The Dark Night

As my counterpart Peanut Butter Jelly has pointed out, I have slacked in postings as of late (hence the title Dark Night).  In light of PBJ's recent posting regarding the housing crisis, I'd like to share a recent conversation with some friends of friends over the Christmas holiday.  First though, it bears mention that I have only had one economics class in college, and do not entirely understand all the lingo and current situation.  But from what I recall, when the supply exceeds demand, as it seems to now it many regions and cities of the country, then housing construction slows.  Prices on existing homes continue to drop until prices become affordable to those who were previously not demanding a new home/dwelling unit.  Then, demand begins to rise again, and new construction occurs.   

My conversation over the holidays was with a recently (within the last six months) married couple.  They had decided to build a new home in a subdivision on the outskirts of the city that, of course, requires the automobile.  The subdivision in which this couple decided to move ironically was the choice of another recently married couple, who also had a home built.  Yet, as I look in the Sunday classifieds at home foreclosures and sales and whatnot, there are many dozens of homes/dwelling units available every week, often with a new dozen joining the group each weekend.  Why build a new home?  Even more, why build a new home in a 4-6 dwelling unit/acre density subdivision with cul-de-sacs and disjointed street networks that require automobile use?  Should the laws of supply and demand at such a terrible economic time cause the prices of existing units to drop below the cost of purchasing land and constructing a new unit?  Well, logic tells me this reflects back on the governmental policies of the particular municipality.

With the above scenario, it would seem appropriate that municipalities with a desire to encourage both economic development and conservation, as this city claims to do, would create policies (short-term) that encourage those able and looking to relocate to do so into an existing dwelling unit.   This provides several benefits.  First, as has become apparent over the past 50 years in urban and regional planning theory and practice, the continual edge growth of cities causes a perpetual exodus of activity from and decline of the interior bulk of cities.  This is counterproductive to acheiving a good city.  Measuring economic success only on new construction, which primarily occurs on the outskirts of cities, is a major flaw.  To have a healthy, thriving, economically productive city, it is logical and desirable to maintain economic activity throughout an urban area, as opposed to around the edges, and possibly in the center city.  Acheiving this requires the development of policies that encourage residents to stay within the existing urban area, but also encourage businesses to remain in and anchor activity nodes throughout an urban region.  The activity nodes, over time, can form higher density pockets that support alternative transportation, have many community services, and serve a diverse population.  

A second benefit of policies that encourage both economic development and conservation through living in existing dwelling units is that it directly impacts how the exterior of the city grows onto rural or ex-urban lands.  These lands, in many instances, better serve a community by remaining farmland, and producing crops and other foods for the local economy, or by continuing to function as an ecosystem that produces animals for hunting, removes pollutants from the air and water, slows urban runoff troubles, etc.  In some instances, the land is of cultural importance, or people may move to a city because they value the beauty of the rural landscape, only to have that landscape succumb to new poorly thought out and approved residential subdivisions.  Certainly to the owner of that property, it may be much more desirable for him though to sell it to a developer.  Theoretically, this may be the root of the problem.

Ultimately, it seems counterintuitive in tough economic times to continue to encourage new home construction.  It will spread a city thin, allowing some areas to become blighted, thereby losing economic value, but also causing money to then be spent fixing those areas.  Yes, exterior growth will always continue to occur, but the internal processes must be understood, so as to prevent the continuation of poorly designed sprawl of development outward, and to keep the interior strong and intact.