And we’re not going to cure the problems of the urban by dragging the country into the city, which is what a lot of us are trying to do all the time.
Yet, one thing humans have done for a long time is to cultivate gardens in cities and communities. Think the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Or, urban farming in Detroit and other cities. Or, rooftop gardens. Urban gardens can, and have, thrived:
Humans will continue to garden in the city and cultivate plots of land or space. This is different than the “nature band-aid” approach Kunstler criticizes where slapping a few bushes or trees into a setting is viewed as adding nature.
Smith Mount, chair of the city council in Huntington, West Virginia, was determined to see her community launch the state’s initial outdoor drinking zone — an idea made possible only after the legislature changed the state’s alcohol law earlier this year…
Huntington leaders saw the district as a way to encourage economic growth by drawing more people to the heart of the city: The hope is that by allowing people to grab a drink and linger, they’ll spend more time and money downtown. Steps away from the banks of the Ohio River, the zone’s few square blocks include local restaurants, bars and shops…
In recent years, several states have relaxed alcohol consumption laws to allow communities to create their own limited drinking zones. They aim to revitalize downtown cores hollowed out by the changing nature of retail and the post-pandemic loss of office workers…
Aside from bringing foot traffic to shops and restaurants, officials say the success of the new districts reveals the need to update antiquated liquor laws that long banned public consumption in most places to try to reduce public intoxication and drunken driving. While some critics have raised concerns about the new districts’ potential to promote drinking, crime or littering, organizers across the country say they have largely been adopted without incident.
This has happened in a number of places in the last decade or so. The importance of business shows up here as alcohol is assumed to be a means by which people will buy and consume more. Alcohol by itself can help boost business as it can be profitable to sell and can then generate more local revenue through taxes. Alcohol plus walking and visiting other nearby locations offers additional benefits.
A side effect of this might be a larger social scene. If people are willing to be downtown and linger, there are more opportunities to interact with each other. While alcohol could lead to negative interactions, it could also lead to people willing to enjoy more time around others. The United States does not have a strong legacy of third places or public squares; could alcohol help turn downtowns into regular social scenes?
Have you noticed that holiday movies are already streaming? And have you noticed the homes? They’re built for families who enjoy being together.
Rarely opulent “McMansions,” the homes featured in holiday family movies run the gamut from the family cabin in the woods to a stately family home that has been passed down through the generations.
The suggestion here is that the features of McMansions are not well-suited for these films. Here are some traits that might not work. Lots of square footage means family members are not around each other regularly. Unusual architectural features or interior designs do not look like traditional homes. A giant house on a small lot or looming over other homes does not appear friendly.
In contrast, a “good” home for a Christmas movie will be cozy, traditional in architecture and design, and present a particular appearance from the outside. The home might be tied to particular styles from the Victorian era through the mid-twentieth century when many Christian traditions and themes emerged in the Anglo-American sphere.
Given the way McMansions are treated in artistic endeavors, perhaps a McMansions could serve as the setting for a dystopian or black comedy Christmas film.
Sioux Gateway Airport, or SUX as it appears on tickets and bag tags, has been the butt of jokes in Iowa and beyond for decades.
After complaints and failed efforts to change the code, Sioux City decided to lean into its unfortunate designation and, more recently, has expanded it well beyond the airport. Area businesses are increasingly embracing the branding and SUX is popping up all over the place.
Poo SUX is a pooper scooper service for pets. RentSUX is a leasing company. Cleaning SUX is a commercial-cleaning firm. Radon SUX helps people mitigate radioactive gas from their homes. The Art SUX gallery is downtown. And the SUX Pride festival is held in June…
FLY SUX has been the centerpiece of this city’s airport marketing since 2007. Before that, the Federal Aviation Administration offered five alternatives—GWU, GYO, GYT, SGV and GAY—but airport trustees stuck with SUX, the Associated Press reported at the time…
Mike Collett, an assistant city manager who serves as the airport’s director, said SUX has become so common for people in the area that “everyone thinks of it as a positive statement.” When the city lobbies airlines to keep or expand their service, representatives often hand out T-shirts, caps and other SUX tchotchkes.
Cities and communities in the United States need to find ways to stand out. Whether they are trying to appeal to businesses, potential residents, or tourists, they try to provide a reason their particular community should be chosen when there are thousands of other options.
Here are my guesses at how Sioux City thinks it is presenting itself by leaning into this airport code (though the story makes clear that not everyone in the community does): it is a place that can have fun, they can turn difficult situations into good ones, and they are a little edgy. This puts them on the map, even if some might find the language distasteful.
Does this branding work? It is one thing if local grab hold of this and make it part of local life. It is another if this helps the city and area attract people.
Since the 1980s, the percentage of homes being constructed with four bedrooms has on the whole grown, while the percentage of two-bedroom homes have fallen. In 2022, nearly half of all homes constructed had four bedrooms, compared to two-bedroom homes at 9%.
This trend of larger homes is also shown through the number of bathrooms in new houses, with over a third having three or more baths, slightly more than the percentage of homes with two baths.
If you have more square footage, people might want more of these kinds of rooms. Who wants to share a bathroom? Can’t additional bedrooms be repurposed for other uses like an office or workout space? Haven’t all the shows on HGTV convinced viewers that more bedrooms and bathrooms increase the resale value of a home? Too bad we do not have a measure of the number of open concept living areas. Or, how many square feet are allocated to the kitchen, the space where Americans spend a lot of their time?
One more interesting chart regarding basements:
Basements have also become much less popular over the last five decades— the percentage of new homes with a full or partial basement in 1974 was 45%, compared to just 21% in 2022. Slab and other types of foundations have become the sweeping majority for new homes.
I wonder if this has more to do with more new homes constructed in places, like the South, where basements are less common as opposed to a declining interest in basements. This also suggests newer homes have less space underground and have more of their space above ground.
Are these changes due solely to the spread of McMansions? The headline may invoke McMansions but they were not the only style of larger home constructed in recent decades. As many new homes added square feet, their features shifted. McMansions may have had plenty of bedrooms and bathrooms but so did other new homes.
The last fifty or so years of life in the United States has included numerous NIMBY efforts by residents (see recent examples here, here, and here). One of the reasons for NIMBY activity is to protect property values. Did NIMBY efforts lead to higher property values?
NIMBY efforts could have contributed to this in multiple ways. They may have limited housing supply. One common argument regarding promoting more affordable housing prices is to build more housing units. This will reduce demand for existing units.
Or, NIMBY movements may have limited what communities will build. When they do construct housing, it is of similar or better quality of what is already there so as to not create downward pressure on prices.
These actions led by residents may not be the only reason housing and property prices have soared. Residents are not the only actors with influence in housing markets and communities; certainly the actions of those involved in real estate, local officials, and others contributed to increased property values.
However, taking the long view, if NIMBYs have acted in order to protect property values, does it appear – whether they directly caused it or not – that this was successful?
Meanwhile, researchers at Cornell University estimate that 94% of the nation’s job growth since 2000 happened in urban counties.
Many would not be surprised to hear that cities are job centers. Whether thinking about offices, industry, or service sectors, cities are often viewed as centers of innovation and economic activity.
But, one of the lesser known aspects of suburban growth in the United States is the amount of jobs in the suburbs. As part of a complex suburbia where suburbs are more than bedroom suburbs dependent on urban centers, suburbs are full of work and business activity. When I wrote the Oxford Bibliographies entry on Suburbanism, I made sure to include “Economic Activity in the Suburbs” as one of the sections.
It sounds like this also means that rural areas are not experiencing much job growth. The job growth is not close to the percent of Americans who live in rural areas. Without seeing historical data, it is hard to know whether this is a big change from the past or whether this has been the case for a long time. At the same time, it is hard to imagine that many rural areas can thrive when they experience little new job growth.
The Lake County Division of Transportation (LCDOT) closed Darrell, Neville and Case roads in Wauconda to through traffic for 110 days to construct a roundabout and realign the intersections…
This is the ninth roundabout in the Lake County Division of Transportation system. The $8.1 million project is the first of three roundabouts to be built as part of the Darrell Road corridor improvement.
Suburbanites are used to traffic lights and stop signs. Adding roundabouts or diamond interchanges presents a new dimension to driving. The roundabout offers the possibility of a smoother journey – if there is not too much traffic – but requires a different level of attention as there are multiple yield points.
Suburbanites can come to like roundabouts with experience. But, local drivers will likely need some time to get used to them. I am curious to see how many roundabouts will eventually populate the suburbs. They are likely not possible in many places due to existing land uses. However, if they help move traffic, are safe, and people can drive through them, we will probably see more of them in the Chicago region.
Dominating the New York skyline brought prestige and publicity, but tall towers also resolved a more prosaic problem: As land prices climbed, developers had to build upward to turn a profit, pushing their projects as high as engineering, natural light and, eventually, zoning would allow. “Skyscrapers were a self-fulfilling prophecy of the heated real estate market,” writes Neal Bascomb in his 2003 book Higher: A Historic Race to the Sky and the Making of a City. By the 1920s, with Europe in ashes after World War I, these buildings became brash totems of a new world order. Manhattan in particular had become the “harbor of the world, messenger of the new land … of the gold diggers and of world conquest,” wrote the German architect Erich Mendelsohn in his seminal 1926 book Amerika, published the year after New York overtook London as the world’s most populous city.
In a dense space like Manhattan, demand for land pushed prices up. To make more money from the same plot of land, skyscrapers offered more space. The addition of thousands of square feet of office space, even if it could be hard to fill at times, provided profit.
I would be interested to see analysis shows the profits of a skyscraper over a lifetime compared to other options builders, developers, and companies could have pursued. Instead of building up in major cities, here are other options they could have pursued: building underground; building dense and wide buildings (imagine ones that cover several city blocks at a height of ten stories or so); constructing large buildings in other parts of the city and suburbs; and pursuing multiple business districts rather than centralized locations where everyone wants to gather.
Even if there was profit at stake, there is also the matter of the prestige of skyscrapers. Skyscrapers are important symbols in a city skyline. Were skyscrapers both profitable and status-enhancing or did the increased status mean that the absolute numbers did not matter quite as much?
On her latest release, 1989 (Taylor’s Release), Taylor Swift has a new song involving suburban life:
Here are the lyrics from the second time through the chorus:
I didn’t come here to make friends We were born to be suburban legends When you hold me, it holds me together And you kiss me in a way that’s gonna screw me up forever I know that you still remember We were born to be national treasures When you told me we’d get back together And you kissed me in a way that’s gonna screw me up forever
The song describes an ill-fated suburban romance. The main character imagines walking into a high school reunion and surprising former classmates with the person they are with.
What exactly makes the song suburban? This is less clear. A powerful romance that ends in heartbreak and wistfulness could take place in a number of American settings, including suburbs. Is this connected to suburban youth? It is about suburbanites looking back on a more exciting time of life? Does a flashy young romance in a suburb make them suburban legends?
Given that more than 50% of Americans live in suburbs, perhaps there are many people who could identify with these sentiments and certainly plenty of suburbanites who like Taylor Swift.
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