On grids and suburbs

Last updated on: February 24, 2015 at 11:29 pm by Jane the Actuary

On grids and suburbs 2015-02-24T23:29:36-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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For a consulting actuary, I don’t travel much — I generally work with my clients over the phone. But once a year I drive up to a client located near the Lake Zurich/Long Grove area of Chicagoland. And as I did so today, I was really struck by the subdivisions.

OK, maybe I need to get out more. But, as I’ve said before, I live on the grid, that is, in an older, but still suburban, neighborhood — a neighborhood where everyone has a two-car garage, but the kids can walk to school and to the park and pool, and there is, within walking distance, a “downtown” area with a commuter train station, a grocery store, restaurants, a movie theatre, and (stretching the definition of “walking distance” a bit) the library.

And as I drove past these houses, some McMansion-y and some largish but not quite that big, all of them sited on large lots in subdivisions with elaborate entrances, and with no hope of walking to anything but perhaps the water feature in the subdivision or maybe the “tot lot,” and I thought, for all that you get a lot more space for the same pricetag, it would absolutely not be worth it, to be unable to go anywhere without a car, and especially for the kids to be equally dependent on the mom-taxi.

But, of course, plenty such fully-car-dependent suburbs were being built left and right until the housing market crash, and periodically the paper reports that those subdivisions which were half-built then are beginning to make progress towards completion. And presumably the people buying those houses, which, in the Chicago area, means not just being car-dependent, but having a long drive to shopping and work and recreation, besides, were perfectly happy with their choices.

At the same time, there are articles, and books, announcing, as was the case in a title from a year ago, “The End of the Suburbs“: young kids these days want their nightlife in walking distance, and aren’t as willing to drive with the increasing price of gas. I’m skeptical of this, because those hip young people, for the most part, will presumably eventually have children and find that being able to conveniently run their errands will outweigh the lure of nightlife; though it may be true that people will be less willing than in the past to drive long distances to work (though, then again, the current decreasing cost of gas, and the opportunity, for many, to work from home to at least some degree, may offset this).

And then you have the situation of someone like Dad — who, though in the grand scheme of things, is old, but not old-old — no longer able to drive. In the best case scenario, a pending test, scheduled for January, may provide for a treatment that would help in walk a bit better, but driving would definitely be out. Or my sister-in-law, who had an unexplained epilepsy-like event some years ago that took away her driving privleges for 6 months.

But, of course, let’s assume that most Americans, all other things being equal, would prefer a traditional single-family house within walking distance of some nice amenities. It’s just impossible.

So what should urban planning look like? And what sort of home, all other things being equal, do you think the next generation wants? And, if in the long run, our population does stablize (that is, if we pare back our approach of importing immigrants to offset our below-replacement birth rate), and housing construction isn’t driven by population growth but by replacement of older or undesirable units, what do our cities look like in a generation or two.

Just a few of the things I’m thinking about tonight (as a procrastinate on a bit of mending).

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