Hey Jeff, great post. It's pretty wild how our built environment affects the economy in different ways. The contrast between my current home in Albuquerque and the place I lived in Spain tells the story.
I live in a small historic neighborhood near Downtown Albuquerque now. There are remnants of old corner convenience stores, pubs, pharmacies, and grocery stores lining the now-dormant Mainstreet and surrounding area. We also used to have a rail yard where many of the locals worked. The start of the neighborhood decline correlates with the decline of the Rail Yards and the construction of the interstate system that destroyed historic neighborhoods in Albuquerque. Today, I have to leave my neighborhood to purchase anything outside of New Mexican food. The Mainstreet is dead, few locals have jobs in the neighborhood, and the streets surrounding my house serve mainly as a throughway for commuters.
Spanish cities have a diverse array of small businesses on every street corner in every neighborhood. There are so many random small businesses that sometimes it's hard to believe how they've stayed open so long. I stand to believe the success of small businesses in Spain, and other densely populated regions, is walkability and a competitive framework that the Spanish built environment creates. Every neighborhood in Barcelona has several pharmacies, cafes, print shops, grocery stores, pubs, and more creating a competitive, small-scale environment for small businesses to thrive. Plus, you get jobs for locals.
When we build our cities around getting between big box stores and the suburbs, we shift the advantage to big corporations and wealth consolidation. If the US were to ever get serious about saving Mainstreet America, one first big step would be allowing more people to live near Mainstreet.
1000% - I've long thought the fastest way to turn an American pro-urbanism is to send them to France, Spain, or Portugal for a week.
But yeah, talking about historic downtowns, I think this is something the ST crowd does a good job highlighting. As much as we're gonna have to allow density basically everywhere, the old pre-war street grids in certain places are just gonna make that easier for some communities.
Really liked this, especially the materialism. I think we live in a very idealist society and it causes problems.
I was fascinated by your points about racial discrimination in access to housing finance. Redlining is talked about but it always seems to me to be described as a sociopolitical sleight with less focus on the sort of mechanical material outcomes. I think that your stats about access to 30yr FR mortgages is just a massively underdiscussed point in conversation about present day equality.
What do you make of Trump explicitly saying that lowering housing prices will hurt homeowners? I feel like its a watershed but maybe its just nothing?
To my ears, he was just saying the quiet part out loud. That message is as often explicit as it is implied at community meetings.
It’s a bit frustrating, too, because it kinda gets the economics wrong. A lot of what would happen if we allowed denser development is people would live in smaller lots in housing like duplexes, triplexes, row houses, etc. So the cost savings is coming from a reduction in the amount of land we force people to consume, not a reduction of existing home values in real terms.
Obviously this is a complicated topic and we could imagine scenarios like a spot upzoning on one lot that reduces the value of adjacent SFHs, but by and large the the thing at issue is people’s free street parking and fear of “others” being or doing whatever that might mean to them.
Hey Jeff, great post. It's pretty wild how our built environment affects the economy in different ways. The contrast between my current home in Albuquerque and the place I lived in Spain tells the story.
I live in a small historic neighborhood near Downtown Albuquerque now. There are remnants of old corner convenience stores, pubs, pharmacies, and grocery stores lining the now-dormant Mainstreet and surrounding area. We also used to have a rail yard where many of the locals worked. The start of the neighborhood decline correlates with the decline of the Rail Yards and the construction of the interstate system that destroyed historic neighborhoods in Albuquerque. Today, I have to leave my neighborhood to purchase anything outside of New Mexican food. The Mainstreet is dead, few locals have jobs in the neighborhood, and the streets surrounding my house serve mainly as a throughway for commuters.
Spanish cities have a diverse array of small businesses on every street corner in every neighborhood. There are so many random small businesses that sometimes it's hard to believe how they've stayed open so long. I stand to believe the success of small businesses in Spain, and other densely populated regions, is walkability and a competitive framework that the Spanish built environment creates. Every neighborhood in Barcelona has several pharmacies, cafes, print shops, grocery stores, pubs, and more creating a competitive, small-scale environment for small businesses to thrive. Plus, you get jobs for locals.
When we build our cities around getting between big box stores and the suburbs, we shift the advantage to big corporations and wealth consolidation. If the US were to ever get serious about saving Mainstreet America, one first big step would be allowing more people to live near Mainstreet.
1000% - I've long thought the fastest way to turn an American pro-urbanism is to send them to France, Spain, or Portugal for a week.
But yeah, talking about historic downtowns, I think this is something the ST crowd does a good job highlighting. As much as we're gonna have to allow density basically everywhere, the old pre-war street grids in certain places are just gonna make that easier for some communities.
Really liked this, especially the materialism. I think we live in a very idealist society and it causes problems.
I was fascinated by your points about racial discrimination in access to housing finance. Redlining is talked about but it always seems to me to be described as a sociopolitical sleight with less focus on the sort of mechanical material outcomes. I think that your stats about access to 30yr FR mortgages is just a massively underdiscussed point in conversation about present day equality.
What do you make of Trump explicitly saying that lowering housing prices will hurt homeowners? I feel like its a watershed but maybe its just nothing?
To my ears, he was just saying the quiet part out loud. That message is as often explicit as it is implied at community meetings.
It’s a bit frustrating, too, because it kinda gets the economics wrong. A lot of what would happen if we allowed denser development is people would live in smaller lots in housing like duplexes, triplexes, row houses, etc. So the cost savings is coming from a reduction in the amount of land we force people to consume, not a reduction of existing home values in real terms.
Obviously this is a complicated topic and we could imagine scenarios like a spot upzoning on one lot that reduces the value of adjacent SFHs, but by and large the the thing at issue is people’s free street parking and fear of “others” being or doing whatever that might mean to them.