I’ve lived in sub-Saharan Africa for 25 years, would say that urbanisation looks very different here than in the US. In the latter cities are generally more energy efficient, with people efficiently packed into smaller areas and well-served by electricity, water and sewage systems. Those systems are often missing from African urban settings.
Its interesting how environmental commentary these days revolves around energy consumption (and thus presumably, climate change). The arguments against sprawl that worked in the past, however, were about the protection of open space resources: farmland, wildlife habitat, etc. Taking them out of the equation and focusing on energy makes it easier to support increasing density. But I can only live where I do, at 5.5 units per acre (not very dense, but this site was once zoned for 1 du/A, so . . .) because of adjacent open lands. And the success of the even denser projects nearby seems to me to be largely tied to affordability (people have little choice) and the trail system, on which they find relief from tight living quarters. There is also the proximity to services, which people say they like, but I wonder what they'd do if they had more choice. Would cities be densifying if people could afford more space?
Yes. Cities are densifying, according to one of the studies I drew upon for this post. The authors of the study, however, offered no hypothesis or guess as to why this is occurring.
I have no doubt from my travels and from what I hear from friends and colleagues, that American cities, even many small ones, in general are densifying while sprawl continues, though at an abated pace. overall. There are reasons for densification.
1) A serious conversation about the costs of sprawl began in the early 1970s. There was nothing remarkable about its main premise; spreading infrastructure over more space makes it more expensive. That conversation has had relatively limited and very spotty influence on the behavior of the local governments that both provide facilities and regulate land use. I'm not going to dive into why. But over nearly 50 years, this reason for densification has had some influence in some places.
2) Starting in the 1960's, as marked by the publication of William Whyte's The Last Landscape, there has been a great deal of resistance to sprawl that consumed good farmlands, riparian and wetlands areas, upland habitat, forests, etc. This resistance was almost always local and focused on "Save the _______ ", but because it engages peoples' energy far more than a fiscal argument ever could, it has pushed back against sprawl with a lot of success in a lot of landscapes. The good work of local conservation commissions and land trusts continues.
3) Beginning in the late '70 and early '80s, there was a movement that has gone by many names, but the "New Urbanism" will do here, that emphasized the appeal of a walkable village or city-centered life.. This appeared in popular magazines, on NPR, etc, etc. It gained traction with a certain part of the population. Some developers saw a path to profit and some communities overcame the NIMBYism that pushed back against this, and higher density walkable neighborhoods, both renovated and new, are now a consistent part of what gets built in a lot of places.
I pause here to note that trends 2) and 3) have both encountered pushback from those who are concerned about "gentrification." I could dive deep on that, but won't here. It is a serious problem, but I don't think the pushback against gentrification has had a major influence on most of what gets built in most places.
4) None of that would have led to the extent of densification we are seeing without the affordability "crisis." I use quotation marks because the affordability problem is the logical result of how we think about property in America. Eventually, even sprawl had to become too expensive for ordinary folks, so now we are calling the perfectly predictable consequences of our system a crisis. But since one can provide somewhat more affordable housing by using less land per unit (which also results in a lower infrastructure cost per unit), affordability has joined with the other three trends to lead to widespread increases in density.
There are lots of opinions about all this, as you recently pointed out, most of which are idealistic (or naive, it works out about the same). But none of the trends I have identified here are going away until there is a fundamental transition in our economy.
I’ve lived in sub-Saharan Africa for 25 years, would say that urbanisation looks very different here than in the US. In the latter cities are generally more energy efficient, with people efficiently packed into smaller areas and well-served by electricity, water and sewage systems. Those systems are often missing from African urban settings.
Thanks for adding your personal experience. I've not been to Africa, so all I know of the continent is what I've read.
Its interesting how environmental commentary these days revolves around energy consumption (and thus presumably, climate change). The arguments against sprawl that worked in the past, however, were about the protection of open space resources: farmland, wildlife habitat, etc. Taking them out of the equation and focusing on energy makes it easier to support increasing density. But I can only live where I do, at 5.5 units per acre (not very dense, but this site was once zoned for 1 du/A, so . . .) because of adjacent open lands. And the success of the even denser projects nearby seems to me to be largely tied to affordability (people have little choice) and the trail system, on which they find relief from tight living quarters. There is also the proximity to services, which people say they like, but I wonder what they'd do if they had more choice. Would cities be densifying if people could afford more space?
Yes. Cities are densifying, according to one of the studies I drew upon for this post. The authors of the study, however, offered no hypothesis or guess as to why this is occurring.
I have no doubt from my travels and from what I hear from friends and colleagues, that American cities, even many small ones, in general are densifying while sprawl continues, though at an abated pace. overall. There are reasons for densification.
1) A serious conversation about the costs of sprawl began in the early 1970s. There was nothing remarkable about its main premise; spreading infrastructure over more space makes it more expensive. That conversation has had relatively limited and very spotty influence on the behavior of the local governments that both provide facilities and regulate land use. I'm not going to dive into why. But over nearly 50 years, this reason for densification has had some influence in some places.
2) Starting in the 1960's, as marked by the publication of William Whyte's The Last Landscape, there has been a great deal of resistance to sprawl that consumed good farmlands, riparian and wetlands areas, upland habitat, forests, etc. This resistance was almost always local and focused on "Save the _______ ", but because it engages peoples' energy far more than a fiscal argument ever could, it has pushed back against sprawl with a lot of success in a lot of landscapes. The good work of local conservation commissions and land trusts continues.
3) Beginning in the late '70 and early '80s, there was a movement that has gone by many names, but the "New Urbanism" will do here, that emphasized the appeal of a walkable village or city-centered life.. This appeared in popular magazines, on NPR, etc, etc. It gained traction with a certain part of the population. Some developers saw a path to profit and some communities overcame the NIMBYism that pushed back against this, and higher density walkable neighborhoods, both renovated and new, are now a consistent part of what gets built in a lot of places.
I pause here to note that trends 2) and 3) have both encountered pushback from those who are concerned about "gentrification." I could dive deep on that, but won't here. It is a serious problem, but I don't think the pushback against gentrification has had a major influence on most of what gets built in most places.
4) None of that would have led to the extent of densification we are seeing without the affordability "crisis." I use quotation marks because the affordability problem is the logical result of how we think about property in America. Eventually, even sprawl had to become too expensive for ordinary folks, so now we are calling the perfectly predictable consequences of our system a crisis. But since one can provide somewhat more affordable housing by using less land per unit (which also results in a lower infrastructure cost per unit), affordability has joined with the other three trends to lead to widespread increases in density.
There are lots of opinions about all this, as you recently pointed out, most of which are idealistic (or naive, it works out about the same). But none of the trends I have identified here are going away until there is a fundamental transition in our economy.
Thought you might enjoy …
Arcade Fire: Sprawl II
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NuSbELCNloc
Thanks!
Thanks for the Monkees!
You're welcome!