Suffocating Suburbs

What a cute suburban garage, it almost looks like a house

Suburbs are isolating. It's so natural to think of the suburbs as the fulfillment of the American Dream, or as the middle-class goal, but that's just familiarity. Getting into a car, driving for 12 minutes each direction onto a collector road then an arterial and back to grab more dish soap is normalized if that's the only way it's ever done. Having a few close friends in nearby houses seems like 'the way things are' until you start investigating alternatives. It's easy for confirmation bias to kick in and say "I know lots of people in my suburb, and they're some of my closest friends; I've had a wonderful time living in my suburb," but what you don't ever have is a point of comparison to something different, because all suburbs are so similar.

In this post, I'm not going to advocate for getting rid of suburbs, or single family homes on big lots, or big wide streets with lots of on-street parking. What I will advocate for is zoning laws that make other types of suburbs possible.

Currently, nearly all suburbs (any by land area, most of all cities) are zoned as single-family homes on big lots. This is Residential zoning (R), at the lowest density (1), making this a R1 zone:

A suburb in Anywhere, USA
(I zoomed into a spot on Google Maps with labels turned off, and ended up in West Des Moines)

R1 zones contain homes with no access to any retail, except by car. While parks, churches, schools, and childcare can be built in these single-family residential zones, simply having a corner market within walking distance would save many car trips, but these zones disallow even that small convenience.

A vehicle is a necessity for living in single-family R1 zones. In order to get anywhere that isn't zoned for R1, you need to get into a car, which necessitates that the people you are meeting there are less likely to be neighbors. People love a small town feel where they know their neighbors, but balk at ideas like putting a coffee shop in a suburb. R1 zones lack any third place (work and home are the first two places, the third place is where you can go to socialize), like a coffee shop, bowling alley, salon, makerspace, bookstore, arcade, lodge, social club, or coworking space. These are all destinations accessible by car only, and when you get there, it's usually full of strangers unless you've planned to meet up with friends. Part of the reason that churches are so popular in America is because they function as one of the only third places easily accessible from deep within R1 zones.

Children growing up in this environment are incredibly isolated until they get a car. That's why getting a car can seem like it has life-or-death importance to children in suburbs. Taking away the car is tantamount to trapping them in an environment that lacks any stimulation or fulfillment.

Imagine growing up here as a child with no car.

There are better ways to make suburbs.

Think of this neighborhood in your (large) city: narrow alternating one way streets, with one lane of travel and one lane of on-street parking. Small to medium houses line the street with small front yards that are right up against the sidewalk. Trees cover the sidewalk and part of the street, and there is a corner market where you can buy staples like flour, milk, and eggs. Now that you have that in mind, answer these two questions:

• How expensive are the houses?
• How old is the neighborhood?

A typical house in Capitol Hill. Bonus point for someone walking their dog.

For me, this description reminded me of Capitol Hill, Washington Park, and Central East Denver. These are old and expensive neighborhoods. Part of the reason they are so expensive is because they are rare - they are in fact illegal to build today in any zoning district. We updated the regulations to mandate things like parking minimums, wider lanes, two way traffic, no mixed-use zoning, setback requirements, minimum lot sizes, and clear zones for the fast-moving cars to roll into when they crash. These regulations make those quaint, human-scale, livable neighborhoods a thing of the past. We can regulate them back. Not only are they more livable—they are far safer than the neighborhoods built with updated road standards.

Wide residential streets with large clear zones, straight roads, lots of on-street parking, and setback houses encourage faster driving, making these roads less safe than complex narrow streets. In fact, these wide residential streets have 4x the number of accidents as narrow streets.

Again, we can fix this problem. Single Family R1 Zoning can be a thing of the past.

A note before moving on: I'm not advocating for eliminating this type of suburb. At least not for everybody. If you can live with it yourself, and can justify subjecting children to the isolation, no one will stop that from happening. Developers can (and will) still create these neighborhoods. Eliminating the zoning simply opens more options, it doesn't shut any down.

Simple Solution #1: Eliminate R1 Zoning or change the R1 zoning district for single-family homes to allow variable lot sizes, duplexes and fourplexes, and small apartment complexes in keeping with neighborhood aesthetic, as well as small commercial corner markets and third places that save car trips to commercial zoned developments.

These changes helps make these areas more walkable and less car dependent, as well as more serviceable by public transit. Duplexes, apartments, and smaller lots increase density, giving the corner markets and third places a greater customer base and public transit more justification—more density means fewer transit stops service more people.

Simple Solution #2: Change standards to increase safety by narrowing roads, reducing on-street parking and setbacks, reduce lot sizes, and make the area more difficult to navigate by car to promote slower, safer neighborhood speeds.

These changes functionally bring back the old style of neighborhood that demands such a premium nowadays. These neighborhoods experience far fewer vehicle accidents, despite being built before the new standards surrendered space to fast moving cars, presumably to keep things safer (it's actually due to an adherence to a measurement of traffic flow called "level of service" which makes things less safe in order to keep cars moving, but that's perhaps a story for another time).

Cheers,

  - Scott

Email List: tinyletter.com/scottsieke

Extras resources:

Urban Design Extras and Pics

Paved Paradise, and put up a 5 level interchange

If you've been driving for a decade or more, you've lived through this story: highway is congested, so they want to expand it. It's under construction and nearly unusable for a few years, after which traffic is better for a year or two, then its right back to square one. This problem is called 'induced demand.' People will use the infrastructure that is built. Build more lanes and more people will drive. Build a protected bus lane that goes faster than traffic, and people will take that. People just want to the most convenient mode of travel.

I don't like driving every day, so I take the bus, even though it's in the same traffic That's induced demand. <sidenote> When you think "why is there all this traffic?," you are part of that traffic. </sidenote> The state DOT's have always built and expanded highways, and they are stuck with that hammer, seeing every traffic problem as a nail. Just take a look at this page: three active projects, ALL just expansions. Adding lanes doesn't do anything, just allow more cars to create more low-density traffic. To help rethink these highway construction efforts, check out these projects: Rethink 35, Better Streets Chicago, Lid I5.

All the pictures that didn't find homes in the other two posts:

You've got to build bypasses

Didn't seem worth it

Fixed it

Yes it is

I like that the city I work in started leaving bikes around everywhere

Extra Resources:

The Senses Taker

This Photo by Parrish Baker is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND

In Norton Juster’s novel The Phantom Tollbooth, young Milo explores the worlds of Dictionopolis – full of language puns, and Digitopolis – a land full of number puns. After meeting a Spelling Bee, and trying to climb the stairs to the Land of Infinity, Milo is being pursued by demons. Climbing up to the Castle in the Air Milo faces a problem: a minor bureaucrat. The so-called Senses Taker needs some information before Milo can gain passage:

1)    When you were born
2)    Where you were born
3)    Why you were born
4)    How old you are now
5)    How old you were then
6)    How old you’ll be in a little while
7)    Your mother’s name
8)    Your father’s name
9)    Your aunt’s name
10) Your uncle’s name
11) Your cousin’s name
12) Where you live
13) How long you’ve lived there
14) The school’s you’ve attended
15) The schools you haven’t attended
16) Your hobbies
17) Your telephone number
18) Your shoe size
19) Your collar size
20) Your hat size
21) Names and addresses of 6 people who can verify all this information

Later on, the Senses Taker asks a few more questions:

22) Height
23) Weight
24) Number of books you read each year
25) Number of books you don’t read each year
26) The amount of time you spend eating, playing, working and sleeping each day
27) Where you go on vacations
28) How many ice cream cones you eat in a week
29) How far it is from your house to the barber shop
30) And which is your favorite color

Taking the list of 30 questions the Senses Taker asks, 27 can be answered easily. Here are my answers to those:

1) When you were born: 1,991 after 2,019 years ago at the time of writing

2) Where you were born: Englewood, CO, USA, Earth, Sol, Milky Way, Virgo Cluster, Universe

4) How old you are now: You can do the working out from the information in question one

5) How old you were then: Assuming this means “at birth,” I was younger than anyone else on the planet, briefly

6) How old you’ll be in a little while: A little older

7) Your mother’s name: Barb

8) Your father’s name: Jim

9) Your aunt’s name: Marian

10) Your uncle’s name: Brad

11) Your cousin’s name: Tom

12) Where you live: Very near the answer to question 2, relatively speaking

13) How long you’ve lived there: 0.11 half-lives of sodium-22

14) The school’s you’ve attended: Pre, Elementary, Middle, High, Higher, Second-Highest

16) Your hobbies: Long walks on the beach. We’ll be out there for a while, bring several days rations, water filters, and a tent.

17) Your telephone number: 3.03 billion and change

18) Your shoe size: 3π

19) Your collar size: 15

20) Your hat size: 57, 7.167, 7, or 22.5 depending on who you ask

21) Names and addresses of 6 people who can verify all this information: Any 6 people that can verify that I’m a generally honest person, so you can just go ahead and trust what I said.

22) Height: 182,900,000 beard seconds

23) Weight: 12 stone

24) Number of books you read each year: Averaged since I started reading: 19

Averaged since leaving college: 51

Here’s the data:

26) The amount of time you spend eating, playing, working, and sleeping each day: 1 hour, 10 minutes, too variable to count, 8 hours, 7 hours and 6 minutes, respectively.

27) Where you go on vacations: Earth, primarily. Sometimes Tucson.

28) How many ice cream cones you eat in a week: 0.06

29) How far it is from your house to the barber shop:
Nearest barber: 1056 feet

My barber: 17 miles

“The Barber Shop,” a barber shop in Denver: 46 miles

30) And which is your favorite color: Blue. Wait, yelloooooooooooooooo…

That leaves us with the interesting question the Senses Taker asks Milo and company:

3) Why were you born?

15) The schools you haven’t attended

25) Number of books you don’t read each year

3) Why were you born?

Ask different fields and get different answers:

Biology: A living organism was produced by the genetic combination of two gametes

Biochemistry: Hormones trigger reward pathways in the brain, creating a pleasant sensation we call “love.” Offspring often result indirectly from this sensation

Evolutionary Biology: Selfish genes wish to preserve themselves, and so take steps to make that happen

Physics: When volume decreases, pressure increases

Sociology: People in the context of my parents in terms of social class, status, race, gender, education, religion, health background, ability, military background, age, social capital, agency, philosophy, wealth, location and temperament tend to have kids, in my case near the time of my birth

Philosophy: What do you do now that you’re born is a far more interesting question

Ecology: Homo sapiens have a proclivity to grow to carrying capacity. This is a case of this proclivity.

Hydrology: Why are you asking me this?

15) The schools you haven’t attended

Questions like this are un-answerable, but a method I like to estimate these types of questions goes like this: 1) Invent three ways of estimating this information using wild guesses. 2) Average the three estimates. This way, the things you estimate high and the things you estimate low tend to about cancel out.

Method 1: How many people per school are there on average? Extrapolate.

In 2019, 26% of the world population is under 15. Let’s assume 75% of these students are in school, and no one over 15 is. That means we have 1.5 billion students. Let's say each school holds 1,000 students on average. That means there are 1.5 million schools.

Method 2: How many schools are in there in a given country? Extrapolate.

Nepal falls just about in the middle of the pack when it comes to GDP and the World Happiness Report, which itself looks at many different metrics. Nepal has 36,632 schools, and a population of 28,600,000. This means Nepal has 781 people/school. Extrapolating to the entire world we get 9.8 million schools.

Method 3: How many schools are in a given developed area? Extrapolate.

Let’s pick 3 cities from countries with varying GDP/capita. We’ll go with Uganda at $671, Argentina at $14,732, and Singapore at $63,363. The cities will be Entebbe, Uganda; La Rioja, Argentina; and Jambi, Singapore, for no reason other than I happened to zoom into them on Google Maps.

Google returns 20 schools in Entebbe, 20 in La Rioja, and about 120 in Jambi. Using their populations to figure out the population/school ratio we get: 3,135 in Entebbe, 8,943 in La Rioja, and 4,432 in Jambi. These average to 5,503 people per school. Extrapolating to the planet we get 1.4 million schools.

Combining these three methods means there are somewhere in the realm of 4.2 million schools. Subtracting the 6 I’ve attended means I haven’t attended roughly 4,199,994 schools.

25) The number of books you don’t read each year

The number of books I haven’t read is 129,864,782 as of August 5, 2010. That ludicrously specific number comes from a Google software engineers blog post in which he estimated the number of books (129,864,880), minus the 98 books I’d read by 2010.

The question here is “what counts as a book?” Do political and pornographic pamphlets widely circulated in the 18^th century count? A thesis published online? Does a compendium of short stories in two volumes and two editions count as four books, two books, one book, or hundreds? What about the King James vs New Living English translations of the Bible, or the uncut vs abridged copies of Stephen King’s The Stand? Leonid Taycher who came up with the 130 million figure has thought more about this than I have, so let’s use his number and definition of “books.” There’s no real clearing house for publishing statistics, so finding out how many books are published per year seems to involve going through the numerous references on this Wikipedia page and checking their definitions of “books,” seeing if the information is even there, and if it is, checking its reliability. Rather than doing that, let’s just take the value it gives us and not think too much about it.

So Wikipedia gives us 2,210,000 books per year, and we have a starting place of 129.864,782 on August 5^th. We can make ourselves an equation! Given 2,210,000 books/year and 364.25 days/year, we know we have 6067.26 books/day being published. We’ll say I read 51 books/year, or 0.14 books/day. That gives us 6067.11 books per day I’m not reading. So using good old y=mx+b, we can start plugging in.

y = unknown, the number of books I haven’t read

m = 6067.11, number of new books per day I haven’t read

x = number of days since August 5, 2010

b = 129,864,782, number of books unread as of August 5^th, 2010

For today, October 3^rd, 2019 the equation looks like this: y = 6067.11 * 3346 + 129,864,782, meaning I have not read 150,165,332.06 books, which seems right, as I’m nearly done with the Phantom Tollbooth. I’ll knock out that 0.06 of a book before tomorrow, when 6,000 more books are published.

Cheers,

  - Scott

Email list:

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