System #10: Human Centered Cities

It may come as a shock to you, but our cities are broken. We have created cities not for humans, but made to worship cars. Have you ever thought about how far everything is from your house? How you need to drive to get to work, to the mall, to school, to the grocery store, to the post office, to your kid's friend's house? On top of that, in most American cities, public transportation is not reliable or abundant which means that we've unknowingly created an "entrance fee" to our cities. You need to have a car to participate in the economy of our cities. Now, don't get me wrong, there ARE cities in the U.S. that have welcomed and invested in public transportation but as you'll see in this article, most cities have embraced the idea of suburban life, housing sprawl, and residential-only zoning requirements to our collective detriment.

How did it get this way?

There's honestly a large amount of reasons for this having become the norm. But here's a quick rundown:

After World War II, America's infrastructure was still intact, and all the returning military men coming back home led to the greatest boom in population which created a generation affectionately called the "Baby Boomers." The government provided G.I. Bill allowed these returning military men to get mortgages so everyone that wanted a house, could buy a house. The only problem was that there weren't enough houses for all the people who wanted one, so developers started building. Instead of redeveloping cities for more capacity (which were seen as for the poor, and filled with smog), they started creating the American dream of a house in the suburbs with a white picket fence. This was made possible by the New Deal which had invested heavily in American infrastructure so that people living in houses outside of the city, with a car, could still utilize the services of a city. But people didn't all have cars did they? Well, to keep America's economy booming, we retooled our wartime factories to create consumer goods, one of which was the car which became increasingly affordable. With more people buying houses in the suburbs, and using their cars to commute, governments invested in more and larger roads which continued the cycle.

With more people buying houses in the suburbs, and using their cars to commute, governments invested in more and larger roads which continued the cycle.

Compare this with European countries that had been devastated after the war. People were poor, infrastructure was broken, so cities tried to help their citizens by investing in public transportation and rebuilding their cities to be more accessible by foot. Amenities being nearby and available meant that people didn't buy cars, and since people didn't by cars, new business or developments had to worry about how people would get to them so instead of offloading the cost of transportation to their citizens, new developments built those into the costs. You can read a bit about this pivotal decision in the book "Confessions of a Pricing Man" by Hermann Simon.

As cities changed, those changes were reinforced by zoning ordinances that in Europe emphasized Mixed Used development while in America, with their emphasis on keeping the America Dream and the suburbs clean, doubled down with Residential (only) development. This ultimately led to the suburban crawl that we've seen sweep over states like California. This crawl is the reason your store is across town, and why schools invested in their own buses to pick children up.

Why is this bad?

There's a few really good reasons why this is bad for our cities, but let's start with the economics. Suburbs are a drain on city finances, while downtown is usually the hub of the economic wheel of a city. Why are suburbs and car-centric development a drain on city finances? Because, the more spaced out that lands and buildings are the more expensive city-run services are per acre. Think about the road maintenance, sewer, police, and firetrucks, as the density goes down, their costs go up. Urban3, a consulting firm focusing on just this, was hired by the town of Lafayette, LA and painstakingly analyzed Lafayette's revenue per acre and created a jaw dropping 3 dimensional map like this:

As you can see from the map, places with higher density, mixed use development brought home revenue for the city, while most other places were a drag on the economy. These drains included places like your local "shopping mall" which are 90% parking lot and 10% shops (which again is limited by zoning laws). Put another way, mixed use development subsidizes suburban development.

Put another way, mixed use development subsidizes suburban development.

Now that we have the economic question for cities out of the way, let's talk about economics for people. Let's continue looking at Lafayette, LA, their average cost of rent is around $1,400/mo, if we include a car payment with that, you're looking at about $1,800/mo. This equates to needing, at minimum, $21,000/year to be a member of their city. That's higher than the poverty line, JUST TO LIVE AND MOVE! Now, is this a full proof calculation? Absolutely not. Could you have roommates? Sure. However, the fact remains, that cities, through our current zoning laws, and development practices are offloading the costs of transportation to their population.

Another issue is the cost of opening up a storefront. Or the cost of sitting all our lives, at work, in transit, at home.

Let's transition to an experiment run in the city of Barcelona for a moment.

Superblocks

Barcelona is known as a grid oriented city made up of pretty well defined city blocks as you can see from the picture above. The city government ran an experiment to create what they called Superblocks by closing off car traffic within the intersections of nine blocks put together. Now, Barcelona is not only a grid city, it is also a mixed use city meaning that in the upstairs of all these city blocks are apartments and on the downstairs, there are shops. Because of this, this experiment was met with much controversy as analysts decried the death of the city of Barcelona. They were worried that all the shops inside of the Superblocks would starve because they would lose their lifeblood, their circulation and connection to the larger Barcelonian grid. What happened instead shocked the world as those same stores brought in record profits AND record patrons. Removing cars meant that people had to walk by foot past these stores, since pedestrians are more inclined to stop by a storefront, the Superblocks flourished! Not only that, the quality of life for all residents went up, people met their neighbors, and roads were absorbed into the fabric of the communities and provided space to get together.

The Solution

Mixed Use Development is not a new concept, as you can see in the old European cities, it used to be THE concept. Buildings that incorporated both dwellings and storefronts used to provide the best of both worlds for the store owners and occupants. Cities were designed around people and their ability to get places, grocery and drug stores were on every street corner. The cost and risk of opening up a store was reduced because the building and the audience already existed, all you had to do was give them a reason to come in (and make the sale). This close knitting of vendors and occupants (as shown by Urban3) also resulted in higher tax revenues per acre for cities. Higher tax revenues makes for richer cities, richer cities investing more make for happier more cared for citizens and the cycle continues.

Cities were designed around people and their ability to get places, grocery and drug stores were on every street corner.

Compare that with our current car-centric design which costs the city money compared to what it brings in, puts the onus of transportation costs on its citizens, increases the risk on store owners to open up because they have to make you drive to them resulting in a homogenization of malls around America (which are dying), a population that needs to go workout instead of having it built into their daily lives, and a segregation of classes between the car owners and those who don't, creating an artificially inflated entry fee to living in our cities.

To make this happen, we need cities to re-evaluate their zoning laws and we need citizens to become educated as to the pitfalls of our current system.

Which city would you rather live in?