New York City is the only one in the US where owning an automobile reduces one's mobility.
Here's an example; two days ago I rode the Q train, some 18 miles from my UES neighborhood to Sheepshead Bay to join friends on a boat excursion to observe whales (Humpbacks), a sportin' on the briny deep a few miles off the coast of Coney Island. The subway journey in each direction was about 40 minutes. Driving that same route by auto would take *twice* as long at a minimum and the tolls cost more than my subway fare.
During my journey I got to see more human faces than most Americans see in a month. I even got to exchange pleasantries with several of them. In the grim political climate of these times this experience is deeply settling.
Driving times in NY are highly variable. There was probably little traffic when you searched. As someone who has driven a lot in NY, the *average* daytime driving time between two locations, if you are passing through Manhattan, is something like 1.5-3x the time it takes when there is no traffic - say at 3 AM.
John may have exaggerated the speed to distance ratio, but traveling such distances by road in NYC greatly increases your risk of hitting major traffic. A car ride (especially from the UES) could easily be substantially longer.
I'm not arguing that going by car in NYC is generally a good idea (Google maps in fact has the equivalent trip by car at 23 minutes faster at the moment but both driving and finding parking in the city are immiserating traffic risk notwithstanding). Rather a point I'm making is about how travel in NYC is excruciatingly slow in general because it takes over an hour to travel thirteen miles. The irony of high density and things being closer together is that it nevertheless takes forever for get anywhere and is substantially more aggravating to cover a given distance than traveling by car in lower-density locales.
Going anywhere outside of the immediate walkshed ends up being this huge time-consuming geschäft.
>NYC is excruciatingly slow in general because it takes over an hour to travel thirteen miles
Note that your map includes 21 minutes of walking, which seems high. It happens to be 13 miles from that location to JFK, and Google maps puts that at 44 min
And part of the point is that normally one doesn't need to travel 13 miles.
For those that enjoy traveling itself, rather than considering it an ordeal (or who find it more of an ordeal to be limited to roaming a smaller space), the condition (density) wherein "one doesn't need to travel" translates as "confinement."
1. By "traveling" I obviously meant doing errands, or going to a dining or entertainment venue.
2. That makes no sense. Someone who lives in, say, Greenwich Village is not "confined" there, simply because he has the ability to go to 200 restaurants and five movie theaters by walking for 15 minutes.
I find something unsettling about anyone who must ride the subway in order to find a social life -- but to each their own. Not everybody enjoys being surrounded by crowds of strangers.
If your social life involves having a few drinks when you are socializing then having to drive to social engagements is much, much worse for you but also for everyone else.
I don't drink very often, but I'm often out late (fully sober) in parts of San Francisco where (having previously been limited to public transportation) I'm glad I can get home to Oakland by car.
You don't need to stay in your neighborhood when you can check out an interesting new mom-and-pop eatery ten miles away (ten minutes' drive) in a strip mall.
If American cities had Singapore, Tokyo, Hong Kong level public transit you could go all over the city to any neighborhood you wanted.
I don't understand why some car lovers feel the same way about public transit as the KKK feels about black people....
Don't y'all realize that if people who don't like driving can use public transit instead that's less traffic for people who do like driving? It will be easier to find parking too.
What matters is the number of places within 15 minutes travel time of you. Places with more density tend to have more things within 15 minutes travel, even if it’s far less land.
What an asinine statement to be unsettled by the *people* who don't use cars.
Almost no one in Singapore owns a car. It's a tiny island city state. There's literally not enough land area for everyone to own a car. Are you "unsettled" by the entire population of Singapore?
Be unsettled by an anti car environment if you like. But don't discriminate against the people.
Riding public transit doesn't mean you "enjoy being surrounded by strangers." Maybe you can't afford a car. Maybe you want to help the environment. Maybe your car is at the repair shop. Maybe you were a crappy driver and you got your license suspended.
So you would discriminate against Singaporeans (who have no choice where they were born) because 90% of them use public transit? Wtf?
Are you "unsettled" by Japanese 10 year olds who ride the Tokyo metro because they can't drive? I don't understand why you're so intent on demonizing people who use public transit.
But why are you so needlessly contemptuous of people who don't mind density? Or who were born in these places, it's what they're used to and don't want to leave? Or just want more transit options?
I like urban environments. I like being able to walk places and not needing to always use a car even though I do also drive. Using public transit for the first few years of my working life let me save a lot more money than if I'd taken out a $40k car loan.
I would never say I'm "unsettled" by someone who prefers to live in a rural area. So why are you saying you'd be "unsettled" by me (not that Oakland is rural)?
Creating the sort of density where owning an automobile reduces one's mobility impedes those who prefer getting around by car. That's creating obstacles -- limiting choice, not enhancing it.
It doesn't. No one is forcing you to live in the 5% of residential land that is dense - even if we expand it to 7% of residential land. Requiring every single part of residential land to be so low density that every single person needs to rely on automobile for everything takes away choice. Allowing some areas of density where people can choose whether to walk, bike, or take transit, in addition to having a slow drive as an option, increases choice.
I'm actually quite fond of the fully-pedestrianized "Old Towns" in mid-sized European cities (like Montpellier or Zaragoza) that function as theme parks (with parking underground). If you actually prefer to live in a theme park (and are willing to pay a premium for the "charm"), go for it.
But keep your "road diets" and "complete streets" out of Oakland -- creating more potential conflict points between pedestrians and drivers -- making every street an obstacle course, removing passing lanes so that every thoroughfare becomes a stop-and-go single-file crawl.
I don't want to live in a theme park, I want to live in an actual functioning city. Part of America's problem that it sees its largest cities as theme parks and luxury experiences instead of normal places where one might live, work, and socialize.
Making five or ten or twenty more American cities Manhattan-like wouldn't even put a dent on the spread of options for people who like low density living behind the wheel of a car. Those of us with different preferences are tired of being told that it's natural for something utterly normal in much of the rest of the world to be relegated to a single exclusive preserve in the United States.
Again, there should be choice here. There should be some major thoroughfares that really do prioritize fast travel. Those should have few if any driveways on them, signal priority at intersections, etc. But there should also be some other streets that prioritize local uses. Those probably should have road diets and complete street treatments and so on. The problem is the "stroads" that are trying to be both things and failing at both.
Doesn't much of urban California have the problem that it is too dense to function efficiently as a car-centric environment (too many traffic jams, leading to intense NIMBYism and sky-high housing costs) but also perhaps not dense enough (and more importantly, too lacking in concentrated job centers) for living without a car to be attractive?
John did however clearly mention that it's possible to drive to the same location. You could be his neighbour and go on the same boat excursion and get there by car. The argument is that there seems to be some people who would like to live like John but sadly can't.
If I lived under the dense conditions prevailing in New York, I doubt that I'd be driving from the UES to Sheepshead Bay; I'd likely take the subway, too.
However, there's still the question of whether there's really much of an unmet demand to live under conditions where owning an automobile reduces one's mobility.
Meanwhile, I'm happy to hop in the car here in Oakland and head out to Bolinas or Half Moon Bay. I can meet up with my friends and we can improvise side-trips (without worrying about "connections") along the way.
When it comes to getting around, I don't miss the subway. Don't believe the urbanist hype!
I'm glad to hear you're happy with where you live. Meanwhile, I still think that the arguments in the article points towards an unmet demand. That in no way devalues your choices however.
If there's a limited amount of land within a block of, say, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, that scarcity (augmented by a slew of "walkability" hype) will jack up the price. It doesn't necessarily mean that people prefer to live in crowded conditions.
It means that a good number of them prefer living in crowded conditions near the Metropolitan Museum over living in spacious conditions where you have to drive to everything. Obviously, everyone would prefer spacious conditions within walking distance of everything, but that's not possible, so you have to have some options of each type, rather than requiring everything to be one type that 2/3 of people prefer.
His point was that he was able to actually talk to people that were strangers! Not that it was his only social life! Not that there’s anything wrong with that! 😆
Not to over simplify, but I do believe that each face to face encounter with other residents of my city builds *social trust*. A trust that the anomnity of social media so often degrades.
I think America is also sleeping a bit on trams. They are a feature of European cities and they work.
The way you know you're in an actually wealthy country vs. "a country with some wealthy people" is whether the rich people in that society take public transport.
Bankers in Zurich and Geneva take the metro and ride the train. They have very nice, expensive cars, but those are for driving up to the mountains, not getting around the city.
Or compare Singapore to Manila. Manila has wealthy people with nice cars and drivers. It also has 3 hour traffic jams. The public transit in Manila is inadequate and under funded.
Singapore, by contrast, made an affirmative choice to favor public transit. The Singapore metro system is big, clean, and works well. The Singapore government makes it very expensive to own a car. (100% tax on the car price + a -50,000 SGD certificate that allows you to own a car.)
As a result, wealthy people in Singapore generally take public transport.
Indian cities showcase this a lot. As India has gotten richer in the past 3 decades, a lot more people can afford cars. Kochi in Kerala built a super nice elevated train line in 2013 and it is great. Meanwhile, other cities in India, such as Guwahati in Assam, have not built public transit. The result is becoming like Manila; endless traffic jams as more cars cram into the same streets. Also, in Guwahati's case, it has become the most polluted city in the world as of 2024.
We had these in many American cities on the early 1900/ and inexplicably tore these up. Many were initially horse-drawn, then cable-driven and electric. Noah should have mentioned this along with zoning. Los Angeles had one of the most extensive systems in the world.
The senseless destruction of the LA transit system in favor of spending your life on a freeway is a fascinating, major subplot of "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" (1988).
It wasn’t that inexplicable. The explanation is that the streetcar companies had been seen as evil corporate monopolies squeezing people, while cars were seen as democratic liberation, so when car traffic started choking the streetcars, people celebrated the bankruptcy of their hated oppressors, rather than enacting regulations ensuring that streets would maximize passenger throughput. After bankruptcy, these lines were then torn out rather than taken over by the city, except in the places where they had separate rights-of-way (New York, and a few lines in San Francisco, Boston, Philadelphia, etc).
This happened to major railroads as well; California treated the Southern Pacific in particular as a monopoly LONG past the point that they actually were.
This was the case nationwide, too, where the regulatory bodies (primarily the Interstate Commerce Commission) didn’t explicitly favor trucks, buses, and planes over railroads, but railroads owned and had to maintain their rights of way, where those other industries used taxpayer-funded infrastructure.
What’s really crazy is that railroads often had to pay property taxes on their rights of way, and the more tracks (which offer more capacity) were assessed even more. This is part of why railroads that still had high passenger volumes lost huge amounts of money on them by the end of WWII; the physical plant was worn out and by eliminating the extra tracks that were needed to let passenger trains not get stuck behind slow freight, they reduced their tax burden AND didn’t have to refurbish them.
Part of the issue is that the trams often shared the right of way with roads. Pacific Electric, in particular, couldn’t meet their timetables because the roads filled up with traffic. Even where they have their own right of way, like the Santa Ana Line (which is still mostly intact and runs less than a full block north of my house) had to deal with level crossings of roads increasingly filled with traffic - remember that the freeways didn’t exist yet, so everyone was on surface streets.
Another factor is that these lines were nearly always private companies, and while they could be profitable on an operating basis, they didn’t make enough money to cover the cost of capital. They were usually founded by either electric utilities as a baseline customer, or by property developers to provide transportation to land that was being developed. The latter was the case for Pacific Electric - Henry Huntington’s land in Southern California was of little value beyond oil development because it was inaccessible. Setting up PE made the land valuable enough to develop; profits for the railway were never the goal.
The US banned utilities from owning electric railways, just as it banned railroads from owning coal mines, during the first big antitrust reform wave. The electric railways owned by utilities were sold off, and lost their favorable electric rates.
At the same time, cities that were paving streets for the first time often made the electric railways pay for any development on their rights of way. The cost was very great to companies that already couldn’t cover the cost of capital. They didn’t all just covert to buses due to General Motors; it was not cost effective to pay for roadwork when the tracks needed replacement or realignment once buses were available. Keep in mind that converting to buses meant these companies no longer had to maintain the infrastructure, which was the big capital cost.
PE basically only made money on local freight by the end, and the land was already developed, so Southern Pacific bought PE for the freight and closed the lines that didn’t have it.
The tragedy in transit in the US is that there was resistance to forming transit agencies to take over these private companies until so many were already gone. Had these been taken over by government sooner - and the owners would have happily sold - the transit agencies would have started with much more rail. Instead most had already been replaced by buses.
I agree with most of this, but America's tram renaissance has just come and gone. From about 2000 through the 2010s there was (relatively speaking) a lot of enthusiasm for building them, but the cost:benefit of them is rough compared to either buses on the cheaper side or grade-separated transit (like the metros you mention) on the better side. Jarret Walker has a good summary: https://humantransit.org/2009/07/streetcars-an-inconvenient-truth.html
Taking trams in Zurich and Geneva was one of my best experiences ever. Just hop on and off, pay a little fee. It was super convenient to get around the city. The culture in Switzerland is amazing though, very little public disorder and people don't typically want to make a mess, and seem to be mindful of each other. American cities should've never gotten rid of trams.
This essay misses one of the real reasons NYC stands apart from other older East Coast cities like Philly and Boston: its own geography. New York is a city of islands, with the smallest one at the center the most desirable. The need to cross a bridge or tunnel just to get into the city has the effect of making car travel that much less convenient, and it also rules out the urban perimeter expressway (yes, 287 and 278 *kind of* do that, but not really), the kind of road where a number of office parks arose in cities like Atlanta and Houston during the 20th century.
Manhattan also directly abuts a wholly different state, New Jersey, that is effectively walled off from the urban core. The subway system reflects this, as there are no lines to the west, only the mini-metro PATH and suburban train and bus lines. Thus, expansion from Manhattan could really only go across the East River into Brooklyn (which was an independent city for most of its existence) or Queens, or across the Harlem River to The Bronx.
I think it's tough to speak of New York exceptionalism without considering its unique geographic circumstances.
I’d argue the development of NYC over other east coast cities could be somewhat due to the rivers and canals connecting the Atlantic to the Great Lakes before the railroads
As far as the 19th century goes, this is absolutely true. But as to why the 20th century car culture never overwhelmed the city, its geography is key. Robert Moses did try, but not until after everyone saw the problems in other areas and coalesced to stop him.
Anthony Bourdain said that there were only two real cities in the U.S. and Chicago was one of them.
I agree that NYC stands apart. But about 700,000 people in Chicago live in car-free households. There's a little more than 800,000 people in San Francisco, in total.
Yes I think that’s right although as an ex Chicagoan I would include LA and SF. All are urban areas with a lot of cultural and economic importance. This is the United States and it is justified in still being somewhat car centric so I don’t prioritize public transit as a metric that a city has to have to be a “real city “!
UK is more similar than you might expect. 27% car commuting in London, c 80% elsewhere. Greater London has mean density of c 50 people/ha (about 13,000 people/sq mile). Other cities 30-40 pp/ha. We're smaller than USA so probably need to consolidate and invest in cities/urban areas (eg, Manchester-Sheffield-Leeds) to create alternative centre of gravity.
The UK has one large city, by American standards. The next most populous city after London, which I think is Birmingham, would be considered a large town in America. Still, this is interesting. I thought UK urban areas were a lot denser, on average, than those in the US.
Birmingham, UK population is over 1 million in the city proper and over 2 million in the metropolitan area, so bigger than Austin, TX and San Jose, CA which are actual cities, not big towns.
That’s a great point. London is huge but other urban areas could work together to make an alternative area where public transit was more accessible and walkablity was better.
Born and raised New York, living in Chicago most of my life, Carlos the last 3 years. 67 years old. Live along the lake where density is clustered in Chicago. Unfortunately, Chicago's lost a million people since its peak population. After World war II. Some L lines were torn down after World war II. There's lots of empty space here, unlike in NYC. A great commuter rail system here which unfortunately is not harmonized with the CTA. Very concerned about coming funding cuts to public transportation.
Totally agree. It’s very short sighted to skimp on funding for that. And ironically I am hearing a lot about more YIMBY people trying to make the city more dense and affordable. There is a lot of regulations like minimum parking that they are now getting rid of . And public transit is a key to this reform.
Noah wrote, “Someone wants to live in NYC, obviously. Partly that’s because of the enormous consumption benefits for the young wealthy childless people who love living in cities. And partly that’s because dense cities allow industrial clustering effects — everyone knows that if you want to hire good employees in banking, publishing, corporate law, and so on, it helps to be in NYC.”
The large pandemic migration to desirable exurban and rural areas was driven by the availability of remote work and universal satellite Internet, and a desire to have more space and outdoor amenities, while being able to enjoy online shopping and entertainment and the company of like minded neighbors.
The evidence suggests most people moving out of big cities are moving to their preference rather than being crowded out. Seems like the first move would be to support and encourage that preference by encouraging remote and distributed work, and free up space for the people who actually want to live in cities.
> Only 27% of Americans prefer to live in big cities
So either NYC needs to grow to about 100 million people or the US needs more big cities.
I'm all for 100 million New Yorkers. I'd probably move back to the US if the type of energy and vibrancy of an NYC aiming for that existed. However, as unrealistic as it is, it still seems more realistic to build up SF, Philly, Chicago, etc. to be mini-NYCs.
Urbanist’s don’t take noise pollution seriously enough. There have been many advances in noise mitigation technology, such as directional sirens, and I’d love to see more people advocate for these easy solutions.
Per Pew, about 31% of the population, roughly 106 million, currently live in urban cores, or about 14 million more than theoretically prefer it.
We do not appear to be short of urban cores if you believe those numbers. However, housing for residents in places like NYC is also competing with second homes owned by people who don’t actually live there, AirBNB, etc. This is true for many places that are desirable to visit.
Whatever definition of urban core is being used here is obviously, hilariously wrong. And to Noah’s original point, all one needs to do is look at prices to see that there is enormous unmet demand here. People are not paying five or six thousand dollars a month to live in not-particularly-fashionable parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn because there is an overwhelming supply of apartments that meet their desires.
As per the article, there are no real cities in the US outside of NYC
There are about 20 million residents of NYC Metropolitan Area, so we are short real city space for about 72 million people, even being very optimistic for how much of that 20 million actually get to enjoy the real city life.
The article is Noah’s opinion on what makes a real city. Not the actual definition of such.
The Gallup poll was on whether people want to live in a large city, suburb, small town, or rural area by the normal definitions of such.
There is no unmet demand for 72 million more US residents to move to NYC. Many people, including my spouse, happily left NYC when alternatives arose. Nearly 300,000 left during the pandemic, and while the population subsequently rebounded, the influx was from international immigration, not domestic. Domestic migration is still outgoing, and the state is thus expected to lose 2 Electoral College votes in the next census.
I moved from New York to California for (among other things) the freeways. New York's subways are fun -- in the same sense as a theme-park ride.
Dense cities can be enjoyable places to hang out -- in the same fashion as a theme park. Consider the pedestrianized "Old Towns" of mid-sized European cities like Montpellier or Zaragoza -- with parking underground.
“Net domestic migration sharply declined from 2019 (-183,857) to 2022 (-299,557), while net international migration plateaued around 27,720 and rose almost to pre-2016 levels in 2022.”
Numbers I have seen from other sources indicate domestic outmigration has slowed since 2023 but is still net negative. If immigration crackdowns continue, that would be a double whammy to population levels.
New York state is losing EC votes because the domestic outmigration is sufficient to drop its relative status.
That 20 million includes about 14 million that are living in NYC’s many, many suburbs. The actual urban population is probably five or six million (city proper minus Staten Island and some out lying areas of Queens and the Bronx that are suburban in character).
Why do you think Pew is defining urban core incorrectly?
Prices show raw demand for a limited resource. They do not show number of people who actually want to live there full time.
Housing in Manhattan has multiple factors affecting price, including a very highly paid finance sector, rich people buying or renting second or third homes so they have a convenient city base when they visit, and AirBNB and similar services turning residence into pseudo hotels. Only the first group is likely to be full time residents.
Non residents are also an issue in housing demand in places like Hawaii and Florida.
This isn't correct though, the OP didn't distinguish between big dense cities and small cities. Only 9% of Americans want to live in a "big city". About half prefer rural, if they could live anywhere, and the rest are a mix of small towns, suburbs, and small cities. Living in a big city is the smallest preference and they have the highest percentage of people who prefer to live elsewhere, rather than the other way around. Americans Do Not Want to Return to Urban Living | American Enterprise Institute - AEI https://share.google/qw9MDPxMi3qldGrbR
Sf could double in density by banning the single family only districts and adopting the remedies that are book abundance recommends. Probably not gonna happen very soon!
Or just distribute evenly to each of the top 10 cities (NYC, LA, Chicago, Houston, Phoenix, Philly, San Antonio, San Diego, Dallas, Jacksonville). A better poll would ask people *which* city they would prefer to live in.
The proposal is "The first step is simply to adopt NYC-style big floor-area ratios, as well as all the city’s other permissive building policies."
If it turns out more people don't want to live with such density, those will remain unoccupied or not get built in the first place. You don't have to get into "how do people respond in surveys", "is there unmet demand", etc. We have a reliable price discovery mechanism -- the home rental and home buying markets! And no one will be shipped to live in dense cities against their will. What is the basis for objection?
I was responding to a commenter who said they don't live in a city and surveys show there is no unmet demand and that people are moving out of cities.
If that is the claim (whether or not accurate), one should still support removing regulations against density. If no one wants to live there, no one will.
Your objection is that increasing density is counter to interests of current city residents. And for that.. there is going to be slow painstaking reform through the usual democratic mechanisms, with the usual give and take.
Texas shows it can be done. California has recently passed promising reforms. A Tim Scott/Elizabeth Warren (!) bill just got voted out of committee. There is momentum.
Actually not what I said. I did not at any point claim there is no unmet demand.
Census data, which I linked, shows people are moving out of cities.
I suggested supporting remote work to let people live where they want and free up housing space for people. That space is already built. Immediate win.
Some of the density ideas IMHO are good, some seem kind of terrible. In general, I am pretty neutral on reforms that don’t affect me, but I would strongly oppose the statewide usurpation of zoning pushed by some YIMBYs.
When you get to rural areas dependent on private well and septic, I do not want uninformed urban housing activists pushing more housing per acre than the water table can support, or opining on how to zone feedlots without contaminating local water supplies or making nearby areas unlivable. Sometimes zoning rules are good. Rural counties deal with different issues.
Texas has relatively flexible housing rules (more ordinances, less zoning, easy permitting, recently reducing minimum lot size lots of places) but is not pushing extreme density.
The Scott/Warren bill has a lot of good stuff in it, and from what I have seen of it, I hope it will pass - but is also not pushing extreme density as discussed in the post we’re commenting on.
> If things are over-densified and don’t sell, that does not magically put back the trees, parks, or open space that was built over
This is even more true for suburban development, since more trees need to be removed per unit of housing vs building a taller building where a shorter one once stood.
It gets more complex in that it depends if they had trees in the first place and the specifics of where you’re building.
Places that had been losing population in previous decades, and places seeing population declines due to deaths >births even with positive in-migration, can have unused housing that doesn’t require building anything but might require work.
Consolidation of farming often leaves some farms economically unviable as businesses, but marketable as housing or divided into smaller hobby farms. Pastures are much more popular with developers than forests, because tree removal isn’t cheap.
And of course whole swaths of the country historically were grassland rather than forest in pre-European times, i.e., the plains states. So they may get loss of grassland with additional housing but not much in the way of tree removal, with the net loss being minus any grassland that’s kept in pasture.
There are different ways to get to density. Personally, the extreme density of no green space, no ability to see stars because of light pollution, no private spaces, seems to me like a really sad way to live - but if someone doesn’t care, not my business.
I do care that people who prefer different things have the chance to contribute as well.
> see the stars ... private spaces ... people who prefer different things have the chance ...
Absolutely! And those of us who value 2-5 minute walk for school/playground/groceries/bank/barbershop/doctor/post office, a short walk to subway ride into work, can have that and make it available to more who like that.
When companies literally have to threaten to fire people to get them back into the office, no, that is not a sign that people actually want to live in the city.
What connection does the office have to living in the city? I thought most people want to live in the city, and be surrounded by people in their line of work that they can socialize with, but not be forced into the office for their work itself.
"I thought most people want to live in the city, and be surrounded by people in their line of work that they can socialize with"?
Ah, yes -- the highly-touted "agglomeration effect"!
Must I remind you that the great paragon of innovation, Silicon Valley, was born in a bunch of suburban garages and office parks?
Meanwhile. those latter-day "tech bros" living in SF and taking the corporate bus to the Valley on a reverse commute are really a bunch of frat boys, constantly itching for a night on the town.
If you are ordered back to the office, you kind of have to live fairly close. If you had decided to, say, move to Ithaca with your spouse and telecommute, that’s going to hit a bump if you are ordered back to the office in Manhattan.
I have telecommuting co-workers in at least four different states, one nearly six hours away. (It does get messier for HR when you are in a different state, BTW.)
Editing because you asked a different question than I first thought - a LOT of people telecommuting moved to exurbs, small cities, rural areas, and towns. I live in an exurb that saw a great deal of growth from this.
You quoted a Gallup saying that 27% of respondents want to live in a big city, a huge shift from 2018. So that article shows the huge effect that the pandemic had, a truly enormous shift in a short time. Still, even after that, it has 27% saying that they want to live in a big/small city, even when given the option of living in a suburb of a big/small city, even when responding during a pandemic. That's a huge number, (potentially) tens of millions of people!
San Francisco is the city with the fewest office workers working in their offices. They’re trying to push it, but people would rather live in the city and work from home.
I'd take that poll with a huge grain of salt. The US is highly urban (over 80%), meaning that people have voted with their feet and demonstrated their preference for urban living, so the "preference for rural living" you mention may just be a romantic dream.
We don't yet know the long-term impact of remote work. Many companies have already instituted RTO mandates. The number of "full remote" jobs has plateaued, and while there are more "hybrid" jobs, those still require you to live within driving distance of the office.
Most people who have moved out of, say, LA have moved to slightly smaller (but still big) towns in more affordable areas. Again, focus on their actual revealed preference rather than hypothetical responses to a Gallup poll.
You are conflating being in a MSA with living in an urban area. I live in a far exurb in a MSA. I have people raising horses, cattle, sheep, goats, pot belly pigs, chickens, and guinea hens on my road, which includes properties up to hundreds of acres. Still in a MSA, definitely not urban.
Rural / urban / suburban population breakdown in the US, measured by actual density, is very roughly 25% urban / 25% rural / 50% suburban. Understand, a good chunk of that rural population is in exurbs of cities - MSAs are often extremely large and cover a lot of rural areas with an economic attachment to a not-that-close city.
“Most notably, migration from large metro areas and counties to smaller metro areas and rural counties has continued across the country. Migration out of counties with more than one million residents in 2023 remained nearly twice as high as before the pandemic, while migration into the country’s smallest metro areas and rural counties rose in 2023 from already near record levels in 2022. The Census Bureau’s 2023 population estimates show that instead of being an anomaly, 2020 increasingly appears to have been a demographic turning point for much of the country.”
These are all revealed preferences, not polls. The increase in exurbs is extremely obvious where I live because we got a significant influx of new people.
From the Cardinal New article:
“The latest Census Bureau estimates confirm some previously reported trends — and provide some surprising new insights into them. Among the highlights:
It’s rural areas, not the state’s metro areas, that are responsible for Virginia becoming a net in-migration state for the first time in more than a decade.
Almost every rural county in Virginia is now seeing more people move in than move out.
This includes the coal-producing counties of Southwest Virginia, which are collectively now gaining people rather than losing them.
In Roanoke, the exodus of residents has nearly ground to a halt.
Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads continue to hemorrhage people, although the outflows are slowing.”
Edited to add quotes. Northern Virginia is the DC suburbs.
I never mentioned MSAs--you were the one who brought them up. I mentioned the "80% urban" statistic, which is based on Census Bureau statistics, which circumscribe city limits much more tightly than MSAs.
“Following the 2010 Census, the Census Bureau defined two types of urban areas:
Urbanized areas with a population of 50,000 or more.
Urban clusters with at least 2,500 but fewer than 50,000 people.
Both areas were defined based on population density measured at the census tract and block levels. We used two population density thresholds in the delineation process: 1,000 people per square mile when delineating the initial urban core and then 500 people per square mile to finish out the delineation as we moved outward through suburban territory to the edge of the urban area.
In 2010, nearly 81% of the U.S. population was urban and approximately 19% was rural. When using the same definitions from 2010, the 2016-2020 American Community Survey (ACS) 5-year estimates show the same percentages at the national level. “
“After the 2020 Census, there are three key changes to the Census Bureau’s urban area concept and criteria:
We increased the minimum population threshold to qualify as urban from 2,500 to 5,000, and we added an alternative: instead of qualifying based on population size, areas can now qualify based on a minimum housing unit threshold.
We now use housing unit density instead of population density.
We no longer distinguish between different types of urban areas.
The first two changes reflect a general shift by the Census Bureau toward using housing units to measure urbanization and identify qualifying urban areas. Each of these criteria changes is described more below.”
“If we apply the new population threshold criteria to the same 2016-2020 ACS 5-year estimates used in Table 1 above, this change would mean approximately 1,000 areas would shift from urban to rural status. These areas contain an estimated 3.5 million people. Using the new criteria, there will be about a 1 percentage point change – a slight decrease in the urban population and a slight increase in the rural population. “
The article is pretty dense but useful in interpreting census numbers.
What percentage of the people polled have actually lived in a big city (i.e. only New York per Noah)? Polls like this are mostly worthless as people typically say they want to live where they already live. However, it is true that those attitudes do prevent building cities.
The poll was asking about all large cities, not just New York. A very substantial percentage of people have lived at least part of their life in large cities.
Also, might we be falling for a false-dichotomy between cheap, cut-and-cover subway building vs. crazy-expensive, ridiculously-slow tunneling?
Stockholm has *multiple* train lines being built right now under the very difficult to excavate terrain of a hundreds-of-years-old hard-rock archipelago urban area and is doing so on-budget and on-time. It is certainly possible to do this if you can overcome some of the other reasons for "cost disease" in large American projects, including over-reliance on subcontractors, over-engineering stations, allowing weaponize environmental reviews, not have a single authority in charge of local transit development, and inventing every project from scratch instead of scaling proven, modular solutions.
New York City could build more Subway without cut-and-cover construction without spending tens of billions and so could Chicago and Philly.
Isn’t hard rock actually much easier for tunneling than soft earth? It’s harder for cut and cover, but the tunnel boring machines don’t have to worry about slippage.
Well I don’t think you really need subways that much. In Chicago the trains are only subways near downtown . The elevated trains are just as functional. Chicago does need more of them and keep funding them!
Yup. Almost every Chicago metric has to be contextualized against the fact that due to segregation Chicago is really 2 completely different cities that happen to be within the same political boundary. Population density, crime, income, education attainment, you name it. The north side and the west/south sides are different worlds.
While I 100% agree with the post, I still hate the title, this is the type of stuff that causes Republicans to make fun of "liberal coastal elites" 🤣It should be titled "America has only one real very dense and transit oriented city" as the post actually explained.
I'm the biggest transit and density fan around for all the reasons outlined in the post, but doesn't make the rest of the country's cities (including very dense ones like Boston and SF as you mention) *not* real cities, as transit connectivity and density is not the definition of a city. LA and Houston are obviously far less dense than NYC but they're obviously still cities. I've been to smaller cities all over Japan and Korea too (as well as ANY city big or small in India, good lord) that were just as hard and in some cases harder to get around without a car than many smaller US cities and definitely harder than the dense parts of sunbelt cities such as Phoenix, Houston, Charlotte, Austin, etc. Seoul and Korea actually has more parking spaces built per unit than US cities do due to their development code guidelines (in Korea it's a cultural expectation that you have a car if you're considered to have made it) it's all just efficiently packed away underground that you usually don't even know it's there. It's like saying any city that's not in the humid subtropical climate zone is not a real city...well no, that's just describing a characteristic of the city no different than you'd describe the terrain.
Also, having been to many car museums and factory tours in Japan and Korea as a huge car fan (yes, I'm one of those urbanists who also loves cars but believes cities should be always people first and not car first, car owners should pay more and face more inconveniences for the benefit of transit) having met the Japanese and Korean car fanatics, many of them absolutely can go face to face and in many cases greatly exceed Americans with their car obsession! In fact, last trip to Japan talking to some students and younger people in Hakodate (near Sapporo), they were extremely amused to find that some Americans were very anti-car and would chose to be transit only, to them most Japanese don't own a car because they either can't afford it, don't have the space, or both. The idea of being able to afford a car with the space to keep it but choosing not to own one literally never occurred to them as they would all choose having a car given the choice! That was definitely a very interesting perspective. I do think we should lean much more into light rail and BRT as someone else mentioned given lots of cases it might not make realistic sense to build subway outside of the densest parts of the biggest cities. This is exactly what you find in Japan and Korea outside of Tokyo/Seoul, and even in Seoul especially has amazing BRT routes within Seoul that run in areas that might not necessitate or support a full subway line. BRT is also setup to easily upgrade to light rail/trams if capacity necessitates, then light rail can add cars if needed, and so on and so forth. This is what you typically find outside of Seoul/Tokyo, great bus and tram/LR setups in these smaller cities.
Okay, carry on, I get you're just making a succinct title with a genuine actual post, but I get triggered from people who do unironically say this online in liberal circles😂, generally never having left their city or the US whatsoever to see it's something you find all over the world in almost all countries outside of their mega-capitol/main city ala NYC/Tokyo/London/Paris etc.
I agree with you that it’s better to promote transit than to denigrate cars, and agree having a car available is always useful (for many situations like injury, disability, making large purchases, traveling to exurban areas in groups, bringing large sports equipment or pets, and more – cars are much better than transit).
I rode on several old tram systems in Japan: in Nagasaki, Kumamoto, Kagoshima and Hiroshima and while charming, the drawbacks are obvious. The tram cars now have automated payment, but are still narrow and crowded with poor climate control, stopping in center islands is common and avoids issues with turning and parking cars, but speed is still much slower than subways or trains because even if traffic signals have automated priority they still cause delays, and sharing streets with cars, trucks, pedestrians and bicycles limits how fast the trams can safely go. The tracks are fixed, so unlike buses routes to new developments aren’t added quickly. In Kagoshima especially the street cars are very heavy and you can feel them rumble by from inside nearby buildings.
Ah yeah I guess I should have clarified, I'm not suggesting we implement these old types of tram cars, you're right they have a lot of downsides for all the reasons you mention. Rather I'm suggesting we simply expand on the new, modern light rail systems which are excellent, have dedicated trackage and gated crossings/grade separation in many areas, they run modern cars so you down have the capacity limits and you can usually walk the entire length of the train from car to car so capacity can full spread out and be utilized. You see these systems in places like Charlotte, Denver, Austin, Houston, Copenhagen, Czech Republic, etc, and they work really well.
There's an SNL skit called "Wells for Boys", and the joke is that Fisher-Price makes a line of toy wells targeting the sensitive boys who would rather be lost in their thoughts while their normal peers are off playing football. And towards the end, a kind of jocky 7-year-old looks at the sensitive boy's well and says:
"That thing's weird. I don't get it."
and sensitive boy's mom steps in and says:
"That's because it's not for you. Because you have everything. EVERYTHING is for you! And this ONE THING is for him!"
and that's how I feel living in one of the cities on the least-driving end of the chart when people protest density increases. If you hate density and love easy driving and parking, congratulations! We set up *the entire country* to cater to your preference! All of it! Except for America's *one* real city! And for people who have a different preference, but can't afford to live in New York, or want to stay closer to family, we have this small handful of cities that sort of, partially, offer a small handful of additional options to suit those people, in a watered-down sort of way. For some reason, a small but loud cohort of folks living in those cities insist that, no, there will be no other options for people who like density. Not just most things, but *everything* must be for them.
You should read the book Abundance by Klein and Thompson. I get what you’re saying. It’s called NIMBY ism! That book has plenty of a good arguments against that kind of thinking.
Part of the problem comparing cities is that the line between “city” and “suburb” does not necessarily correspond to the actual city lines. I’m a lifelong New Yorker who has also lived for a time in DC and Boston. I think the “city” parts of those cities are like New York in density and walkability, but the official boundaries of those cities include land that is effectively suburban. The fact that 50% of people in those cities don’t drive to work is nothing to sniff at.
Also, the suburbs of all American cities, *including New York*, are uniformly car-centric. New Yorkers don’t get to lecture other cities when its closest suburbs are so full of sprawl and pedestrian unfriendly. Bear in mind most of the people in the consolidated NY metro region actually live in the suburbs. This is the New York tourists don’t see.
New York is the American city where density extends over the largest area.
That’s true, many cities have very walkable areas and good public transport. Any town that has a high percentage of commuting by public transit is doing well.
The West Coast is on the Ring of Fire tectonic plate. Building up in LA or SF, is problematic. The building has to be put on springs to allow for movement. In any event, do not discount the fact that many people have no interest in being in a tall building during a big earthquake. It would not be my preference. In LA, there is no equivalent of a Manhattan-type area. Seattle does, SF does.
Plus, Western cities have a history of suburban living, unlike cities on the East Coast. LA is a car town, and I’m not sure anything would make that change. I can walk Manhattan, Boston, and Center City Philly. LA is too big an area. Chicago is your next best bet. I’d say Indianapolis is attempting what you're talking about, Noah.
Oh, do those cities have a history of building single-family homes? Of wide open spaces, of being empty and only slowly being populated like our West Coast cities?
They held a big BB Que during the war, it tipped over and burned the city. Actually the thing that the cities you mentioned is density. Something LA didn’t have until 30 years or so ago
No large skyscrapers (over 20 stories) have fallen or had significant structural damage during earthquakes (other than one 21 story building collapsed in 1985 in Mexico City) such as Tokyo, LA, San Francisco, Kobe, Fukuoka, Santiago, Mexico City, Taipei, and others. Modern high rises built with seismic reinforcement are safer than smaller buildings. I experienced a pretty big earthquake from a 43rd floor hotel room, and the shaking was disturbing but no damage or injuries.
Wooden single family homes survive earthquakes well (if built with cross frame bracing), but are susceptible to fires spawned by the quakes. The worst for death and damage are mid rise cheaply built masonry or concrete buildings.
For high rises most earthquake injuries are probably to sidewalk pedestrians from falling glass.
The Mexico City earthquake in 1985 was M8, and as I said only one building over 20 stories ( Conjunto Pino Suárez Complex) collapsed, but over 3000 buildings collapsed most were only a few stories high. Well designed high rises are safer than small buildings.
I spent time this summer in San Sebastian, Bordeaux, and Reykjavik and loved all of them, and it got me thinking about how America doesn't have nearly enough (any?) dense little cities: mid-rise places with a few hundred thousand people, a lively compact walkable urban core, a solid bus/tram network, etc. That size of place is so much quieter and more nature-embedded, and feels so much more chill and "human scale" than NYC, but it can easily support a solid cluster of good jobs as well as high quality cultural and other amenities (a few good universities, a symphony and opera, an airport with flights to a lot of places, etc).
I don't know how we get there from here. Minneapolis/St. Paul has been trying to make itself more like that, but the excessive width of US streets and the intrusion of limited access highways into the city centers are big obstacles. But it seems to me that plenty of Americans who would never agree to live in an NYC-style city would be very happy in one of these smaller places, if only we could make that an option.
One thing that’s missed in these posts is that most people don’t actually want to live in super dense environments. My friend lives in a SFH in San Francisco and it’s great for him. He’s close to all the urban activities but gets to have a quiet and peaceful home life, a larger living space, and so on.
Most people in these dense cities end up living on the outskirts where it’s cheaper. So then you have a 1+ hour subway commute every day and it’s not like you end up going to Broadway plays every weekend or something. You’re still just kind of hanging out near where you live most of the time. At that point how are you even benefitting.
The people that tend to like Manhattan style density is young, single people that make a lot of money and can afford to live in the dense core *and* like to be social and go out a lot. But that’s simply not a huge % of the population.
So I just don’t think the demand is there for many more “New Yorks”. Probably why most countries have one ultra dense city and then the rest is much less dense. And often the smaller cities do still have a very dense core you can live in, the population density numbers obviously get skewed by outlying areas. So the demands of those consumers are satisfied.
Most people don’t - but far more still want to than can. There’s a reason it’s more expensive to get a place in the city than the suburbs, and it’s not because there’s too much city housing.
Does he live in a house similar to a Nancy Pelosi? Than good for him but we should also note that SF has a major homeless problem in addition to an affordability problem. I think that all major urban areas need to be affordable for workers without them needing to commute for hours.
New York City is the only one in the US where owning an automobile reduces one's mobility.
Here's an example; two days ago I rode the Q train, some 18 miles from my UES neighborhood to Sheepshead Bay to join friends on a boat excursion to observe whales (Humpbacks), a sportin' on the briny deep a few miles off the coast of Coney Island. The subway journey in each direction was about 40 minutes. Driving that same route by auto would take *twice* as long at a minimum and the tolls cost more than my subway fare.
During my journey I got to see more human faces than most Americans see in a month. I even got to exchange pleasantries with several of them. In the grim political climate of these times this experience is deeply settling.
yes! taking the Q down to Coney Island is one our favorite things to do.
Google Maps has that trip listed at 13 miles and taking 1 hour 7 minutes.
https://www.google.com/maps/dir/40.766569,-73.9636294/Sheepshead+Bay,+Brooklyn,+NY/@40.6775087,-74.14201,42560m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m9!4m8!1m0!1m5!1m1!1s0x89c24485e6a29363:0xce1b519601b9e80c!2m2!1d-73.9457538!2d40.5953955!3e3?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MDgxMi4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D
Driving times in NY are highly variable. There was probably little traffic when you searched. As someone who has driven a lot in NY, the *average* daytime driving time between two locations, if you are passing through Manhattan, is something like 1.5-3x the time it takes when there is no traffic - say at 3 AM.
My comment was referring to the time it takes on the Q.
John may have exaggerated the speed to distance ratio, but traveling such distances by road in NYC greatly increases your risk of hitting major traffic. A car ride (especially from the UES) could easily be substantially longer.
I'm not arguing that going by car in NYC is generally a good idea (Google maps in fact has the equivalent trip by car at 23 minutes faster at the moment but both driving and finding parking in the city are immiserating traffic risk notwithstanding). Rather a point I'm making is about how travel in NYC is excruciatingly slow in general because it takes over an hour to travel thirteen miles. The irony of high density and things being closer together is that it nevertheless takes forever for get anywhere and is substantially more aggravating to cover a given distance than traveling by car in lower-density locales.
Going anywhere outside of the immediate walkshed ends up being this huge time-consuming geschäft.
>NYC is excruciatingly slow in general because it takes over an hour to travel thirteen miles
Note that your map includes 21 minutes of walking, which seems high. It happens to be 13 miles from that location to JFK, and Google maps puts that at 44 min
And part of the point is that normally one doesn't need to travel 13 miles.
Depends on what you want to do.
For those that enjoy traveling itself, rather than considering it an ordeal (or who find it more of an ordeal to be limited to roaming a smaller space), the condition (density) wherein "one doesn't need to travel" translates as "confinement."
1. By "traveling" I obviously meant doing errands, or going to a dining or entertainment venue.
2. That makes no sense. Someone who lives in, say, Greenwich Village is not "confined" there, simply because he has the ability to go to 200 restaurants and five movie theaters by walking for 15 minutes.
time flies when you're having a good time :)
I find something unsettling about anyone who must ride the subway in order to find a social life -- but to each their own. Not everybody enjoys being surrounded by crowds of strangers.
If your social life involves having a few drinks when you are socializing then having to drive to social engagements is much, much worse for you but also for everyone else.
That’s why the old school bar cars on trains were so cool! Socialize and commute!
I don't drink very often, but I'm often out late (fully sober) in parts of San Francisco where (having previously been limited to public transportation) I'm glad I can get home to Oakland by car.
You don’t necessarily have to leave your neighborhood in NYC to have a social life.
You don't need to stay in your neighborhood when you can check out an interesting new mom-and-pop eatery ten miles away (ten minutes' drive) in a strip mall.
If American cities had Singapore, Tokyo, Hong Kong level public transit you could go all over the city to any neighborhood you wanted.
I don't understand why some car lovers feel the same way about public transit as the KKK feels about black people....
Don't y'all realize that if people who don't like driving can use public transit instead that's less traffic for people who do like driving? It will be easier to find parking too.
As one who loves to drive (and despises meddlesome apparatchiks), I'm a disciple of the KKK: Kerouac, Kesey, and Kafka! ;-)
What matters is the number of places within 15 minutes travel time of you. Places with more density tend to have more things within 15 minutes travel, even if it’s far less land.
15 minutes in NYC is easily eaten up by just the latencies involved with getting to and waiting for subways, especially on a weekend.
But your 15 minute walkshed has a lot more than a 15 minute drive does in most towns!
What an asinine statement to be unsettled by the *people* who don't use cars.
Almost no one in Singapore owns a car. It's a tiny island city state. There's literally not enough land area for everyone to own a car. Are you "unsettled" by the entire population of Singapore?
Be unsettled by an anti car environment if you like. But don't discriminate against the people.
REPEAT: To each their own. Not everybody enjoys being surrounded by crowds of strangers.
If you call that "asinine" -- yes, I find that unsettling.
Riding public transit doesn't mean you "enjoy being surrounded by strangers." Maybe you can't afford a car. Maybe you want to help the environment. Maybe your car is at the repair shop. Maybe you were a crappy driver and you got your license suspended.
So you would discriminate against Singaporeans (who have no choice where they were born) because 90% of them use public transit? Wtf?
Are you "unsettled" by Japanese 10 year olds who ride the Tokyo metro because they can't drive? I don't understand why you're so intent on demonizing people who use public transit.
I don't live in Singapore. I moved from New York to California to get away from density.
I'm not demonizing people who use public transit. If I'm demonizing anyone, it's urbanists intent on "getting people out of their cars."
Heck, when I couldn't afford a car, I, myself, was forced to rely on public transit. I prefer being in the driver's seat, thank you very much.
A(n electric) car in every garage!
That's fine. You do you.
But why are you so needlessly contemptuous of people who don't mind density? Or who were born in these places, it's what they're used to and don't want to leave? Or just want more transit options?
I like urban environments. I like being able to walk places and not needing to always use a car even though I do also drive. Using public transit for the first few years of my working life let me save a lot more money than if I'd taken out a $40k car loan.
I would never say I'm "unsettled" by someone who prefers to live in a rural area. So why are you saying you'd be "unsettled" by me (not that Oakland is rural)?
I find it more unsettling if you have no choice but to drive! Having choice seems better!
Creating the sort of density where owning an automobile reduces one's mobility impedes those who prefer getting around by car. That's creating obstacles -- limiting choice, not enhancing it.
It doesn't. No one is forcing you to live in the 5% of residential land that is dense - even if we expand it to 7% of residential land. Requiring every single part of residential land to be so low density that every single person needs to rely on automobile for everything takes away choice. Allowing some areas of density where people can choose whether to walk, bike, or take transit, in addition to having a slow drive as an option, increases choice.
I'm actually quite fond of the fully-pedestrianized "Old Towns" in mid-sized European cities (like Montpellier or Zaragoza) that function as theme parks (with parking underground). If you actually prefer to live in a theme park (and are willing to pay a premium for the "charm"), go for it.
But keep your "road diets" and "complete streets" out of Oakland -- creating more potential conflict points between pedestrians and drivers -- making every street an obstacle course, removing passing lanes so that every thoroughfare becomes a stop-and-go single-file crawl.
I don't want to live in a theme park, I want to live in an actual functioning city. Part of America's problem that it sees its largest cities as theme parks and luxury experiences instead of normal places where one might live, work, and socialize.
Making five or ten or twenty more American cities Manhattan-like wouldn't even put a dent on the spread of options for people who like low density living behind the wheel of a car. Those of us with different preferences are tired of being told that it's natural for something utterly normal in much of the rest of the world to be relegated to a single exclusive preserve in the United States.
Again, there should be choice here. There should be some major thoroughfares that really do prioritize fast travel. Those should have few if any driveways on them, signal priority at intersections, etc. But there should also be some other streets that prioritize local uses. Those probably should have road diets and complete street treatments and so on. The problem is the "stroads" that are trying to be both things and failing at both.
Doesn't much of urban California have the problem that it is too dense to function efficiently as a car-centric environment (too many traffic jams, leading to intense NIMBYism and sky-high housing costs) but also perhaps not dense enough (and more importantly, too lacking in concentrated job centers) for living without a car to be attractive?
John did however clearly mention that it's possible to drive to the same location. You could be his neighbour and go on the same boat excursion and get there by car. The argument is that there seems to be some people who would like to live like John but sadly can't.
If I lived under the dense conditions prevailing in New York, I doubt that I'd be driving from the UES to Sheepshead Bay; I'd likely take the subway, too.
However, there's still the question of whether there's really much of an unmet demand to live under conditions where owning an automobile reduces one's mobility.
Meanwhile, I'm happy to hop in the car here in Oakland and head out to Bolinas or Half Moon Bay. I can meet up with my friends and we can improvise side-trips (without worrying about "connections") along the way.
When it comes to getting around, I don't miss the subway. Don't believe the urbanist hype!
I'm glad to hear you're happy with where you live. Meanwhile, I still think that the arguments in the article points towards an unmet demand. That in no way devalues your choices however.
I think price per square foot of housing is probably a good measure of unmet demand.
If there's a limited amount of land within a block of, say, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, that scarcity (augmented by a slew of "walkability" hype) will jack up the price. It doesn't necessarily mean that people prefer to live in crowded conditions.
It means that a good number of them prefer living in crowded conditions near the Metropolitan Museum over living in spacious conditions where you have to drive to everything. Obviously, everyone would prefer spacious conditions within walking distance of everything, but that's not possible, so you have to have some options of each type, rather than requiring everything to be one type that 2/3 of people prefer.
His point was that he was able to actually talk to people that were strangers! Not that it was his only social life! Not that there’s anything wrong with that! 😆
Not to over simplify, but I do believe that each face to face encounter with other residents of my city builds *social trust*. A trust that the anomnity of social media so often degrades.
This is a great post.
I think America is also sleeping a bit on trams. They are a feature of European cities and they work.
The way you know you're in an actually wealthy country vs. "a country with some wealthy people" is whether the rich people in that society take public transport.
Bankers in Zurich and Geneva take the metro and ride the train. They have very nice, expensive cars, but those are for driving up to the mountains, not getting around the city.
Or compare Singapore to Manila. Manila has wealthy people with nice cars and drivers. It also has 3 hour traffic jams. The public transit in Manila is inadequate and under funded.
Singapore, by contrast, made an affirmative choice to favor public transit. The Singapore metro system is big, clean, and works well. The Singapore government makes it very expensive to own a car. (100% tax on the car price + a -50,000 SGD certificate that allows you to own a car.)
As a result, wealthy people in Singapore generally take public transport.
Indian cities showcase this a lot. As India has gotten richer in the past 3 decades, a lot more people can afford cars. Kochi in Kerala built a super nice elevated train line in 2013 and it is great. Meanwhile, other cities in India, such as Guwahati in Assam, have not built public transit. The result is becoming like Manila; endless traffic jams as more cars cram into the same streets. Also, in Guwahati's case, it has become the most polluted city in the world as of 2024.
We had these in many American cities on the early 1900/ and inexplicably tore these up. Many were initially horse-drawn, then cable-driven and electric. Noah should have mentioned this along with zoning. Los Angeles had one of the most extensive systems in the world.
https://www.thereallosangelestours.com/the-red-cars-las-lost-trams/
The senseless destruction of the LA transit system in favor of spending your life on a freeway is a fascinating, major subplot of "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" (1988).
I’m glad we made that reference! 😁
A classic movie for anyone interested in city planning.
It wasn’t that inexplicable. The explanation is that the streetcar companies had been seen as evil corporate monopolies squeezing people, while cars were seen as democratic liberation, so when car traffic started choking the streetcars, people celebrated the bankruptcy of their hated oppressors, rather than enacting regulations ensuring that streets would maximize passenger throughput. After bankruptcy, these lines were then torn out rather than taken over by the city, except in the places where they had separate rights-of-way (New York, and a few lines in San Francisco, Boston, Philadelphia, etc).
This happened to major railroads as well; California treated the Southern Pacific in particular as a monopoly LONG past the point that they actually were.
This was the case nationwide, too, where the regulatory bodies (primarily the Interstate Commerce Commission) didn’t explicitly favor trucks, buses, and planes over railroads, but railroads owned and had to maintain their rights of way, where those other industries used taxpayer-funded infrastructure.
What’s really crazy is that railroads often had to pay property taxes on their rights of way, and the more tracks (which offer more capacity) were assessed even more. This is part of why railroads that still had high passenger volumes lost huge amounts of money on them by the end of WWII; the physical plant was worn out and by eliminating the extra tracks that were needed to let passenger trains not get stuck behind slow freight, they reduced their tax burden AND didn’t have to refurbish them.
Part of the issue is that the trams often shared the right of way with roads. Pacific Electric, in particular, couldn’t meet their timetables because the roads filled up with traffic. Even where they have their own right of way, like the Santa Ana Line (which is still mostly intact and runs less than a full block north of my house) had to deal with level crossings of roads increasingly filled with traffic - remember that the freeways didn’t exist yet, so everyone was on surface streets.
Another factor is that these lines were nearly always private companies, and while they could be profitable on an operating basis, they didn’t make enough money to cover the cost of capital. They were usually founded by either electric utilities as a baseline customer, or by property developers to provide transportation to land that was being developed. The latter was the case for Pacific Electric - Henry Huntington’s land in Southern California was of little value beyond oil development because it was inaccessible. Setting up PE made the land valuable enough to develop; profits for the railway were never the goal.
The US banned utilities from owning electric railways, just as it banned railroads from owning coal mines, during the first big antitrust reform wave. The electric railways owned by utilities were sold off, and lost their favorable electric rates.
At the same time, cities that were paving streets for the first time often made the electric railways pay for any development on their rights of way. The cost was very great to companies that already couldn’t cover the cost of capital. They didn’t all just covert to buses due to General Motors; it was not cost effective to pay for roadwork when the tracks needed replacement or realignment once buses were available. Keep in mind that converting to buses meant these companies no longer had to maintain the infrastructure, which was the big capital cost.
PE basically only made money on local freight by the end, and the land was already developed, so Southern Pacific bought PE for the freight and closed the lines that didn’t have it.
The tragedy in transit in the US is that there was resistance to forming transit agencies to take over these private companies until so many were already gone. Had these been taken over by government sooner - and the owners would have happily sold - the transit agencies would have started with much more rail. Instead most had already been replaced by buses.
That is a tragedy. The NY subway also started out as two private networks, the IRT and the BMT, which were eventually taken over by the transit agency
I say this as an activist for public transit and new railroads:
Back in the 20th century, new buses running on the various new roads/highways were faster and more comfortable than the trollies they replaced.
Have you seen Who Framed Roger Rabbit ? I’m pretty sure Noah has! Anyway we can blame Cloverleaf’s Industries for the death of trams in LA!
I agree with most of this, but America's tram renaissance has just come and gone. From about 2000 through the 2010s there was (relatively speaking) a lot of enthusiasm for building them, but the cost:benefit of them is rough compared to either buses on the cheaper side or grade-separated transit (like the metros you mention) on the better side. Jarret Walker has a good summary: https://humantransit.org/2009/07/streetcars-an-inconvenient-truth.html
Taking trams in Zurich and Geneva was one of my best experiences ever. Just hop on and off, pay a little fee. It was super convenient to get around the city. The culture in Switzerland is amazing though, very little public disorder and people don't typically want to make a mess, and seem to be mindful of each other. American cities should've never gotten rid of trams.
Did they fully replace the streetcars in terms of coverage and frequency, or was there a reduction in service?
Initially it was similar, but ridership still dropped, and buses are just more flexible in terms of routing.
This essay misses one of the real reasons NYC stands apart from other older East Coast cities like Philly and Boston: its own geography. New York is a city of islands, with the smallest one at the center the most desirable. The need to cross a bridge or tunnel just to get into the city has the effect of making car travel that much less convenient, and it also rules out the urban perimeter expressway (yes, 287 and 278 *kind of* do that, but not really), the kind of road where a number of office parks arose in cities like Atlanta and Houston during the 20th century.
Manhattan also directly abuts a wholly different state, New Jersey, that is effectively walled off from the urban core. The subway system reflects this, as there are no lines to the west, only the mini-metro PATH and suburban train and bus lines. Thus, expansion from Manhattan could really only go across the East River into Brooklyn (which was an independent city for most of its existence) or Queens, or across the Harlem River to The Bronx.
I think it's tough to speak of New York exceptionalism without considering its unique geographic circumstances.
I’d argue the development of NYC over other east coast cities could be somewhat due to the rivers and canals connecting the Atlantic to the Great Lakes before the railroads
As far as the 19th century goes, this is absolutely true. But as to why the 20th century car culture never overwhelmed the city, its geography is key. Robert Moses did try, but not until after everyone saw the problems in other areas and coalesced to stop him.
Trains east to Connecticut and Long Island are also single lines and not very convenient.
Anthony Bourdain said that there were only two real cities in the U.S. and Chicago was one of them.
I agree that NYC stands apart. But about 700,000 people in Chicago live in car-free households. There's a little more than 800,000 people in San Francisco, in total.
Yes I think that’s right although as an ex Chicagoan I would include LA and SF. All are urban areas with a lot of cultural and economic importance. This is the United States and it is justified in still being somewhat car centric so I don’t prioritize public transit as a metric that a city has to have to be a “real city “!
UK is more similar than you might expect. 27% car commuting in London, c 80% elsewhere. Greater London has mean density of c 50 people/ha (about 13,000 people/sq mile). Other cities 30-40 pp/ha. We're smaller than USA so probably need to consolidate and invest in cities/urban areas (eg, Manchester-Sheffield-Leeds) to create alternative centre of gravity.
The UK has one large city, by American standards. The next most populous city after London, which I think is Birmingham, would be considered a large town in America. Still, this is interesting. I thought UK urban areas were a lot denser, on average, than those in the US.
Birmingham, UK population is over 1 million in the city proper and over 2 million in the metropolitan area, so bigger than Austin, TX and San Jose, CA which are actual cities, not big towns.
I stand corrected. I thought it had a few hundred thousand people.
That’s a great point. London is huge but other urban areas could work together to make an alternative area where public transit was more accessible and walkablity was better.
Lifelong New Yorker who was cheering this essay.
Me too. I also lived in DC and Boston and I think those cities do pretty well. Noah’s graph shows half those cities’ people do not commute by car.
Born and raised New York, living in Chicago most of my life, Carlos the last 3 years. 67 years old. Live along the lake where density is clustered in Chicago. Unfortunately, Chicago's lost a million people since its peak population. After World war II. Some L lines were torn down after World war II. There's lots of empty space here, unlike in NYC. A great commuter rail system here which unfortunately is not harmonized with the CTA. Very concerned about coming funding cuts to public transportation.
Chicago seems to have the worst city government, although NYC may take that crown soon too, at least for Mayor.
Totally agree. It’s very short sighted to skimp on funding for that. And ironically I am hearing a lot about more YIMBY people trying to make the city more dense and affordable. There is a lot of regulations like minimum parking that they are now getting rid of . And public transit is a key to this reform.
Noah wrote, “Someone wants to live in NYC, obviously. Partly that’s because of the enormous consumption benefits for the young wealthy childless people who love living in cities. And partly that’s because dense cities allow industrial clustering effects — everyone knows that if you want to hire good employees in banking, publishing, corporate law, and so on, it helps to be in NYC.”
Much of “industrial clustering” in the services has de-clustered physically, in favor of collaborating virtually. For example over half of publishing industry employees work remote, per https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-13/remote-work-productivity.htm#:~:text=Looking%20at%20a%20more%20detailed,of%20their%20workforce%20working%20remotely.
Only 27% of Americans prefer to live in big cities - the highest preference for living location, at 47%, is to live in a small town or rural area. See https://news.gallup.com/poll/328268/country-living-enjoys-renewed-appeal.aspx
The large pandemic migration to desirable exurban and rural areas was driven by the availability of remote work and universal satellite Internet, and a desire to have more space and outdoor amenities, while being able to enjoy online shopping and entertainment and the company of like minded neighbors.
The evidence suggests most people moving out of big cities are moving to their preference rather than being crowded out. Seems like the first move would be to support and encourage that preference by encouraging remote and distributed work, and free up space for the people who actually want to live in cities.
> Only 27% of Americans prefer to live in big cities
So either NYC needs to grow to about 100 million people or the US needs more big cities.
I'm all for 100 million New Yorkers. I'd probably move back to the US if the type of energy and vibrancy of an NYC aiming for that existed. However, as unrealistic as it is, it still seems more realistic to build up SF, Philly, Chicago, etc. to be mini-NYCs.
Can't any urbanist EVER write a single paragraph without using the word "vibrant" (to mean "crowded")?
I usually interpret the word "vibrant" as "loud."
Urbanist’s don’t take noise pollution seriously enough. There have been many advances in noise mitigation technology, such as directional sirens, and I’d love to see more people advocate for these easy solutions.
27% of 342 million is 92 million.
Per Pew, about 31% of the population, roughly 106 million, currently live in urban cores, or about 14 million more than theoretically prefer it.
We do not appear to be short of urban cores if you believe those numbers. However, housing for residents in places like NYC is also competing with second homes owned by people who don’t actually live there, AirBNB, etc. This is true for many places that are desirable to visit.
Whatever definition of urban core is being used here is obviously, hilariously wrong. And to Noah’s original point, all one needs to do is look at prices to see that there is enormous unmet demand here. People are not paying five or six thousand dollars a month to live in not-particularly-fashionable parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn because there is an overwhelming supply of apartments that meet their desires.
As per the article, there are no real cities in the US outside of NYC
There are about 20 million residents of NYC Metropolitan Area, so we are short real city space for about 72 million people, even being very optimistic for how much of that 20 million actually get to enjoy the real city life.
The article is Noah’s opinion on what makes a real city. Not the actual definition of such.
The Gallup poll was on whether people want to live in a large city, suburb, small town, or rural area by the normal definitions of such.
There is no unmet demand for 72 million more US residents to move to NYC. Many people, including my spouse, happily left NYC when alternatives arose. Nearly 300,000 left during the pandemic, and while the population subsequently rebounded, the influx was from international immigration, not domestic. Domestic migration is still outgoing, and the state is thus expected to lose 2 Electoral College votes in the next census.
I moved from New York to California for (among other things) the freeways. New York's subways are fun -- in the same sense as a theme-park ride.
Dense cities can be enjoyable places to hang out -- in the same fashion as a theme park. Consider the pedestrianized "Old Towns" of mid-sized European cities like Montpellier or Zaragoza -- with parking underground.
Losing congressional seats is about "relative" growth, not absolute growth.
New York is still growing, just not as fast as Texas.
NYC still has net domestic out-migration. All growth is from international immigration.
See https://pad.human.cornell.edu/TiDbit/TiDbit_24-01.html#:~:text=Net%20domestic%20migration%20sharply%20declined,out%20of%20NYC%20(%2D0.3).
“Net domestic migration sharply declined from 2019 (-183,857) to 2022 (-299,557), while net international migration plateaued around 27,720 and rose almost to pre-2016 levels in 2022.”
Numbers I have seen from other sources indicate domestic outmigration has slowed since 2023 but is still net negative. If immigration crackdowns continue, that would be a double whammy to population levels.
New York state is losing EC votes because the domestic outmigration is sufficient to drop its relative status.
That 20 million includes about 14 million that are living in NYC’s many, many suburbs. The actual urban population is probably five or six million (city proper minus Staten Island and some out lying areas of Queens and the Bronx that are suburban in character).
Why do you think Pew is defining urban core incorrectly?
Prices show raw demand for a limited resource. They do not show number of people who actually want to live there full time.
Housing in Manhattan has multiple factors affecting price, including a very highly paid finance sector, rich people buying or renting second or third homes so they have a convenient city base when they visit, and AirBNB and similar services turning residence into pseudo hotels. Only the first group is likely to be full time residents.
Non residents are also an issue in housing demand in places like Hawaii and Florida.
This isn't correct though, the OP didn't distinguish between big dense cities and small cities. Only 9% of Americans want to live in a "big city". About half prefer rural, if they could live anywhere, and the rest are a mix of small towns, suburbs, and small cities. Living in a big city is the smallest preference and they have the highest percentage of people who prefer to live elsewhere, rather than the other way around. Americans Do Not Want to Return to Urban Living | American Enterprise Institute - AEI https://share.google/qw9MDPxMi3qldGrbR
Sf could double in density by banning the single family only districts and adopting the remedies that are book abundance recommends. Probably not gonna happen very soon!
Or just distribute evenly to each of the top 10 cities (NYC, LA, Chicago, Houston, Phoenix, Philly, San Antonio, San Diego, Dallas, Jacksonville). A better poll would ask people *which* city they would prefer to live in.
The proposal is "The first step is simply to adopt NYC-style big floor-area ratios, as well as all the city’s other permissive building policies."
If it turns out more people don't want to live with such density, those will remain unoccupied or not get built in the first place. You don't have to get into "how do people respond in surveys", "is there unmet demand", etc. We have a reliable price discovery mechanism -- the home rental and home buying markets! And no one will be shipped to live in dense cities against their will. What is the basis for objection?
Existing residents.
It’s easier to support a new apartment building when you’re not watching people pave over the woods and tear down your grocery store.
Online leftists often call these people NIMBY or racist. Both sometimes true. It’s also entirely rational to oppose upzoning in my opinion.
I was responding to a commenter who said they don't live in a city and surveys show there is no unmet demand and that people are moving out of cities.
If that is the claim (whether or not accurate), one should still support removing regulations against density. If no one wants to live there, no one will.
Your objection is that increasing density is counter to interests of current city residents. And for that.. there is going to be slow painstaking reform through the usual democratic mechanisms, with the usual give and take.
Texas shows it can be done. California has recently passed promising reforms. A Tim Scott/Elizabeth Warren (!) bill just got voted out of committee. There is momentum.
Actually not what I said. I did not at any point claim there is no unmet demand.
Census data, which I linked, shows people are moving out of cities.
I suggested supporting remote work to let people live where they want and free up housing space for people. That space is already built. Immediate win.
Some of the density ideas IMHO are good, some seem kind of terrible. In general, I am pretty neutral on reforms that don’t affect me, but I would strongly oppose the statewide usurpation of zoning pushed by some YIMBYs.
When you get to rural areas dependent on private well and septic, I do not want uninformed urban housing activists pushing more housing per acre than the water table can support, or opining on how to zone feedlots without contaminating local water supplies or making nearby areas unlivable. Sometimes zoning rules are good. Rural counties deal with different issues.
Texas has relatively flexible housing rules (more ordinances, less zoning, easy permitting, recently reducing minimum lot size lots of places) but is not pushing extreme density.
The Scott/Warren bill has a lot of good stuff in it, and from what I have seen of it, I hope it will pass - but is also not pushing extreme density as discussed in the post we’re commenting on.
Also even newer and maybe more accurate “degrowthers”
The comment was about policy and policy changes, not the market, which, as you point out, will ultimately show preferences.
If things are over-densified and don’t sell, that does not magically put back the trees, parks, or open space that was built over.
> If things are over-densified and don’t sell, that does not magically put back the trees, parks, or open space that was built over
This is even more true for suburban development, since more trees need to be removed per unit of housing vs building a taller building where a shorter one once stood.
It gets more complex in that it depends if they had trees in the first place and the specifics of where you’re building.
Places that had been losing population in previous decades, and places seeing population declines due to deaths >births even with positive in-migration, can have unused housing that doesn’t require building anything but might require work.
Consolidation of farming often leaves some farms economically unviable as businesses, but marketable as housing or divided into smaller hobby farms. Pastures are much more popular with developers than forests, because tree removal isn’t cheap.
And of course whole swaths of the country historically were grassland rather than forest in pre-European times, i.e., the plains states. So they may get loss of grassland with additional housing but not much in the way of tree removal, with the net loss being minus any grassland that’s kept in pasture.
You can remove height restrictions in Sunset/Richmond and other parts of San Francisco. And never have to raze and build over Golden Gate Park.
There are different ways to get to density. Personally, the extreme density of no green space, no ability to see stars because of light pollution, no private spaces, seems to me like a really sad way to live - but if someone doesn’t care, not my business.
I do care that people who prefer different things have the chance to contribute as well.
> see the stars ... private spaces ... people who prefer different things have the chance ...
Absolutely! And those of us who value 2-5 minute walk for school/playground/groceries/bank/barbershop/doctor/post office, a short walk to subway ride into work, can have that and make it available to more who like that.
There already was an enormous, systemic shift towards remote and distributed work, and still demand for city-living is clearly very high.
When companies literally have to threaten to fire people to get them back into the office, no, that is not a sign that people actually want to live in the city.
What connection does the office have to living in the city? I thought most people want to live in the city, and be surrounded by people in their line of work that they can socialize with, but not be forced into the office for their work itself.
"I thought most people want to live in the city, and be surrounded by people in their line of work that they can socialize with"?
Ah, yes -- the highly-touted "agglomeration effect"!
Must I remind you that the great paragon of innovation, Silicon Valley, was born in a bunch of suburban garages and office parks?
Meanwhile. those latter-day "tech bros" living in SF and taking the corporate bus to the Valley on a reverse commute are really a bunch of frat boys, constantly itching for a night on the town.
Don't believe the hype!
If you are ordered back to the office, you kind of have to live fairly close. If you had decided to, say, move to Ithaca with your spouse and telecommute, that’s going to hit a bump if you are ordered back to the office in Manhattan.
I have telecommuting co-workers in at least four different states, one nearly six hours away. (It does get messier for HR when you are in a different state, BTW.)
Editing because you asked a different question than I first thought - a LOT of people telecommuting moved to exurbs, small cities, rural areas, and towns. I live in an exurb that saw a great deal of growth from this.
Pretty good review of related census data at https://www.coopercenter.org/research/remote-work-persists-migration-continues-rural-america from UVAs Weldon Cooper Center.
You quoted a Gallup saying that 27% of respondents want to live in a big city, a huge shift from 2018. So that article shows the huge effect that the pandemic had, a truly enormous shift in a short time. Still, even after that, it has 27% saying that they want to live in a big/small city, even when given the option of living in a suburb of a big/small city, even when responding during a pandemic. That's a huge number, (potentially) tens of millions of people!
Yes, it’s preferred by a good percentage. My point was that it isn’t for everyone, not that there aren’t lots of people who love it.
Thanks Lisa. I don't think anyone is arguing that "everyone" wants to live in a big city.
Is that trend still going? In sF the trend is reversing, as every company want their employees to be in office
San Francisco is the city with the fewest office workers working in their offices. They’re trying to push it, but people would rather live in the city and work from home.
I'd take that poll with a huge grain of salt. The US is highly urban (over 80%), meaning that people have voted with their feet and demonstrated their preference for urban living, so the "preference for rural living" you mention may just be a romantic dream.
We don't yet know the long-term impact of remote work. Many companies have already instituted RTO mandates. The number of "full remote" jobs has plateaued, and while there are more "hybrid" jobs, those still require you to live within driving distance of the office.
Most people who have moved out of, say, LA have moved to slightly smaller (but still big) towns in more affordable areas. Again, focus on their actual revealed preference rather than hypothetical responses to a Gallup poll.
You are conflating being in a MSA with living in an urban area. I live in a far exurb in a MSA. I have people raising horses, cattle, sheep, goats, pot belly pigs, chickens, and guinea hens on my road, which includes properties up to hundreds of acres. Still in a MSA, definitely not urban.
Rural / urban / suburban population breakdown in the US, measured by actual density, is very roughly 25% urban / 25% rural / 50% suburban. Understand, a good chunk of that rural population is in exurbs of cities - MSAs are often extremely large and cover a lot of rural areas with an economic attachment to a not-that-close city.
Analysis of census data showing actual migration numbers is at https://www.coopercenter.org/research/remote-work-persists-migration-continues-rural-america - the Cooper Center is a UVA project.
“Most notably, migration from large metro areas and counties to smaller metro areas and rural counties has continued across the country. Migration out of counties with more than one million residents in 2023 remained nearly twice as high as before the pandemic, while migration into the country’s smallest metro areas and rural counties rose in 2023 from already near record levels in 2022. The Census Bureau’s 2023 population estimates show that instead of being an anomaly, 2020 increasingly appears to have been a demographic turning point for much of the country.”
Even more recent census data is discussed at https://cardinalnews.org/2025/05/13/rural-communities-are-the-ones-that-are-keeping-virginia-from-becoming-an-exporter-of-people/
These are all revealed preferences, not polls. The increase in exurbs is extremely obvious where I live because we got a significant influx of new people.
From the Cardinal New article:
“The latest Census Bureau estimates confirm some previously reported trends — and provide some surprising new insights into them. Among the highlights:
It’s rural areas, not the state’s metro areas, that are responsible for Virginia becoming a net in-migration state for the first time in more than a decade.
Almost every rural county in Virginia is now seeing more people move in than move out.
This includes the coal-producing counties of Southwest Virginia, which are collectively now gaining people rather than losing them.
In Roanoke, the exodus of residents has nearly ground to a halt.
Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads continue to hemorrhage people, although the outflows are slowing.”
Edited to add quotes. Northern Virginia is the DC suburbs.
I never mentioned MSAs--you were the one who brought them up. I mentioned the "80% urban" statistic, which is based on Census Bureau statistics, which circumscribe city limits much more tightly than MSAs.
Urban, if you’re using that definition, is urban plus suburban.
From https://www.census.gov/newsroom/blogs/random-samplings/2022/12/redefining-urban-areas-following-2020-census.html#:~:text=Both%20areas%20were%20defined%20based,Census%20and%202016%2D2020%20ACS.&text=Sources:%202010%20Census;%202016%2D,2020%20ACS%205%2Dyear%20data.
“Following the 2010 Census, the Census Bureau defined two types of urban areas:
Urbanized areas with a population of 50,000 or more.
Urban clusters with at least 2,500 but fewer than 50,000 people.
Both areas were defined based on population density measured at the census tract and block levels. We used two population density thresholds in the delineation process: 1,000 people per square mile when delineating the initial urban core and then 500 people per square mile to finish out the delineation as we moved outward through suburban territory to the edge of the urban area.
In 2010, nearly 81% of the U.S. population was urban and approximately 19% was rural. When using the same definitions from 2010, the 2016-2020 American Community Survey (ACS) 5-year estimates show the same percentages at the national level. “
“After the 2020 Census, there are three key changes to the Census Bureau’s urban area concept and criteria:
We increased the minimum population threshold to qualify as urban from 2,500 to 5,000, and we added an alternative: instead of qualifying based on population size, areas can now qualify based on a minimum housing unit threshold.
We now use housing unit density instead of population density.
We no longer distinguish between different types of urban areas.
The first two changes reflect a general shift by the Census Bureau toward using housing units to measure urbanization and identify qualifying urban areas. Each of these criteria changes is described more below.”
“If we apply the new population threshold criteria to the same 2016-2020 ACS 5-year estimates used in Table 1 above, this change would mean approximately 1,000 areas would shift from urban to rural status. These areas contain an estimated 3.5 million people. Using the new criteria, there will be about a 1 percentage point change – a slight decrease in the urban population and a slight increase in the rural population. “
The article is pretty dense but useful in interpreting census numbers.
What percentage of the people polled have actually lived in a big city (i.e. only New York per Noah)? Polls like this are mostly worthless as people typically say they want to live where they already live. However, it is true that those attitudes do prevent building cities.
The poll was asking about all large cities, not just New York. A very substantial percentage of people have lived at least part of their life in large cities.
Also, might we be falling for a false-dichotomy between cheap, cut-and-cover subway building vs. crazy-expensive, ridiculously-slow tunneling?
Stockholm has *multiple* train lines being built right now under the very difficult to excavate terrain of a hundreds-of-years-old hard-rock archipelago urban area and is doing so on-budget and on-time. It is certainly possible to do this if you can overcome some of the other reasons for "cost disease" in large American projects, including over-reliance on subcontractors, over-engineering stations, allowing weaponize environmental reviews, not have a single authority in charge of local transit development, and inventing every project from scratch instead of scaling proven, modular solutions.
New York City could build more Subway without cut-and-cover construction without spending tens of billions and so could Chicago and Philly.
Isn’t hard rock actually much easier for tunneling than soft earth? It’s harder for cut and cover, but the tunnel boring machines don’t have to worry about slippage.
Well I don’t think you really need subways that much. In Chicago the trains are only subways near downtown . The elevated trains are just as functional. Chicago does need more of them and keep funding them!
Just an observation: that 17.5 homicides per 100,000 in Chicago is heavily weighted to just a few neighborhoods that are fairly far from the downtown.
Yup. Almost every Chicago metric has to be contextualized against the fact that due to segregation Chicago is really 2 completely different cities that happen to be within the same political boundary. Population density, crime, income, education attainment, you name it. The north side and the west/south sides are different worlds.
That’s very worth noting. Lincoln Park is much safer than Englewood for example.
While I 100% agree with the post, I still hate the title, this is the type of stuff that causes Republicans to make fun of "liberal coastal elites" 🤣It should be titled "America has only one real very dense and transit oriented city" as the post actually explained.
I'm the biggest transit and density fan around for all the reasons outlined in the post, but doesn't make the rest of the country's cities (including very dense ones like Boston and SF as you mention) *not* real cities, as transit connectivity and density is not the definition of a city. LA and Houston are obviously far less dense than NYC but they're obviously still cities. I've been to smaller cities all over Japan and Korea too (as well as ANY city big or small in India, good lord) that were just as hard and in some cases harder to get around without a car than many smaller US cities and definitely harder than the dense parts of sunbelt cities such as Phoenix, Houston, Charlotte, Austin, etc. Seoul and Korea actually has more parking spaces built per unit than US cities do due to their development code guidelines (in Korea it's a cultural expectation that you have a car if you're considered to have made it) it's all just efficiently packed away underground that you usually don't even know it's there. It's like saying any city that's not in the humid subtropical climate zone is not a real city...well no, that's just describing a characteristic of the city no different than you'd describe the terrain.
Also, having been to many car museums and factory tours in Japan and Korea as a huge car fan (yes, I'm one of those urbanists who also loves cars but believes cities should be always people first and not car first, car owners should pay more and face more inconveniences for the benefit of transit) having met the Japanese and Korean car fanatics, many of them absolutely can go face to face and in many cases greatly exceed Americans with their car obsession! In fact, last trip to Japan talking to some students and younger people in Hakodate (near Sapporo), they were extremely amused to find that some Americans were very anti-car and would chose to be transit only, to them most Japanese don't own a car because they either can't afford it, don't have the space, or both. The idea of being able to afford a car with the space to keep it but choosing not to own one literally never occurred to them as they would all choose having a car given the choice! That was definitely a very interesting perspective. I do think we should lean much more into light rail and BRT as someone else mentioned given lots of cases it might not make realistic sense to build subway outside of the densest parts of the biggest cities. This is exactly what you find in Japan and Korea outside of Tokyo/Seoul, and even in Seoul especially has amazing BRT routes within Seoul that run in areas that might not necessitate or support a full subway line. BRT is also setup to easily upgrade to light rail/trams if capacity necessitates, then light rail can add cars if needed, and so on and so forth. This is what you typically find outside of Seoul/Tokyo, great bus and tram/LR setups in these smaller cities.
Okay, carry on, I get you're just making a succinct title with a genuine actual post, but I get triggered from people who do unironically say this online in liberal circles😂, generally never having left their city or the US whatsoever to see it's something you find all over the world in almost all countries outside of their mega-capitol/main city ala NYC/Tokyo/London/Paris etc.
I agree with you that it’s better to promote transit than to denigrate cars, and agree having a car available is always useful (for many situations like injury, disability, making large purchases, traveling to exurban areas in groups, bringing large sports equipment or pets, and more – cars are much better than transit).
I rode on several old tram systems in Japan: in Nagasaki, Kumamoto, Kagoshima and Hiroshima and while charming, the drawbacks are obvious. The tram cars now have automated payment, but are still narrow and crowded with poor climate control, stopping in center islands is common and avoids issues with turning and parking cars, but speed is still much slower than subways or trains because even if traffic signals have automated priority they still cause delays, and sharing streets with cars, trucks, pedestrians and bicycles limits how fast the trams can safely go. The tracks are fixed, so unlike buses routes to new developments aren’t added quickly. In Kagoshima especially the street cars are very heavy and you can feel them rumble by from inside nearby buildings.
Ah yeah I guess I should have clarified, I'm not suggesting we implement these old types of tram cars, you're right they have a lot of downsides for all the reasons you mention. Rather I'm suggesting we simply expand on the new, modern light rail systems which are excellent, have dedicated trackage and gated crossings/grade separation in many areas, they run modern cars so you down have the capacity limits and you can usually walk the entire length of the train from car to car so capacity can full spread out and be utilized. You see these systems in places like Charlotte, Denver, Austin, Houston, Copenhagen, Czech Republic, etc, and they work really well.
There's an SNL skit called "Wells for Boys", and the joke is that Fisher-Price makes a line of toy wells targeting the sensitive boys who would rather be lost in their thoughts while their normal peers are off playing football. And towards the end, a kind of jocky 7-year-old looks at the sensitive boy's well and says:
"That thing's weird. I don't get it."
and sensitive boy's mom steps in and says:
"That's because it's not for you. Because you have everything. EVERYTHING is for you! And this ONE THING is for him!"
and that's how I feel living in one of the cities on the least-driving end of the chart when people protest density increases. If you hate density and love easy driving and parking, congratulations! We set up *the entire country* to cater to your preference! All of it! Except for America's *one* real city! And for people who have a different preference, but can't afford to live in New York, or want to stay closer to family, we have this small handful of cities that sort of, partially, offer a small handful of additional options to suit those people, in a watered-down sort of way. For some reason, a small but loud cohort of folks living in those cities insist that, no, there will be no other options for people who like density. Not just most things, but *everything* must be for them.
You should read the book Abundance by Klein and Thompson. I get what you’re saying. It’s called NIMBY ism! That book has plenty of a good arguments against that kind of thinking.
Part of the problem comparing cities is that the line between “city” and “suburb” does not necessarily correspond to the actual city lines. I’m a lifelong New Yorker who has also lived for a time in DC and Boston. I think the “city” parts of those cities are like New York in density and walkability, but the official boundaries of those cities include land that is effectively suburban. The fact that 50% of people in those cities don’t drive to work is nothing to sniff at.
Also, the suburbs of all American cities, *including New York*, are uniformly car-centric. New Yorkers don’t get to lecture other cities when its closest suburbs are so full of sprawl and pedestrian unfriendly. Bear in mind most of the people in the consolidated NY metro region actually live in the suburbs. This is the New York tourists don’t see.
New York is the American city where density extends over the largest area.
That’s true, many cities have very walkable areas and good public transport. Any town that has a high percentage of commuting by public transit is doing well.
The West Coast is on the Ring of Fire tectonic plate. Building up in LA or SF, is problematic. The building has to be put on springs to allow for movement. In any event, do not discount the fact that many people have no interest in being in a tall building during a big earthquake. It would not be my preference. In LA, there is no equivalent of a Manhattan-type area. Seattle does, SF does.
Plus, Western cities have a history of suburban living, unlike cities on the East Coast. LA is a car town, and I’m not sure anything would make that change. I can walk Manhattan, Boston, and Center City Philly. LA is too big an area. Chicago is your next best bet. I’d say Indianapolis is attempting what you're talking about, Noah.
Yes, this is why there are no tall buildings in cities on the other side of the ring of fire like Tokyo, Taipei, Hong Kong, etc.
Oh, do those cities have a history of building single-family homes? Of wide open spaces, of being empty and only slowly being populated like our West Coast cities?
History matters, just saying.
I mean, yes? All of those cities topped out at a couple of stories within living memory? Skyscrapers as a technology are not that old...
Most of Japan's urban core was very rapidly depopulated in the early 1940's actually.
They held a big BB Que during the war, it tipped over and burned the city. Actually the thing that the cities you mentioned is density. Something LA didn’t have until 30 years or so ago
No large skyscrapers (over 20 stories) have fallen or had significant structural damage during earthquakes (other than one 21 story building collapsed in 1985 in Mexico City) such as Tokyo, LA, San Francisco, Kobe, Fukuoka, Santiago, Mexico City, Taipei, and others. Modern high rises built with seismic reinforcement are safer than smaller buildings. I experienced a pretty big earthquake from a 43rd floor hotel room, and the shaking was disturbing but no damage or injuries.
Wooden single family homes survive earthquakes well (if built with cross frame bracing), but are susceptible to fires spawned by the quakes. The worst for death and damage are mid rise cheaply built masonry or concrete buildings.
For high rises most earthquake injuries are probably to sidewalk pedestrians from falling glass.
Have we had an 8.0 in a major city with high rises? That is the expected “big one” from the San Andreas fault.
The Mexico City earthquake in 1985 was M8, and as I said only one building over 20 stories ( Conjunto Pino Suárez Complex) collapsed, but over 3000 buildings collapsed most were only a few stories high. Well designed high rises are safer than small buildings.
I spent time this summer in San Sebastian, Bordeaux, and Reykjavik and loved all of them, and it got me thinking about how America doesn't have nearly enough (any?) dense little cities: mid-rise places with a few hundred thousand people, a lively compact walkable urban core, a solid bus/tram network, etc. That size of place is so much quieter and more nature-embedded, and feels so much more chill and "human scale" than NYC, but it can easily support a solid cluster of good jobs as well as high quality cultural and other amenities (a few good universities, a symphony and opera, an airport with flights to a lot of places, etc).
I don't know how we get there from here. Minneapolis/St. Paul has been trying to make itself more like that, but the excessive width of US streets and the intrusion of limited access highways into the city centers are big obstacles. But it seems to me that plenty of Americans who would never agree to live in an NYC-style city would be very happy in one of these smaller places, if only we could make that an option.
One thing that’s missed in these posts is that most people don’t actually want to live in super dense environments. My friend lives in a SFH in San Francisco and it’s great for him. He’s close to all the urban activities but gets to have a quiet and peaceful home life, a larger living space, and so on.
Most people in these dense cities end up living on the outskirts where it’s cheaper. So then you have a 1+ hour subway commute every day and it’s not like you end up going to Broadway plays every weekend or something. You’re still just kind of hanging out near where you live most of the time. At that point how are you even benefitting.
The people that tend to like Manhattan style density is young, single people that make a lot of money and can afford to live in the dense core *and* like to be social and go out a lot. But that’s simply not a huge % of the population.
So I just don’t think the demand is there for many more “New Yorks”. Probably why most countries have one ultra dense city and then the rest is much less dense. And often the smaller cities do still have a very dense core you can live in, the population density numbers obviously get skewed by outlying areas. So the demands of those consumers are satisfied.
Most people don’t - but far more still want to than can. There’s a reason it’s more expensive to get a place in the city than the suburbs, and it’s not because there’s too much city housing.
Does he live in a house similar to a Nancy Pelosi? Than good for him but we should also note that SF has a major homeless problem in addition to an affordability problem. I think that all major urban areas need to be affordable for workers without them needing to commute for hours.