suburbs

Exodus to Suburbs Continues Through 2012

Wendell Cox — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 14:33:48 -0500

The latest US Census Bureau migration data shows that people continue to move from principal cities (which include core cities) in metropolitan areas to what the Census Bureau characterizes as "suburbs" (Note). Between 2011 and 2012, a net 1.5 million people moved from principal cities to suburbs (principal cities lost 1.5 million people to the suburbs). The movement to the suburbs was pervasive. In each of the age categories, there was a net migration from the principal cities to the suburbs. There was also net migration to the "suburbs" in all categories of educational attainment.

These data are in contrast to claims that people are moving from a suburbs to central cities. Virtually none of the migration data has shown any such movement. Moreover, the city population estimates produced for 2011 by the Census Bureau, which indicated stronger central city growth have been shown to be simply allocations of growth within counties, rather than genuine estimates of population increase.

----

Note on Census Bureau "Suburbs:"

The movement to the suburbs is undoubtedly understated in the Census Bureau estimates, because many jurisdictions included in the "principal city" classification are in fact suburbs. The Real State of Metropolitan America showed that virtually all population growth in principal cities was either in suburban jurisdictions classified as principal cities, or in cities with substantial expenses of post-World War II automobile oriented (or suburban) land-use patterns. The remaining core cities that are largely only urban core in land use accounted for only 2% of principal city growth from 2000 to 2008.

For a decade, the Census Bureau has used a "principal city" designation instead of the former "central city" term. All former "central cities" are "principal cities." The Census Bureau characterizes all other areas of metropolitan areas as "suburbs." In fact, many of the principal cities are functionally suburbs, having barely existed or not existed at all at the beginning of the great automobile oriented suburban exodus following World War II.

Examples of such suburban principal cities, with their metropolitan areas in parentheses, are Hoffman Estates (Chicago), Arlington (Dallas-Fort Worth), Aurora (Denver), Fountain Valley (Los Angeles), Eden Prairie (Minneapolis-St. Paul), Mesa (Phoenix), Hillsboro (Portland), San Marcos (San Diego), Pleasanton (San Francisco), Kent (Seattle), Virginia Beach (Virginia Beach-Norfolk) and many others.

Core Cities Growing: Available Data Indicates Domestic Migration Losses

Wendell Cox — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 08:03:12 -0400

Redaction Notice: September 17, 2012

Part of this article from June 28, 2012 has been redacted because of difficulties with the US Census Bureau's 2011 sub-county population estimates. In fact, these were not genuine population estimates at all, but were largely "fair share" allocations of county population change rates based upon the share of population in each jurisdiction. This issue is further described at was revealed on newgeography.com by Chris Briem and our new URL.

However, the fact remains that domestic migration trends continue to be from historical core cities to the suburbs, as the unredacted data below indicates.

Just released United States Bureau of the Census estimates indicate that the urban cores of major metropolitan areas (over 1,000,000) grew slightly faster than their suburbs between July 2010 and July 2011. Overall, the historical core municipalities grew 1.03 percent, compared to the suburban growth of 0.93 percent. Among the 51 metropolitan areas, 26 urban cores grew at a faster percentage rate than their suburbs (Note 1). However, suburban areas continued to add many more people. Over suburban areas grew 1,150,000, compared to 462,000 for the urban cores, indicating that approximately 75 percent of new residents were in the suburbs. Suburban areas had greater population growth in 43 of the 51 metropolitan areas (Table 1).

Table 1
DELETED

As was noted in Still Moving to the Suburbs and Exurbs, the core counties of US metropolitan areas, which contain the greatest portion of the historical core municipalities (Note 2) also grew faster than suburban counties between 2010 and 2011. However, that is not an indication of an exodus from the suburbs to urban cores.
Migration Continues from Cores (County Data)
There was net domestic migration (people moving between counties of the United States) of minus 67,000 in the core counties, while a net 121,000 domestic migrants moved into suburban areas between 2010 and 2011. The stronger core growth was driven by stronger international migration and a larger natural growth rate (births minus deaths).
Limited City Data Confirms the Trend
Migration data is not reported below the county level. As a result, historical core municipality migration data is not available, except where cities and counties are combined. A review of such cases confirms the finding from Still Moving to the Suburbs and Exurbs(Table 2). Among the 12 combined city/counties, there was a net domestic migration loss of 49,000 in the historical core municipalities, while there was a much smaller net domestic migration loss of 1,000 in the corresponding suburban areas.

Note: Table 2 is retained since the Census Bureau produced genuine population estimates for counties. Table 2 includes only municipalities that are coterminous with counties, and thus were not subject to the "fair share" population growth allocation method inappropriately applied at the sub-county level.

Table 2
Historical Core Municipality Domestic Migration 2010-2011
(Where Cities and Counties are Combined)
	Central City/County	Suburban Counties
PRE-1950 CITY/COUNTIES	(55,441)	(21,306)
Baltmore	(3,638)	2,297
Denver	8,281	11,284
New York	(56,982)	(41,993)
Philadelphia	(5,466)	(7,667)
San Francisco	416	5,464
St. Louis	(4,959)	(5,301)
Washington	6,907	14,610

POST-1950 CITY/COUNTIES	(4,119)	20,179
Indianapolis	(3,401)	5,341
Jacksonville	(1,485)	4,396
Louisville	18	1,868
Nashville	749	8,574

NOT CLASSIFIED (Due to Hurricane Katrina)
New Orleans	10,243	(90)

TOTAL	(49,317)	(1,217)

Among the seven combined city/counties formed before 1950 (excluding New Orleans), the historical core municipalities had a net domestic migration loss of 55,000, while the suburban areas had a smaller net domestic loss of 21,000. In four cases, the historical core municipalities had domestic migration losses. In the three cases in which cities had domestic migration gains, there were also domestic migration gains in the suburbs. In this group, New York had a domestic migration loss of 57,000 despite having an overall population gain of 55,000 (the gain resulting from international migration and natural growth)
Among the four combined city/counties formed after 1950, the historical core municipalities had a net domestic migration loss of 4,000, while the suburban areas had a net domestic migration gain of 20,000. In two cases, the historical core municipalities had domestic migration losses. In the two cases in which cities had domestic migration gains, there were also domestic migration gains in the suburbs.
New Orleans is a special case, by virtue of the fact that it is "still rebounding from the effects of Hurricane Katrina," according to the Bureau of the Census and remains 20 percent below its 2005 population. New Orleans is the only case that meets the requirement of historical core net domestic migration gain and suburban net domestic migration loss to demonstrate the likelihood of movement from the suburbs to the city. The historical core municipality had a net gain of 10,000 domestic migrants, while the suburbs lost 90, which could indicate that a very small number of people moved to the city from the suburbs (Note 3).

Moreover, the county data indicates that in 25 of the 49 metropolitan areas with suburban counties, core counties lost domestic migrants between 2010 and 2011.

The Effect of "Staying Put"

As with the previously released county population estimates, the city data that is available indicates that Americans are staying put in the difficult economy. Domestic migration has fallen substantially. Over the past year, 590,000 people moved between the nation's counties. This domestic migration compares to an annual average of 1,080,000 between the 2000 and 2009 (Figure 1). This reduction in domestic migration has made international migration and natural growth more prevalent, and as a result, core growth has been stronger.

Note 1: An article in this morning's Wall Street Journal contains information different from this article. The Wall Street Journal article classifies some cities as urban core that this article defines as suburbs (such as Fort Lauderdale [Miami], Aurora [Denver] and Arden-Arcade [Sacramento]). This article defines urban cores as historical core municipalities.

Note 2: All historical core municipalities are principally in one county, except for New York (city), which is five counties.

Note 3: The Bureau of the Census domestic migration data is limited to a net number for each county, so it is not possible to determine where people are moving to or moving from.

Architecture Critic Paul Goldberger on Silicon Valley, San Jose, and Apple

Adam Mayer — Sun, 27 May 2012 13:16:38 -0400

Last week Paul Goldberger, Pulitzer Prize winning architecture critic for the New Yorker and Vanity Fair, sat down with Allison Arief of the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR) in downtown San Jose to discuss the state of 21st Century urbanism with a focus on Silicon Valley. Though admired the world over as the preeminent center for technological innovation, Silicon Valley has never been known for its great architecture. Goldberger suggested that this reputation could’ve improved had Apple not missed the mark with the design of their proposed Apple Campus 2 building in Cupertino.

While acknowledging that Apple is probably the best design company at the moment, Goldberger asserted that the company’s design abilities end with small consumer gadgets and fail spectacularly at the urban level. Calling the Norman Foster designed building for the new Apple Campus a ‘beautifully designed donut or spaceship’, he lamented the lack of context and connection to anything around it. Speaking to an audience that included members of San Jose’s city government, Goldberger suggested that Apple missed the opportunity to take the reins to help transform San Jose by relocating at least some of its operations to help its long struggling (and subsidized) downtown.

The reality is that most of the big tech companies in the Valley, not just Apple, have an extreme indifference to place-choosing to locate operations in suburban office parks. This has much to do with the history of Silicon Valley planning as it does with the nature of tech companies, which tend to employ legions of introverted computer engineering types and go to great lengths to remain insular and secretive (Apple taking this to the extreme). Perhaps it also makes perfect sense that rather than even acknowledging the true urban environment, companies whose primary business is creating the virtual world in which we increasingly experience public life take an active stance on turning their backs on the city.

Yet for those still interested in experiencing the delights of pre-Information Era, pre-21 Century urbanism, there is always San Francisco not far up the road. Goldberger made the point that the handful of tech companies who do choose to locate their operations in the city probably have a different mindset than those that stay in the Valley. Twitter being the prime example of the moment- the micro blogging site just leased 400,000 square feet of space on a long-maligned section of Market Street. Up in Seattle, Amazon recently announced its plan to build three new 37-story towers in the downtown area, which the proposal’s architect said is “not about building a corporate campus, it’s about building a neighborhood.”

So even though not every tech company is averse to the city, the Richard Florida argument that high urban density is a prerequisite for innovation and creativity is a bit of a stretch, as the economic success of suburban Silicon Valley continually disproves. Near the end of the discussion, Goldberger suggested that deliberately designing space for innovation might be a bit too self-conscious. This implies that rather than design, factors such as human resources, access to capital and a culture with openness to trial-and-error matter more than the traditional urban hardware of cities.

Adam Nathaniel Mayer is an American architectural design professional currently based in China and California. In addition to his job designing buildings he writes the China Urban Development Blog. Follow him on Twitter: @AdamNMayer.

How Cities Grow: Dispersion, not Densification

Wendell Cox — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 19:08:59 -0400

Analysts occasionally note that urban areas ("cities") are becoming larger and denser. This is only half right. It is true that most of the world's urban areas are becoming larger, with megacities like Delhi, Jakarta, Shanghai, Beijing and Manila adding more than five million people in the last decade and most other urban areas are growing, but not as fast.

Understanding Urban Areas: However almost without exception, urban areas are getting less dense. Because there is so much confusion about city "definitions," a clarification is required. The only geography for which overall urban density can be measured is the urban area, which is the area of continuous development. The urban area is not constrained by municipal or other jurisdictional boundaries and does not include rural (undeveloped) territory, even if it is in a "central city" (such as Rome, Ho Chi Minh or Marseille, with their expansive boundaries). An urban area is also different from a metropolitan area, because metropolitan areas (as labor markets) always include rural territory, which is by definition not urban.

1960-1990 Data: Historical urban population density is not readily available. Kenworthy and Laube were pioneers in this area, publishing estimates from 1960 to 1990 for a number of urban areas. That data indicates density losses in the more than urban areas for which they were able to develop comparable data. The world average decline was 20 percent, ranging from 15 percent in the United States to 29 percent in Europe and 33 percent in Australia. While Tokyo was doubling in population, its population density was dropping 17 percent between 1960 and 1990. While Zurich was adding 21 percent to its population, it was becoming 13 percent less dense.

Recent Data: The dispersion continues, which is indicated by these high-income world cases:

Today, the ville de Paris has 700,000 fewer people than at its peak, and inner London (generally the former London County Council area) has lost more than 1,500,000 people since its peak. All growth has been in lower density suburban areas in both the London and Paris urban areas.

In the United States, urban areas with more than 1,000,000 population more than doubled in population from 1950 to 2000 (2010 data not yet available), while the population density dropped by nearly one-third. Detailed analysis indicates that this trend has continued over the past decade in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, Seattle, St. Louis and other major US urban areas.

The dense core city of Seoul has been losing population and all growth has been in the suburbs, which are lower density.

The dense urban core of Milan has experience substantial population losses, while the less dense suburbs have captured all the growth.

Dispersion is not limited to high income urban areas, with declining densities in evidence across lower and middle income nations as well. For example:

Nearly all of the growth in Jakarta has been in the suburbs for the last 20 years, while the core has gained little in population. The net effect is a less dense, but much larger urban area, because the suburbs are not as dense.

Nearly all of the growth for 30 years in Manila has been in the suburbs, while the core city. Again, the urban area has become much larger, but much less dense because the suburbs are much less dense.

The dense core of Shanghai has lost population and all growth has been in the suburbs, which are lower density.

The population in the dense core of Beijing has nearly stopped growing, with nearly all population in the suburbs, which are lower density.

The core of Mumbai has lost population in two of the last three census periods, while all growth has been in the suburbs, which are lower density.

The urban core of Mexico City has been declining in population since 1960 and all of the growth has been in the suburbs, which are less dense.

The dense core city of Buenos Aires has fewer people today than in 1947, while at least 8 million people have been added to nearly 1,000 square miles of lower density suburbs.

Urban growth continues to be overwhelmingly in less dense suburban areas, rather than in the more dense urban cores, and as a result even as urban areas grow, they become less dense. This is how cities grow.

Final Census Results: Core Cities Do Worse in 2000s than 1990s

Wendell Cox — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 00:07:16 -0400

Based upon complete census counts for 2010, historical core municipalities of the nation’s major metropolitan areas (over 1,000,000 population) captured a smaller share of growth in the 2000s than in the 1990s.

The results for the 50 metropolitan areas (New Orleans excluded due to Hurricane Katrina and Tucson unexpectedly failed to reach 1,000,000 population) indicate that historical core municipalities accounted for 9 percent of metropolitan area growth between 2000 and 2010, compared to 15 percent in the 1990-2000 period. Overall, suburban areas captured 91 percent of metropolitan area population growth between 2000 and 2010, compared to 85 percent between 1990 and 2000.

Total population growth in the historical core municipalities was 1.4 million, nearly all of it in municipalities with a largely suburban form (such as Phoenix, San Antonio and Charlotte). This compares to an increase of 2.9 million during the 1990s.

Suburban areas (areas in metropolitan areas outside the historical core municipalities) grew 15.0 million, down from 16.1million.

Overall, the major metropolitan areas added 14 percent to their populations in the 2000s, down from 19 percent growth in the 1990s. The historical core municipalities grew 4 percent, compared to the 1990s rate of 7 percent. Suburban areas grew 18 percent, compared to the 1990s rate of 26 percent (all data unweighted).

Major Metropolitan Areas: Summary of the First 20

Wendell Cox — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 11:26:17 -0500

Data is now available for 20 of the nation’s 52 metropolitan areas with more than 1,000,000 population. The early results indicate a pattern of accelerating dispersion of the population to the suburbs as is indicated in the table below. Thus far, historic core municipality growth has been approximately one-half the 1990s rate. During the 2000s, the historic cores have accounted for 8.8 percent of metropolitan growth, down nearly one-half from the 1990s rate.

Summary of 2010 Census Results
Major Metropolitan Areas (Over 1,000,000 Population)

	Historical Core Municipalities	Suburbs	Metropolitan Areas
2000-2010
Population Gain	682,000	7,047,000	7,729,000
Percentage Increase	6.7%	23.7%	17.7%
Share of Growth	8.8%	91.2%	100.0%

1990-2000
Population Gain	1,229,000	6,718,000	7,948,000
Percentage Increase	10.8%	30.5%	23.7%
Share of Growth	15.5%	84.5%	100.0%
Includes 20 of 52 metropolitan areas released by 3-3-2010

A More Objective Attitude Toward the Suburbs (Almost)

Wendell Cox — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 16:34:46 -0500

It is always encouraging to see greater objectivity in the treatment of the suburbs. In fact, the urban form includes not only the urban core, but also the suburbs and economically connected rural areas and exurban areas that are beyond the urban footprint. This fact has often been missed by some urbanologists who imagine no city extends beyond the view on the foggiest day from a central city office tower.

William Upski Wimsatt, author of Bomb the Suburbs, has now published an update called Please Don't Bomb the Suburbs. The title of Wimsatt's original book, focusing on grafitti and hip-hop culture, has a ring reflective of the irrational and ideological condemnation that has been far too typical of some of the urban planning community.

Wimsatt cites five myths about suburbs in a Washington Post opinion piece. To be charitable, he gets as many as four of them right. These include his discovery that suburbs are not white middle-class enclaves, that they can be "cool," that they are not necessarily politically conservative, and that suburbanites care about the environment.

However, Wimsatt still has some distance to go. His last myth suggests that suburbs are not the result of the free market. This general proposition is tenable, for example, given large lot zoning requirements, which have caused many urban areas to consume far more land than they would have if the market had been allowed to operate. The problem with Wimsatt's free-market analysis is his acceptance of three additional myths.

Myth 1: Smart Growth Reduced Property Taxes in Portland: Wimsatt cites an analysis indicating that property taxes in Portland dropped between the mid-1980s and the mid-1990s while property taxes in Atlanta increased. He uses this "factoid" to imply that Portland's more restrictive land use planning regime ("compact development" or "smart growth") is superior to the more liberal Atlanta approach. Wimsatt does not note that during this period the voters of Oregon implemented their own Proposition 13 type property tax reduction (Measure 5), which lowered property taxes even as per capita revenue rose at a greater rate in Oregon than in Georgia. To be fair, Wimsatt cannot be blamed for this oversight, since the Sierra Club source he cited omitted this detail. We refuted a larger analysis by Arthur C. (Chris) Nelson that included this claim 10 years ago, in a paper for the Georgia Public Policy Foundation entitled American Dream Boundaries: Urban Containment and its Consequences.

Myth 2: Suburban Infrastructure is More Costly: Wimsatt claims that the cost of infrastructure and public services is higher in suburbs than in the urban core. Joshua Utt and I put this myth to rest in research covering all of the reporting municipalities in the US government database, which indicated no such higher costs (The Costs of Sprawl: What the Data Really Show). The claims of higher infrastructure and service costs in the suburbs are largely based on theoretical studies, which invariably suffer from the "length of pipe" fallacy, which fails to take into consideration the substantial differences in the costs of infrastructure construction in already developed areas versus greenfield areas. In fact, labor costs tend to be less in suburban areas. Moreover, much of the cost of suburban development is paid for by home owners, who reimburse developers who have already paid much of the sewer, water and street construction costs. These are not costs to the public or to society, they are costs that buyers voluntarily pay for what they consider to be a better lifestyle. Finally, Core city infrastructure is often obsolete and not able to adequately serve the higher demand that would occur from substantial population increases.

Myth 3: Consolidating Local Government Saves Money: Wimsatt presumes that consolidation of local governments is a way to reduce public expenditures. He cites the case of towns in New Jersey, which he would prefer to see combined. Despite the fact that ivory tower before-the-fact analysis routinely concludes that larger, consolidated local governments are spend less per capita than smaller governments, the record says exactly the opposite. Our research, using US government, New York, Pennsylvania and Illinois state databases shows a consistent relationship between larger local governments and higher expenditures per capita and higher debt per capita.

This should not really be so surprising, since larger governments tend to be further from the people and by definition more remote from their control. Where voters are less important, as is the case with larger local governments, special interests fill the vacuum, generally to the detriment of taxpayers.

With this diluted control by voters, larger governments tend to get into financial difficulty, and a vicious cycle of excessive spending and debt can follow. Often unable to say no to spending interests, they raise taxes. When the electorate loses tolerance for higher taxes, larger governments tend to borrow, which increases expenditures even more. Finally, when they reach high debt levels, it is not unusual for there to be proposals to consolidate these governments with their smaller neighbors, which have been more fiscally prudent. If consolidation is implemented, the new larger local government is granted a new lease on fiscal irresponsibility, and per capita expenditures and debt is likely to rise even higher.

As if that were not enough, labor contracts and service levels are routinely "harmonized" at the highest cost, since employees will not be forced to take pay or benefit cuts and service levels will generally not be reduced for residents. This was cited by the Toronto Business Alliance after a theoretical $300 million in promised cost savings were transformed into substantially higher spending in the newly consolidated city.

Welcome: Wimsatt graciously ends his commentary by saying "Everyone with a prejudice against the suburbs will have to get over it. Even me." Welcome, Mr. Wimsatt.

A New Word in Development

Howard Ahmanson — Sun, 05 Dec 2010 14:38:55 -0500

In the old days a "blurb" was a positive promotional recommendation statement on a book jacket. I have done a few myself. Now we are informed by the developer of Civita, an urban infill project in San Diego, that "blurb" really means a cross between suburban and urban.

Are they going to put a picture of it on a book jacket?

As for villages, I live in one myself. Fine and dandy, Very nice to have shops, bars, and restaurants you can walk to. But most people are not going to want to be limited to the retail and recreational opportunities of their "village," nor even to those one can reach by good public transport from said "village." Most particularly, most people are not going to be able to be limited to the job opportunities reachable on foot or by public transit from one's "village."

Home Sweet McMansion

Matthew Stevenson — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 19:02:35 -0500

Is the new American house, with three-car garages and laundry chutes like Olympic ski runs, an improvement over the old ones that were limited to a cozy dining room, a den, and a kitchen that held a small round table on which was kept a toaster?

The size of the American house tracks the evolution of the budget deficit and national debt. Think of McMansions as you would the Federal Reserve Bank—an imposing edifice with the contents of the garage pledged to Household Finance, if not the Chinese.

Many neighborhoods have become the United States of Gatsby.

Because I live in Europe but travel across America to visit family and friends, I will start my appraisal in the guest room.

In my wanderings, I have slept on bunk beds, fold-out sofas (one called “the rack of pain”), camping mats oozing air, and luxury, king-sized mattresses, suitable for a sultan. This summer, I woke up in the middle of the night to find two dogs nestled against my feet. My only objection was when they chose to growl at each other at 3:00 a.m.

What makes a great guest room? My tastes are idiosyncratic, but I like a room that has bookshelves, a good reading light, a clock that works, a large desk, Wi-Fi, windows that open onto cool air, the distant sounds of trains in the night, hooks instead of closet hangers, and a cat that buys into guests.

Instead of television, I prefer a radio beamed up to the BBC World Service and a side table of magazines (ones devoted to gardens, yachts, and celebrity divorces are the best) that I would never buy or read, unless I were a guest. I like coming down in the morning with up-to-date information on Jody Foster’s career. (She’s loyal to Mel Gibson, despite his crazy rants.)

Having been recently in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and New Jersey, I can report that the American guest room is alive and well. As for the rest of the new American home, the jury is out, or least meeting with the architect to design several thousand more square feet of pool rooms, wet bars, conversation pits, walk-in closets, and fireplaces that ignite with jet propulsion.

When I last lived in the United States in the 1990s, our kitchen was the size of a pantry. If I held my arms outstretched, I could almost touch both walls, and the length was less than that of a stretch limo (literally and figuratively, imagine the oven in the trunk).

Nevertheless, that kitchen was a perfect place to feed a family of four, prepare a dinner party, and hold a conversation. The cost to renovate the kitchen was about $900, but that’s because we went with a “custom” linoleum countertop that fit around the stove top. The overhead light came from a closed New York City school. A neighbor, whose services we won at a charity auction, repainted the cupboards.

Now the American kitchen is the size of Polynesia and comes with archipelagos of “islands,” a nearby “family room,” television screens that could track a lunar launch, machines that dispense coffee and boiling water on demand, hidden drawers that contain freezers, enough marble to impress the Emperor Aurelian, and appliances that give the room the air of an operating theater.

The “new” kitchen is designed to celebrate the diversity of American families—imagine Thanksgiving with the Brady Bunch, maybe over at Bill Cosby’s house—although best as I can judge from my travels, these tribal nations rarely eat together, in the kitchen or anywhere else.

Like nomads, children and adults wander through the new American kitchen as if it were the Serengeti, collecting food and drink until the grazing land is stripped, and then they head off to a cave, to surf the web, text, or watch movies.

I would say that the herd goes to the living room, but I haven’t seen anyone in an American living room since “Gunsmoke” was aired during the Eisenhower administration.

Part of the reason that living rooms are now as forlorn as a safe house is because the television is elsewhere and because there are few formal occasions to sit in the American living room, which often looks as though it could be hired out to a funeral parlor.

As a guest, I am sometimes granted a living-room audience. As a rule of thumb, however, Americans prefer to talk to their guests when standing up in the kitchen or sitting outside on the porch.

Porches are one of the few areas of the house that modern architecture has improved. Screened porches used to be small and cramped, with patches on the screen where the bugs had drilled holes in the night.

In places like Florida, there are now screened porches that are the size of the backyard; in fact, they are the backyard, and the netting and enclosed jungle trees give the terrace the air of a film location on “Survivor.” But I admire anything that allows me to sit outside, beyond the reach of mosquitoes. I also like the practical evolution of the outdoor kitchen, even though the idea seems better suited to the Roman senate.

Part of the reason that many new American houses lack a central focus (think of the courtyard in a Spanish hacienda or an English fireplace) is because television is the high alter of fleeting attention, and screens pop up in all sorts of diverse places, as though part of a billboard campaign.

I have seen televisions in the basement, in small dens, in exercise rooms, on kitchen and living room walls, and on small robotic arms that shift the blue haze around the bathroom as if it were yet another jet spray coming out of the shower or Jacuzzi.

Nevertheless, television watching is a solitary endeavor and programs could be beamed into headsets, for all they foster family or community. Its effect on house layout is put up electronic walls that the architects have spent thousands of dollars to remove, in the spirit of open design.

In my experience, happy houses are those that work in spite of their obvious flaws, like all those New York City apartments that used to have a bath tub in the kitchen or farmhouses with large wood stoves just inside the kitchen door.

In the 1970s, I loved visiting a house in Maryland that instead of a front hall had an indoor rock garden. The meals were cooked outdoors on an open flame, but no one left the dinner table before midnight, unless it was to go for beer (kept outdoors).

The house in which I grew up had claw-footed tubs and one shower. Between 1961 and 1994, when my parents lived there, home improvements consisted of cosmetics and painting (sometimes carried out by one Larry W. Jones, who was a family legend for his ability to paint windows shut).

For years, my parents resisted “improving” the kitchen, because the walls had hand-painted fruit trees and it reminded them of a European café. Nor did they touch the wallpaper in the hall, which had similar scenes of the French revolution.

When they sold the house, the new owners, no doubt in counterrevolutionary horror, tore it down and put up a McMansion, although I have a hard time imagining that they were able completely get rid of all the “fraternité” that would have been lodged in the walls.

Satellite Cities for Beijing? Yes, But....

Wendell Cox — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 12:40:28 -0400

China Daily ran an article on the continuing urbanization of Beijing. In Build upward or outward: City’s growth dilemma, Daniel Garst notes that Beijing is not as centralized as other urban areas, with its multiple business districts and comparatively low density in its inner areas. He indicates a preference for the urbanization of Shanghai, with its stronger center (both Pudong and Puxi), but suggests that it would be a mistake to replace the historic low density development with the high rises that would be necessary to change Beijing's urban form.

Actually, Beijing's form is not that unusual for Asian urban areas. Tokyo has multiple office centers rather than a single dominant center and has comparatively low residential densities, even within the Yamanote Loop. Bangkok, Manila and Jakarta are similarly multi-centric. Chinese urban areas like Shenyang, Xi'an, Wuhan, Suzhou and Changsha are closer (but smaller) replicas of Beijing than Shanghai. Garst also misunderstands the dynamics of traffic congestion in his belief that roads and metros (subways) would be less congested with a more centralized form. In fact, higher densities routinely produce more intense congestion, not only on the roads but also on the rails and buses, a point recently made by Michael Matusik on this site.

However, Garst may be onto something with respect to a suggestion that Beijing's growth should be directed to new satellite towns, in which residents work rather than commuting to Beijing. This is good theory, but there is an important caveat, which we outlined in a comment at China Daily on the article.

Satellite cities are not a reasonable answer unless they are so far from the Beijing urban area that commuting to Beijing is not possible. The idea of self-contained satellite cities, where people live and work in them has not worked anywhere. There are good examples of failure in London, Cairo, Stockholm, etc. So long as the large urban area can be reached, people will commute there.

Cairo provides a useful example. Egyptian planners have long decried the continuing commute pattern into the urban area from the new towns of 6th of October and 10th of Ramadan, which are within commuting distance. On the other hand, the new town of Anwar Sadat, more remote from the urban area, has been more successful in keeping its residents in its labor market.

Locating new satellite towns far enough to make commuting infeasible will be a real problem for Beijing. There just is not enough territory in the provincial level municipality. That means the new towns would have to be in the province Hebei, which along with the province level municipality of Tianjin surrounds Beijing.

Short of remote new towns and forcing population and economic growth away from Beijing, the key to minimizing traffic congestion will be to minimize work trip distances by achieving a dispersion of comparatively lower density employment to match the lower density suburban dispersion. Economists Peter Gordon and Harry W. Richardson have found that "suburbanization has been the dominant and successful mechanism for reducing congestion." in the United States. This applies no less to Beijing.

Photograph: Forbidden City, Beijing (by author)