town. Note that ALL New Jersey municipalities are required to meet the obligations of the Council on Affordable Housing (COAH) set forth in the Fair Housing Act of 1985...so if you are going “down the shore” you know that you will run in to those less-fortunate. In Wildwood they may be swimming in the surf next to you.
I also wonder if racist or classist undertones are at play, and they may be in some Jersey Shore towns with less motels, like Avalon or Stone Harbor where they continue to fight them, or in those which require resident Beach Tags.
Steve Thorngate in Washington, DC
Thu, Jul 24, 2008 at 3:03pm
Matt--thanks for your informative response. I wasn’t aware of the interesting class elements of the Wildwood Crest example. I’m more familiar with Stone Harbor, which I believe does require resident beach tags, and the residents of which, as you mention, have fought to keep motels out.
At any rate, day trippers would seem to pose a far smaller (perceived!) threat to the leisure-class types than over-nighters do, especially when it comes to questions of housing, density, neighborhoods, etc.
ryan in san francisco, ca
Thu, Jul 24, 2008 at 7:06pm
Great story, and I have often contemplated this myself. Why do Americans vacation to classic, walkable, pre-war towns and cities and yet constantly fight these things in their own towns and cities? In fact, the most visited man-made tourist destinations (Disney World included) are usually places where you can ditch the car and enjoy the simple pleasures of walking, bicycling and mingling with others. It’s an interesting hypocrisy we have created.
Steve
Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 10:23am
Bumper stickers and dealership stamps don’t infer anything, they imply it.
BradyDale in Philadelphia, PA
Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 11:35am
This is a great post. Unfortunately, I think a lot of people like it boring most of the time. It’s sad. It’s always funny when people want to see both vibrancy but low-density. Can’t have it. I just finished DEATH AND LIFE, and Jane Jacobs says density (or concentration) is a prerequisite for a healthy vibrancy, and of course that’s true. Nothing random is going to happen if people have to get out of their car to interact with anything.
AWC in Syracuse, NY
Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 1:19pm
I agree with you about urban policy. I grew up in the city of Philadelphia and have spent many summers on the Jersey Shore (mostly Sea Isle, but also LBI, Brigantine, etc.)
I also agree racism is a factor. Yes, definitely.
But:
1) Many of the suburban folks you mention aren’t being inconsistent. They would happily tear down the quaint old towns to build beachfront estates, were it financially possible. Look at parts of the Hamptons.
2) Kids don’t go to school in the summer. Your example merely proves that many people choose urban living when schools aren’t a factor.
3) It’s easy to label people “classist,” but the cheapest shore towns are the noisiest. They have the most drinking and carousing. Parents have a right to avoid that without being called bigots.
sebsi
Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 1:34pm
i think several posters have hit the nail in the head already. the answers are kids and schools. while i personally do not mind a packed urban environment (i prefer it), i need to be able to afford schools my children can attend. i am lucky enough that i make enough money to afford private school, so i can live in the city where i work. but if i made only 80% of what i make now, i would simply not be able to afford it, and would have to move to the suburbs. there is no way around it. there would be an enormous drop in quality of life for us if we moved 40 minutes away from where i work. but that’s what we would have to do.
and if i moved to the suburbs, i would want them to stay that way. i would not want them to become like the city, only further away. because then the schools would suck there too. i really don’t know what can be done about this. it’s really sad.
Shawn
Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 3:39pm
The same thing can be observed in most mountain towns in the West. Suburbanites from all over the country flock to Aspen, Vail, Park City, or Whistler to enjoy the lifestyle that dense, walkable towns have to offer.
Swift Loris
Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 6:13pm
FWIW, both Asbury Park and Long Branch (to the north) are currently undergoing fairly massive residential and commercial development in their downtown areas after decades of slow deterioration. They were always walkable, but there wasn’t anywhere a tourist would really want to walk to. That’s no longer the case in Asbury and is in the process of no longer being the case in Long Branch. (I live a block from the beach in the West End section of Long Branch, well south of “downtown,” which became gentrified and tourist-friendly--although not highly developed--some years back. I don’t drive, so its walkability was crucial for me when I moved here a few years ago after having lived for over half a century on Manhattan’s West Side.)
StreetsPariah
Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 12:57pm
I wonder if the reason people spend one week in the dense, walkable areas like Wildwood and the rest of the year in disbursed, not walkable areas (like the rest of the country) is because that’s the way they want it to be. It would be interesting to ask whether people would even want to live in a place like Wildwood all year, or just spend a week there and then go home. (There are a lot of places that are refreshing to visit, but not to live.) I love Wildwood, but the density means nothing to me. I like the boardwalk, the amusement rides, and the endless beach. But I wouldn’t want to live there.
Jonathan in London
Tue, Aug 19, 2008 at 11:48am
“The shore” is what makes the shore attractive. Beach and ocean are the fundamental attraction, as mountains are in Aspen. Density is a response to the desire for proximity to the attraction. Low suburban densities, as has been established endlessly elsewhere, might be an organised response to a whole range of desires, from tranquility and safety to classism and racism.
I have spent a weekend in a tiny clapboard house in Belmar, NJ, packed with friends and friends of friends. Three blocks from the beach; proximity was the asset of this property. You could walk to the beach, bars and stores which all depend on each other to give Belmar a daytime and nightime economy, and broad appeal.
But I wouldn’t say that density was embraced; it was tolerated, though perhaps many weren’t aware of its hidden benefits such as the density of bars and stores that could be supported. No one embraces living in a shoebox studio in SoHo - they tolerate the lack of space for the benefits that the dense urban location provides. I know regular visitors to Belmar who tolerate a cramped weekend precisely because they have the suburban creature comforts of a lawn, a spare bedroom and abundant parking “back home”. And its worth remembering that in Belmar - as in SoHo - the idyllic bike rides and conversations on the stoop by day are balanced by night with noise and litter nuisance ; perhaps an inevitable results when an age-diverse residential demographic exists in dense proximity; something else to be tolerated.
A great topic, and there is obviously a lot of nuance in the attitudes of new “shoobies” towards density at home and on vacation.
On a lighter note, the class war has already begun: http://gawker.com/5026793/guido-war
Payton Chung in Chicago
Wed, Sep 17, 2008 at 10:38pm
It’s long been a canard among New Urbanists that people love to vacation in towns (whether Paris, Seaside FL, or Main Street USA at Disneyland), as an antidote to the mind-numbing stress of their suburban daily grind.
This tendency might have something to do with a deeply held human need to be in towns, but I’d chalk more of it up to history. Many of North America’s resort towns were carved out of the scenery by (not just around!) railroads looking to drum up passengers; as one Canadian Pacific Railroad CEO reportedly said about Banff (where I spent much of my summer vacation), “if I can’t export the scenery, I’ll import the tourists.” Many resort towns in the northeast retain their compact, railroad-era fabric, but America has countless other resort areas grew up entirely in the sprawl era. For every Kennebunkport, Wildwood, Key West, Santa Fe, Waikiki, or Santa Barbara, there’s a Daytona, Gatlinburg, Hilton Head Island, Palm Springs, Scottsdale, or Branson.
Shawn mentions ski resort towns—an exception to the postwar resort sprawl, but possibly only due to basic practicality, since the same challenging terrain that skiiers demand makes servicing sprawling development (almost) prohibitively expensive. Similarly, a lot of yesteryear’s resort towns were built on environmentally sensitive lands, and their further expansion has been limited by environmental regulations or land protection. However, the ski towns just might offer us a way out of the mess. I know of at least one new consulting firm started by people who cut their teeth building (immensely profitable) ski towns—and have now moved on to the bigger challenge of building real towns in the suburbs.