*Many white war veterans secured easy mortgages in rapidly expanding suburbs. (Mark Mathosian,* *Flickr*)

by Nathan Kim (SFS ‘23)

The current situation of urban planning in the United States is atrocious, and difficulties of price, accessibility, and climate change will only make it worse. Housing affordability in this country is declining rapidly for both homeowners and renters, largely due to the limited supply of housing being built. A bewildering array of restrictions and regulations that encourage car dependency and suburban single-family-home sprawl smother U.S. neighborhoods. Most building codes in the United States are not sufficient to weather the effects of climate change, such as heat waves and floods. And of course, historical injustices, such as redlining and credit discrimination, that prevent minorities from accessing wealth through property continue to this day.

The United States urgently needs to upgrade its communities through urban planning that rectifies the sad, unjust state of U.S. housing.

The Sidewalk Not Taken

Zoning regulations are local statutes that restrict the types of building that can be built on a piece of land. The vast majority of land parcels in U.S. cities and towns are zoned for single-family housing, where only detached single-family homes can be built. This practice of restrictive zoning originates in the post-WWII G.I. Bill, in which the federal government guaranteed low-cost mortgages for returning white veterans paired with a massive investment in the construction of these detached single-family homes. Thus began modern U.S. suburbia.

The resulting policies created the now-famous suburban sprawl that characterizes U.S. housing. The previously common construction of multi-family housing, including duplexes, triplexes, and row houses, were de-emphasized and in many cases prohibited. Neighborhoods grew less dense as single-family zoning decreased the amount of space allocated to multi-family housing units.

*The D.C.-Maryland-Virginia region is, for all intents and purposes, mostly suburb. (Tracy Hadden Loh,* *GGWash*)

It is not much of a surprise, then, that dedicating so much space to low-density single-family homes puts a strain on housing costs, given the decrease in the supply of land and a growing national population’s demand for housing. As a result, it is almost impossible for a U.S. citizen working a minimum-wage job to afford a simple two-bedroom apartment—if they can’t afford an apartment, how will they afford a house?

Since single-family zoning prohibits the construction of anything but detached houses, most families often have no amenities within walking distance of their homes. To get anywhere and do anything—getting groceries, working out in a gym, grabbing coffee—people lucky enough to live in a single-family home must drive. Even where walking could theoretically be possible, many suburban neighborhoods simply lack sidewalks. More importantly, no commercial buildings can be built on much of the land zoned for single families.

So, U.S. suburbs are boring. They are cookie-cutter houses as far as the eye can see. There is little in the way of public space such as playgrounds or open fields (not including at the local school, or, in a richer city, public parks), and the absence of eateries lowers one’s chance of mingling with neighbors on a regular basis.

Coincidentally, cookie-cutter housing might play a role in U.S. racial tension—the de facto socio-economic segregation of suburbs alienates suburban residents from each other. This alienation leads to suspicion of anyone who does not fit the right description of a suburban resident. Trayvon Martin’s murder is one of the most famous examples of this suburban social distrust.

In the 1930s, the government enacted policies that segregated suburbs and ended up pushing minorities into underfunded public housing. Black Americans were frequently banned from entering majority-white suburban communities and from buying housing in these de facto segregated neighborhoods. As a consequence, Black Americans remained shut out of the booming government-subsidized suburbs that whites fleeing cities migrated to, a phenomenon known today as “white flight.”

Other racist practices such as redlining, which disincentivized mortgage lenders and banks from putting money into majority-black communities, isolated and impoverished Black neighborhoods. Large chunks of American suburbs are still racially segregated: white neighborhoods sometimes physically separate themselves from Black ones through gated communities, and they soak up funding for quality schools and public amenities including fire departments and police forces. It is no surprise then, that white suspicion of anyone not fitting the typical suburban racial profile is prevalent. Such distrust can lead to open racism and even outright killings of Black Americans, exemplified by Ahmaud Arbery’s murder.

The Everyday American Road Trip

U.S. urban planning strategies are not well-prepared to meet the challenges of climate change, either. Much of this vulnerability originates in the post-WWII hype for automobile-centric transportation. Indeed, with sprawling, low-density single-family zoning came single-family transport. Thanks to their abundance of cars, suburban communities have extremely high carbon emissions. In addition, concerning the overwhelming influence of car-centric design on American life, even U.S. cities that do not rely as much on cars are not designed sustainably enough to effectively deal with climate change.

*The primary pastime of a car-centric society: driving through endless traffic congestion without alternative transit options, such as trams or buses. (Wikimedia Commons*)

Restrictive single-family zoning not only prevents the building of multi-family units but also contributes to climate change by promoting cars and all their inefficiencies. Many suburban neighborhood zoning codes contain provisions such as minimum parking spaces and minimum lot sizes. So much of a neighborhood’s space is dedicated to making car use convenient to the point of outright encouraging it.

Suburban policymakers prioritize carbon-emitting cars over alternative modes of transportation, which are ignored and even attacked. Bus, tram, bike, and train services are either not provided in many outer suburbs (such as a general absence of bike lanes) or they are severely curtailed and deprived of adequate funding.

It is an established fact that buses and trains emit much less carbon than cars do. The vast majority of public transit can be powered by renewable energy sources while also transporting far greater numbers of people. New York City, the U.S.’s most populous urban center, actually has a lower carbon footprint per individual than a typical suburb in neighboring New Jersey does, thanks to its forms of public transit.

Suburbs’ lack of residential density is partially to blame for the lack of cleaner alternatives to cars. Because single-family zoning artificially restricts the potential density, or number, of persons per square mile in a particular neighborhood or region, public transportation becomes less efficient precisely because it relies on economies of scale to obtain higher demand for transit services.

If a neighborhood is not sufficiently populated, and not as many people use public transit, then there is little revenue from rider fares and, therefore, no funding for these systems, a reality which in turn forces suboptimal service that pushes people toward cars instead. (For the past 60 years, the car lobby and conservative donors have worked hard to gut public transit systems around the country.) Hence, it is not surprising that suburban communities in the United States may produce as much as 50 percent of the total U.S. household carbon footprint despite hosting less than half of the country’s population.

It should not come as a surprise that public transit also has a racist history. Black and Hispanic Americans depend much more heavily on public transportation than white Americans do: 23 percent and 15 percent, respectively, rely on buses, subways, or trains to commute. However, only 7 percent of white Americans depend on public transportation; the majority use a car instead.

Cities prioritize funding adequate automobile-centric infrastructure such as highways and roads, leaving a severe deficit of public transit options. From the 1950s onwards, many highways and interstates were constructed by demolishing minority neighborhoods to make way for car owners, of which whites were the overwhelming majority.

Highways to Hell

Suburbs aren’t equipped to combat climate change — and neither are cities. When cities such as Philadelphia have more parking spaces than people (almost 2.2 million slots vs 1.5 million inhabitants), there should be legitimate cause for concern. U.S. cities are still designed around cars rather than people: 8-lane roads and parking lots take up enormous amounts of space for automobiles while also exacerbating climate change’s effects on people, often in racist ways.

Freeways built through cities have forced out communities of color. Urban asphalt and other sunlight-absorbing, paved surfaces such as concrete can massively contribute to urban heat islands (urban areas that experience higher temperatures), a phenomenon that disproportionately hurts people of color. Minorities are exposed to higher average heat island intensity in nearly all major U.S. cities than white communities are.

Besides prolonging and intensifying hotter temperatures, dedicating so much space to cars rather than people results in pretty barren, ugly cityscapes. Houston wholeheartedly embraced the automobile as its prioritized form of transportation after WWII; planners dedicated much of downtown to parking lots and gargantuan interstate highways that ran right through the heart of the city. The vast majority of cities across the United States followed the same model. Many still stay true to this car-centric urban design.

Unfortunately, urban design in the United States is not evolving quickly enough to address growing concerns of social inequity and climate change. The car remains the primary means of transportation for the majority of U.S. citizens; other forms of transportation are neglected and underfunded even as funding for more highways and ever-wider roads continues to increase. Until more Americans demand better transit services, this state of car-dependent infrastructure and urban design will persist into the foreseeable future.

Street Smarts

Today, Americans who desire a solution to unaffordable housing and unwalkable communities need a new movement to address challenges such as rising housing costs and car-centric, polluting neighborhood design. To address these challenges, policymakers must implement zoning reform, dedicate more resources toward public transit, and reclaim public spaces for people, not vehicles. To be sure, each of these problems is deeply entrenched in U.S. society, and there are considerable numbers of people who are interested in maintaining the status quo.

However, calls for change and a different set of guiding principles—such as getting rid of single-family zoning and turning away from the automobile—are also gaining momentum. Encouraging news is becoming more common across the country. For example, Berkeley, California, was the birthplace of single-family zoning in 1916; in September, its municipal council unanimously voted to end the practice. Berkeley follows other cities across the country that have reformed their zoning codes and allowed for more diverse forms of housing to ease the affordability crisis, including Minneapolis, Portland, and the rest of the state of California.

The Biden administration also seems to recognize the importance of more diverse housing options and better alternatives to car-centric communities. The $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill allocates nearly $39 billion to mass transit such as buses and trains. However, some advocates were still critical of the bill for dedicating over $100 billion to highway expansion, citing this provision as proof that the United States still has much work to do to overcome its addiction to the automobile. Fortunately, the Build Back Better bill should provide additional funding and build off of the infrastructure bill by dedicating money for communities devastated by interstate construction, as well as creating a new affordable housing program and investing in alternative modes of transportation for lower-income areas.

It is up to the U.S. people to decide what future they want: a future of unaffordable housing and traffic congestion or a future of affordable housing and walkable green communities with diverse transit options.