Similarly, the suburb of Chicago, Schaumburg, is an Edge City. Basically a grown up suburb that now has more reverse commuters from the Chicago to its employment centers. It’s “main street” is the mall and over the last few years has created more condos than homes.
We have been concentrating on only city vs suburban but not it evolution. Good and bad. In an earlier post Rationalist discussed how Culver City was swallowed by LA. There by creating its own typology.
Similarly, the suburb of Chicago, Schaumburg, is an Edge City. Basically a grown up suburb that now has more reverse commuters from the Chicago to its employment centers. It’s “main street” is the mall and over the last few years has created more condos than homes.
We have been concentrating on only city vs suburban but not it evolution. Good and bad. In an earlier post Rationalist discussed how Culver City was swallowed by LA. There by creating its own typology.
one to get a few people's blood boiling. combining the recent crisis in the subprime lending market with the trend towards legislating sustainable urban growth, conservative columnist thomas sowell of the hoover institution, stanford, blames "smart growth" for the recent increase in real estate prices that lead to an increase in risky lending practices. in his words:
"Attractive and heady phrases like "open space," "smart growth" and the like have accompanied land use restrictions that made the cost of land rise in many places to the point where it greatly exceeded the cost of the homes built on the land.
In places that resisted this political rhetoric, home prices remained reasonable, despite rising incomes and population growth."
is there any truth to this or has this guy just been smoking the conservative crack pipe?
haha, good design and more desirable properties are causing this mess. oh no! what's lending got to do with it?
it's true that prices were skyrocketing there for a while, but they were skyrocketing everywhere, even in areas where there was plenty of existing housing stock. it's not a supply/demand issue. everybody knew that prices were going up in an unsustainable way and that there would have to be a breaking/stopping point. did we forget this?
I love how this article by a lauded "professional" quotes one unreferenced statistic, and that's it.
A number of studies... Which studies? Commissioned by whom, what was the structure of the study?
Politicians have also been a key factor... Which politicians? Under which laws at what governmental level?
Then he talks about fingerpointing...and what exactly is he doing in this article?
There may be some valid points hidden in there somewhere, I'm not saying it's unreasonable that restrictions on supply can lead to higher prices. But this article is not news, not acedemic research - it's empty hysteria and blame.
well, sowell is saying that in places like san francisco (i assume sf because he is writing from stanford, though he never mentions it in particular) that there were too many restrictions on builders and not enough buildable land to keep prices down. if suburbs were able to stretch out infinitely away from the city and not be contained by legislation (growth boundaries, etc.), then home prices would never have risen as fast as they did, forcing lenders to come up with these hair-brained interest only, adjustable rate mortgages to make financing available to first-time or subprime homebuyers.
i wondered the same thing, liberty. the only city i know of with a legislated urban growth boundary is portland, or. home prices did go up there, but not nearly so much as they did in places like la where there is little legislated sustainable urban growth, far from.
Personally I think prices went crazy in part due to a hysterical media - not unlike this article - saying over and over "Prices on houses are going nowhere but up! If you don't buy now you'll never get in!!"
But then, despite growing up in Phoenix, I don't understand the mentality of any person who would want to buy a house a 1.5 hour commute away from where they woprk - I just don't get that, so who am I to judge why endless sprawl would be beneficial to anyone?
just the name 'sub-prime' means that there is a known risk. the financial folks weren't "forced" to be creative. they saw $$$. risk can be very lucrative.
no question the credit industry was only looking to make money and under the auspices of "giving people who normally couldn't afford it the chance to buy a home," they bled them dry or will shortly.
but for me, the more interesting question is: is there a downside to the kinds of regulation of urban growth that many of us as architects and urban planners support? the obvious one and the one that sowell alludes to is that urban growth boundaries inhibit new development leading to an increase in urban density (generally a good thing), but also an increase in land and real estate prices within the boundary (not a great thing for lower income homebuyers). like most things, the answer isn't as simple as we would like it to be.
yeah, that is an issue pointd out quite often by anti-anti-sprawlers. growth boundaries seem to increase costs and lead to inequities of some kind or another ( but they may not; research is slightly biased). on other hand the lack of such boundaries also induces many know problems...it is i suppose a matter of choice as to which side of the coin we wish to support (or maybe both sides simultaneously).
more than growth boundaries, local control of zoning that keeps apt buildings and duplexes out of family home areas is a real problem from my perspective. zoning in usa originally began (i think in california) to keep chinese out of white areas and since then has been used to exclude, all in the name of preserving property values.
the most recent form of land control proposals is i think maybe not so useful without regional planning controls that ensure intelligent growth, mixed use and so on. that the loan programs in place and our cultural biases as well tend not to suport this approach is a much larger issue than redesigning land use in graphic design projects...in this way it is really a problem of policy and politics more than design...which is i supose why the new urbanists are focusing more and more on policy and letting design issues become sub-goals...
maybe... it is a very complicated problem, isn't it?
Agree, jump, about the difficulties of trying to densify existing low-density residential neighborhoods. If developers are not allwoed to sprawl ever outwards, than they need to come up with creative approaches to developing within the existing fabric - but if local zoning boards won't allow it, that's a problem.
spreading like a virus...(discuss)
So what is the next evolution of suburbia and/or an Edge City. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_city
Similarly, the suburb of Chicago, Schaumburg, is an Edge City. Basically a grown up suburb that now has more reverse commuters from the Chicago to its employment centers. It’s “main street” is the mall and over the last few years has created more condos than homes.
We have been concentrating on only city vs suburban but not it evolution. Good and bad. In an earlier post Rationalist discussed how Culver City was swallowed by LA. There by creating its own typology.
Any thoughts
So what is the next evolution of suburbia and/or an Edge City. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_city
Similarly, the suburb of Chicago, Schaumburg, is an Edge City. Basically a grown up suburb that now has more reverse commuters from the Chicago to its employment centers. It’s “main street” is the mall and over the last few years has created more condos than homes.
We have been concentrating on only city vs suburban but not it evolution. Good and bad. In an earlier post Rationalist discussed how Culver City was swallowed by LA. There by creating its own typology.
Any thoughts
one to get a few people's blood boiling. combining the recent crisis in the subprime lending market with the trend towards legislating sustainable urban growth, conservative columnist thomas sowell of the hoover institution, stanford, blames "smart growth" for the recent increase in real estate prices that lead to an increase in risky lending practices. in his words:
"Attractive and heady phrases like "open space," "smart growth" and the like have accompanied land use restrictions that made the cost of land rise in many places to the point where it greatly exceeded the cost of the homes built on the land.
In places that resisted this political rhetoric, home prices remained reasonable, despite rising incomes and population growth."
is there any truth to this or has this guy just been smoking the conservative crack pipe?
haha, good design and more desirable properties are causing this mess. oh no! what's lending got to do with it?
it's true that prices were skyrocketing there for a while, but they were skyrocketing everywhere, even in areas where there was plenty of existing housing stock. it's not a supply/demand issue. everybody knew that prices were going up in an unsustainable way and that there would have to be a breaking/stopping point. did we forget this?
I love how this article by a lauded "professional" quotes one unreferenced statistic, and that's it.
A number of studies... Which studies? Commissioned by whom, what was the structure of the study?
Politicians have also been a key factor... Which politicians? Under which laws at what governmental level?
Then he talks about fingerpointing...and what exactly is he doing in this article?
There may be some valid points hidden in there somewhere, I'm not saying it's unreasonable that restrictions on supply can lead to higher prices. But this article is not news, not acedemic research - it's empty hysteria and blame.
well, sowell is saying that in places like san francisco (i assume sf because he is writing from stanford, though he never mentions it in particular) that there were too many restrictions on builders and not enough buildable land to keep prices down. if suburbs were able to stretch out infinitely away from the city and not be contained by legislation (growth boundaries, etc.), then home prices would never have risen as fast as they did, forcing lenders to come up with these hair-brained interest only, adjustable rate mortgages to make financing available to first-time or subprime homebuyers.
i wondered the same thing, liberty. the only city i know of with a legislated urban growth boundary is portland, or. home prices did go up there, but not nearly so much as they did in places like la where there is little legislated sustainable urban growth, far from.
Personally I think prices went crazy in part due to a hysterical media - not unlike this article - saying over and over "Prices on houses are going nowhere but up! If you don't buy now you'll never get in!!"
But then, despite growing up in Phoenix, I don't understand the mentality of any person who would want to buy a house a 1.5 hour commute away from where they woprk - I just don't get that, so who am I to judge why endless sprawl would be beneficial to anyone?
just the name 'sub-prime' means that there is a known risk. the financial folks weren't "forced" to be creative. they saw $$$. risk can be very lucrative.
no question the credit industry was only looking to make money and under the auspices of "giving people who normally couldn't afford it the chance to buy a home," they bled them dry or will shortly.
but for me, the more interesting question is: is there a downside to the kinds of regulation of urban growth that many of us as architects and urban planners support? the obvious one and the one that sowell alludes to is that urban growth boundaries inhibit new development leading to an increase in urban density (generally a good thing), but also an increase in land and real estate prices within the boundary (not a great thing for lower income homebuyers). like most things, the answer isn't as simple as we would like it to be.
yeah, that is an issue pointd out quite often by anti-anti-sprawlers. growth boundaries seem to increase costs and lead to inequities of some kind or another ( but they may not; research is slightly biased). on other hand the lack of such boundaries also induces many know problems...it is i suppose a matter of choice as to which side of the coin we wish to support (or maybe both sides simultaneously).
more than growth boundaries, local control of zoning that keeps apt buildings and duplexes out of family home areas is a real problem from my perspective. zoning in usa originally began (i think in california) to keep chinese out of white areas and since then has been used to exclude, all in the name of preserving property values.
the most recent form of land control proposals is i think maybe not so useful without regional planning controls that ensure intelligent growth, mixed use and so on. that the loan programs in place and our cultural biases as well tend not to suport this approach is a much larger issue than redesigning land use in graphic design projects...in this way it is really a problem of policy and politics more than design...which is i supose why the new urbanists are focusing more and more on policy and letting design issues become sub-goals...
maybe... it is a very complicated problem, isn't it?
Agree, jump, about the difficulties of trying to densify existing low-density residential neighborhoods. If developers are not allwoed to sprawl ever outwards, than they need to come up with creative approaches to developing within the existing fabric - but if local zoning boards won't allow it, that's a problem.
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