great posting- I like your comments
People move where they are comfortable. And people move where there are jobs. And if they have children, they take into account what is going to create the greatest opportunity for the children. We have been through tough times with oil before. And the car manufacturers have adjusted, but to think that Americans are suddenly going to fall in love in massive quantities with living close together doesn't sit with the reality of the last 200 years of American migration patterns, IMHO. Americans don't much like each other, frankly. And with a multicultural society without strictly defined classes, self segregation furthers this trend of moving apart from each other.
True, demand for city living won't experience a seismic shift over the next year or two, but it won't take that to have a profound impact on urban centers.
DC proper only constitutes about 10% of the Washington metropolitan area (~550k vs. ~5.5M). If the overall demand for city living increases by a few percent, there is only one place where that population can go (well, more than one if you include Arlington, etc.). It won't take much of an increase in demand to significantly affect cities, since the supply of high-density, transit-oriented communities is so limited.
Quite frankly, my biggest concern for the outlook of urban living in DC is the lack of capital investments in transit. Metro is already busting at the seams and there isn't much in the pipeline to address that.
Good to start the dialogue, R.
IMHO, we are running up against the Second Law of Thermodynamics, one feature of which is the finite limit of growth.
This has been going on for millenia: ever since we stopped being nomads and started harnessing nature for "our" benefit. (Check out Thom Hartman's book, "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight.") We now have a population that needs about two and a half planets to sustain itself.
The readjustment is not going to be pretty.
Great comments and initial posting. This speaks directly to the folks who have been dismissing compact development in Brookland, Tenleytown, Friendship Heights and other places on the metro.
Enough is enough. We as a society and culture need to wake up and start implementing better transit options and smarter development to handle decisions which will be made in the coming years.
Gas prices are not going to fall (at least for any sustained period of time), the ability to be mobile, stay warm in the winter etc will be much more expensive and every household needs to start preparing for efficiencies which will not only save money, but more importantly stretch finite resources.
+ Alley dwellings and growing more of your own food (if you're not in a rowhouse neighborhood). I am looking to provide a SPINGardening workshop in the city, along with some other stuff, to get the Citizens Planning Coalition moving again.
www.spinfarming.com
William -- I have been interested in urban issues since I was a child, living in Detroit. Before I got involved in stuff I wrote a long letter in response to the very first piece in the Post that spawned Dr. Gridlock.
I don't have a copy of the letter, but (as you can imagine) had more than 10 significant points. This was 1990 or 1991. I made the point that WMATA then said they wouldn't do any expansion planning, until the system was built out to the final plan. That was due to finish in the late 1990s.
And that since it takes more than a decade to plan and build transit extensions, not to mention to line up the funding that this meant until about 2025 we wouldn't see much in the way of transit system growth, and that this wasn't an ideal scenario...
Of course, the days of no longer cheap gasoline hastens the day that the decision to junk transit for automobility comes payable.
It'll be an uphill battle to get new alley dwellings and to increase density around Metro stations when the 50- 80 year olds who seem to be the most out spoken in the neighborhood groups are all car addicts and never think of anything other than parking parking parking.
Just to clarify, on allaboutcities.ca I didn't say soaring gasoline prices would "never" bring a change to the American suburban style of living. But just that current prices are not nearly high enough to bring such a change and that many Americans may choose smaller cars rather than abandoning a sprawl-oriented lifestyle.
I hope I'm wrong and that there will be a sudden dramatic philosophical, cultural and lifestyle change in American toward higher density living. But I just don't see it happening for a couple more generations at least.
I'm surprised nobody else has commented on this passage in the post:
"I always like reading newspapers in other communities, especially the letters to the editor pages, where you get a much wider range of opinion and less erudite writers when compared to the Washington Post or the New York Times. . . . But I think with the kinds of articles I was reading in those papers, the letters to the editor, the various wire stories about automobile production dropping, the higher and higher cost of flying, etc., that maybe we are on the cusp of change."
I enjoy reading this blog, often agree with you, and usually find your posts thought-provoking, if sometimes a little over my head. But this sort of statement just demonstrates for me why Eastern liberals (or "progressives" as they have attempted to re-brand themselves) are perceived by much of the rest of the country as condescending elitists. The basic point - that it is good to get a broader range of viewpoints by reading newspapers from other parts of the country - is a good one. Its a shame that you didn't stop at "wider range of opinion" and went on to call the writers from other parts of the country "less erudite" than those in the New York Times and the Washington Post.
In a one-person, one-income family situation, it's easy to live near work. The problem is whether one person in a couple should compromise on their career satisfaction in order for both workplaces to be easy to reach.
Mike sure I am an elitist but this is the kind of letter I mean:
Drilling solution
May 22, 2008
Reference the article "Senate turns down attempt to expand offshore drilling," May 14. Once again the Democrats stand for energy dependence on the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, Venezuela and a number of others who wish us harm. Virginia Sen. Jim Webb votes "no" on allowing oil drilling off the Virginia coast. Illinois Sen. Richard Durbin states: "We can't drill our way out of this situation. We can't drill our way to lower gas prices."
In reality, if Durbin and his fellow Democrats had lifted the restrictions on oil exploration and building of refineries 20 years ago, we would surely be in a better position than we are today. The rationale then was "It will take 10 years to bring anything online." Does that sound familiar?
The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge alone has enough oil to meet all our requirements for 30-plus years
Brazil has just brought in a huge oil field off its coast and is now energy independent. China is drilling off the coast of Cuba. Mexico is drilling off its coast in the gulf. Russia is planning to drill in the Arctic Sea. They obviously don't buy into the theory (not science) of man-made global warming, while the Democrats in the Senate relegate us to potential shortages, higher prices, OPEC blackmail and economic suicide.
Want a source of funds to relieve the traffic problem in Hampton Roads? It's there for the taking under the continental shelf off the coast of Virginia.
Harold Harlowe
Yorktown
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I suppose in retrospect it's not so bad. But yeah, I have a high expectation for public discourse.
I meant to write that I have a high expectation for the quality of public discourse.
Of course, I see by looking at today's Newport News Daily Press that there was a response:
Energy equation
May 28, 2008
Most of what Harold Harlowe wrote in the letter "Drilling solution," May 22, is factually inaccurate. With respect to the Democrats preventing drilling, in some respects this is true; however, many very knowledgeable oil and gas experts believe that the largest oil and gas reserves are off the coast of Florida. Reason we don't drill there? Florida is a key Republican state in the national election, and Florida has a Republican governor. Drill there and Republicans lose big time.
Second, Harlowe stated that the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has enough reserves to meet all of our requirements for 30 years. Wrong! The United States currently consumes roughly 21 million barrels of oil per day, of which 13 million are imported. A very large oilfield has reserves of 1 billion barrels of oil, and there are only a few nationwide. This is not a Democratic or Republican problem.
The goal of U.S. energy policy must be to move us toward energy self-sufficiency. We cannot drill our way out of this problem.
We as Americans can aid in solving this problem. Drive less, drive slower, buy more fuel-efficient cars, buy energy efficient appliances and lights, etc. This however probably will not happen, as we Americans are a self-absorbed, self-indulged group. We are willing to spend any amount for anything we want but want to pay nothing for things we need.
I earn my living producing oil and gas. I wish everyone drove a Hummer and wasted energy at our current rate. That would make my life quite simple and make my time on the work force very short.
Kevin Martin
Williamsburg
Richard, I have high expectations for public discourse too, which is why I called you on your post. I do not take issue with the correctness or cogency of this or that particular letter to the editor, but with the general assumption that people who do not read the NY Times and the Washington Post are less erudite than others. The tone of the passage I quoted above seemed to reflect an attitude that the provinces are populated by rubes. Conveying such an attitude in your writing does not help to persuade anyone of your point. Indeed, it directly undermines the message of your post (and perhaps of your blog as a whole), that sprawl is bad. Talking down to (or about) people from rural and exurban areas will not motivate them to move into denser urban areas where they would have to live in close proximity to people who hold them in such disdain.
Point taken. (But umm, I don't hang out with people who don't "discourse" at my level here either, including DCist commenters..)
Yes, economic forces are powerful. The run up in commodity prices has actually reduced U.S. CO2 emissions--- a reduction that would have otherwise been politically impossible.
However, Richard, your second and third photos in this post contrast two types of living. Since we're discussing economic motivations, which home costs more? I'd bet it's the Capitol Hill rowhouse. With the exception of crime-infested neighborhoods, Washington is still terribly expensive, and especially so for middle class families since they would have to pay for private school tuition if they lived in DC. The suburbs are cheaper than DC and are here to stay.
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