Since I was a kid I’ve found them particularly depressing. I couldn’t and still don’t understand why people would want to live in a McMansion in a sea of identical McMansions. It’s a good source of existential dread for me
He places the blame on “laws” when it is really capitalism. People want a single family home so capitalism provides it the absolutely cheapest way possible: cookie cutter suburbs.
It’s no different than Campbell’s soup. It’s not meant to be the best soup. It’s meant to be the soup you can afford to buy.
Lots of people have studied this over the years, many people also attribute this to the GI Bill, the post WWII economic boom, Racism / White Flight, the National Highway Act, and social norms that developed after man Americans grew accustomed to the concept of suburban life.
It’s a complex things that was fueled by war, money, affordable land, cars, big roads, etc.
While I agree with all your statements about the fuel for suburban sprawl, without demand all that money would have gone into high density urban construction. Even white flight would have been a flight to new high density housing if that’s what people preferred.
It’s the problem that all the best urban planning can’t address.
If people didn’t want cheap cookie cutter suburbs they would spend more for something else. But they don’t.
Its the same as when everyone complains about how airlines used to have good food, lots of leg room, attractive staff. The someone goes out and goes that and business fails because no one wants to pay extra and instead they want the cheapest thing possible.
The laws certainly don’t help and the finances are broken, which isn’t a failure if capitalism its a failure of politics.
If people didn’t want cheap cookie cutter suburbs they would spend more for something else.
Yeah, it’s the best they can afford. Like Campbell’s soup. If they had more money the homes would be larger and more unique. But that wouldn’t change suburban sprawl at all.
Suburban sprawl exists because people do not want to live that close to others. It doesn’t matter how nice you make apartments when a large percentage of the population are introverts and will pay as much as they can afford to have space.
The problem isn’t politics or laws. The problem is people.
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