car based hyper mobility increases housing costs

[kc9eog]

I had a revelation this morning straight out of an economics textbook. I had been reading a thread on this forum when I went to breakfast, and I couldn't stop thinking of the issues it raised. Suddenly it became obvious that the reason for very high housing costs, especially near urban areas, is the hyper mobility our society enjoys. If the housing five miles from your work could be bought by anyone within 50 miles of that house then it will be more valuable in the marketplace. The people saying "I can't afford a house near work, I will buy one 40-60 miles away and commute" are the problem! If mobility were reduced to where the 60 mile drive became a five mile drive then housing would become more reasonable as the market of available buyers shrank 90% This would spill over into integrated communities of people who shopped the same stores and went to the same places; the kids could walk to their own activities or do whatever kids used to do before the notion of the soccer mom.

[Bockman]

Thomas Sowell would disagree with you. For an excellent essay on the subject see http://www.opinionjournal.com/cc/?id=110006737

[cooker]

I had a revelation this morning straight out of an economics textbook. I had been reading a thread on this forum when I went to breakfast, and I couldn't stop thinking of the issues it raised. Suddenly it became obvious that the reason for very high housing costs, especially near urban areas, is the hyper mobility our society enjoys. If the housing five miles from your work could be bought by anyone within 50 miles of that house then it will be more valuable in the marketplace. The people saying "I can't afford a house near work, I will buy one 40-60 miles away and commute" are the problem! If mobility were reduced to where the 60 mile drive became a five mile drive then housing would become more reasonable as the market of available buyers shrank 90% This would spill over into integrated communities of people who shopped the same stores and went to the same places; the kids could walk to their own activities or do whatever kids used to do before the notion of the soccer mom.

I think you're only partly right. All those people want houses, and if they are less mobile and can't compete for ones 50 miles away, they will compete more aggressively in their own neighbourhood, so in either case, the same no. of people are competing, and prices will still be high.

The mobility afforded by cars tends to somewhat even out prices, and if there was less mobility, inner city prices, and town main street prices would be huge, while suburban and rural prices would be low.

The real cost of mobility/suburbia is in three other areas.

Firstly service costs....there are massive costs to providing freeways and sewers and snowplowing etc. to all that real estate. Inner city houses and apartments are much closer together and the infrastructure is much more efficient.

Secondly, lost opportunity costs. All the land that is buried and defiled under freeways, parking lots, etc. could be productive farmland or could be shops and homes contributing to the local economy through commerce and property taxes.

Thirdly other externalized costs, like the harm done to the economy and nature by time wasted in gridlock, or by air pollution and oil tanker spills.

R

[Tom Stormcrowe]

I think you're only partly right. All those people want houses, and if they are less mobile and can't compete for ones 50 miles away, they will compete more aggressively in their own neighbourhood, so in either case, the same no. of people are competing, and prices will still be high.

The mobility afforded by cars tends to somewhat even out prices, and if there was less mobility, inner city prices, and town main street prices would be huge, while suburban and rural prices would be low.

The real cost of mobility/suburbia is in three other areas.

Firstly service costs....there are massive costs to providing freeways and sewers and snowplowing etc. to all that real estate. Inner city houses and apartments are much closer together and the infrastructure is much more efficient.

Secondly, lost opportunity costs. All the land that is buried and defiled under freeways, parking lots, etc. could be productive farmland or could be shops and homes contributing to the local economy through commerce and property taxes.

Thirdly other externalized costs, like the harm done to the economy and nature by time wasted in gridlock, or by air pollution and oil tanker spills.

R

Excellent points!

[UCSDbikeAnarchy]

mobility in general increases housing costs, or at least makes extra-urban land more valuble. the very first suburbs were called "streetcar suburbs" beacuse only with the mobility that the street car provided around the turn of the century could people really live very far away from the centers of employment. if there wasn't an easy way to get to your job, then rural alnd would remain rural land. But that would just make housing in the cities more expensive.

as long as people want big houses with back yards and three car garages, suburbs will continue to grow outward. City planners like to talk about smart growth, and transit oriented development, but as long as gas prices are somewhat afordable, people will keep snaping up cookie cutter houses with 30 mile commutes.

High Speed Rail does really funny things to land values. In France cities that used to be 2 hours outside of paris found themselves sudenly 45 minutes away, and houses were quickly picked up by commuters. In California, I think that high speed rail could do alot to alievated the poverty of centeral valley, or simply price people out in the market. In Fresno (which has one of the highest rates of poverty in the nation), you can rent a 3bedroom, 2bath house for $750/month. In San francisco, $750 doesn't even get you a studio. What will happen when Fresno is an hour away from San Jose or SF, and Bakersfield is 45 minutes from LA. It will be interesting to see.

anyways, by point is that mobility is a good thing, and I support it when it is provided by non-polluting means, but we all know the probelsm that cars present.

[cooker]

I think what will change as gas gets too costly is people's expectations for a home. Since land is apparently cheap in suburbia, people expect to have large lots, yet urban people can be very house-proud with a brick pad in front of their row house just big enought to park a Smart Car, and courtyard in back that can barely hold a large gas grill. That old-urban density makes public transit, local pedestrian shopping, walking to work or school, and many other low-environmental impact lifestyle activities not only possible, but preferable.

[BroMax]

What we call our American "standard of living which is the envy of the world" is made up in large part on being servants to our automobiles, buying, maintaining, housing, roadbuilding and maintaining, fuelling, burning fuel in traffic with single digit average speeds, two and three hour daily commuting times. It's all consumption and it's factored into an equation that is presumably indicative of our "quality of life."

A passenger is ten times safer in a train than an automobile. A mile of track costs one-sixth as much to construct and has less environmental impact and one track can carry the equivalent of six lanes of traffic. But automobile travel encourages more consumption and consumption is good for the economy.

Is the threat in having a lower standard of living a fear that our quality of life might decline? Or are we terrified of having more time to goof off?

[Dahon.Steve]

Suddenly it became obvious that the reason for very high housing costs, especially near urban areas, is the hyper mobility our society enjoys. If the housing five miles from your work could be bought by anyone within 50 miles of that house then it will be more valuable in the marketplace. The people saying "I can't afford a house near work, I will buy one 40-60 miles away and commute" are the problem!

I think you have a point.

There's no question that homes within walking distance from a train stop have higher values those located in the middle of nowhere. Unless that train stop is a noise, dirty elevated train, it will raise values dramatically. It happend recently where I live. The Lightrail increased property values by 30% within two years of opening the station.

I happen to think high housing costs are occuring regradless of hyper mobility. When over 50% of the available space in a city has to be dedicated to roads and parking, that alone is driving up property values for the rest.

Back in the 1940's a single family home in Long Island cost $5,000.00 dollars! Today that same home is now worth half a million or more! No one is building affordable homes anymore whether in the city or burbs. The effort today is to build luxury homes and codos. The prices are not coming down and there is overcapacity in most cities. High housing costs is the problem but it's not due to any housing shortgage beacuse there are plenty of homes and codo's for sale. They're just not affordable. Hyper-mobility is part of the problem but the poor and middle class are being shut out of the American dream.

[gwd]

I think you're only partly right. All those people want houses, and if they are less mobile and can't compete for ones 50 miles away, they will compete more aggressively in their own neighbourhood, so in either case, the same no. of people are competing, and prices will still be high.

The mobility afforded by cars tends to somewhat even out prices, and if there was less mobility, inner city prices, and town main street prices would be huge, while suburban and rural prices would be low.

The real cost of mobility/suburbia is in three other areas.

Firstly service costs....there are massive costs to providing freeways and sewers and snowplowing etc. to all that real estate. Inner city houses and apartments are much closer together and the infrastructure is much more efficient.

Secondly, lost opportunity costs. All the land that is buried and defiled under freeways, parking lots, etc. could be productive farmland or could be shops and homes contributing to the local economy through commerce and property taxes.

Thirdly other externalized costs, like the harm done to the economy and nature by time wasted in gridlock, or by air pollution and oil tanker spills.

R

Reading this post made me think that all the concrete and other resources used to build the massive highways that support the suburbs could have been used to build close in housing so that the roads wouldn't be needed. It almost seems like the urban planners think cars are more important than people.

[Platy]

...It almost seems like the urban planners think cars are more important than people.
Aye.

[cooker]

Excellent points!

Thanks...of course, all borrowed or stolen from various wiser people!

[AverageCommuter]

It almost seems like the urban planners think cars are more important than people.

Yup, any city that had most of its development after cars were commonplace were built for cars first and people second.

[cooker]

It's not just urban planners. The notion that a large suburban lot is the ideal site for your home is pushed all the time by businesses that profit by that...lawn care and lawn tractor companies, car companies, homebuilders and other real estate developers, oil companies, etc. etc. TV shows and commercials reinforce that notion continuously, and people buy into it, and buy those houses, and urban planners and politicians give them what they need to go with it...land re-zoning, freeways, megamalls -whatever.

But that lifestyle has it's price, and in fact, living in a more modest property in the city, closer to your job, has huge, underappreciated benefits. You have way more time to spend with your family, or on recreation (or working, if that's your choice) if you're not commuting an hour by car each way. Sure, you'd spend a lot more on housing if you wanted a city home comparable to a suburban home, so instead you accept a much smaller lot, and you'll notice that your neighbours earn the same as you and have made the same realty compromise, so you won't feel that you somehow need to be embarrassed by your choice. Remember - you spend a lot less on gas and vehicles...a family with teenagers might make do with 1 (or 2) cars instead of one for every driver, and each vehicle might be driven 8000 miles per year instead of 16,000. You can get regular exercise just walking to the bus stop or all the way to work and your kids can walk to school instead of spending 40 minutes each way on the bus.

Somehow people need to get this message since they're steadily bombarded with the suburban myth.

[Roody]

I think there's a limit to the idea of manufactured need (that is, consumers make choices based largely on what manufacturers tell them to want). People live in the suburbs because they want to live in the suburbs, not because marketers told them to live in the suburbs. We're not going to be able to convince them to move to the city through marketing either. We may just need to come up with some more workable solutions, since we can't force the population to relocate like they do in North Korea or wherever.

A couple ideas, off the top of my head:
Make the city neighborhoods nicer, especially the school systems and housing stock.
Improve the non-automobile infrastructure in both cities and suburbs.
New suburban development should be denser and more centralised. Hold off on new roads, sewer mains and water mains to help accomplish this.
Use tax abatement to encourage employment sites near to residential districts in both the city and the suburbs.


The solution to suburban sprawl, in my inexpert opinion, is to make the cities more attractive, while also making the suburbs more sustainable.

[Fillanzea]

I thought that Alex Marshall's book "How Cities Work" was really insightful on the subject of why we live in suburbs and drive cars rather than live in cities and take public transportation/walking/bicycles... he argues that the government, by allowing the development of freeways, allows the suburbs to flourish. Libertarian types sometimes argue against the government subsidizing public transportation, but as it is now, the government essentially subsidizes freeways and suburban development, though it could choose not to.

[Roody]

I haven't read Marshall's book, but freeways aren't the only government investment that makes suburban development possible. There's also sewers, water, zoning laws, and other factors.

But do you think the "government" made these investments to persuade people to move to the suburbs, or did governments make investments in response to the voter's existing desire to move to the suburbs? I'm quite sure it was the latter. My point is, people live there because they really want to, not because government or corporate marketers forced them to. We can't just get rid of sprawl by using government or marketers to force or convince people to move back to the cities.

[cooker]

I think there's a limit to the idea of manufactured need (that is, consumers make choices based largely on what manufacturers tell them to want). People live in the suburbs because they want to live in the suburbs, not because marketers told them to live in the suburbs. The solution to suburban sprawl, in my inexpert opinion, is to make the cities more attractive, while also making the suburbs more sustainable.

People also live in suburbs because of hidden subsidies. Sure, some of the costs of highways come from a gas tax or from tolls, but much comes from general government revenues, which means that non freeway users are helping pay for freeways. In Canada, health care and highway policing costs are funded by provincial taxes, so city dwellers are helping to pay for patrolling car commuters' highways, and the health-care costs of highway traffic victims. Even services delivered locally, and theoretically based on property taxes, like school busses, underutilized or inefficient ex-urban transit systems, and snowplowing, depend in part on provincial grants to municipalities, so again urbanites are subsidizing non-urbanites. While I don't know all the details of funding in the USA, I would bet that at least some similar economic distortions are in effect .

Proper taxation or service charges, so that those who drive long distances to work pay the true cost of their lifestyle, would go a long way toward exposing the economic burdens created by sprawling development.

(EDIT: oops. I see some of the same points were made as I composed this post.)