Lack of housing supply is a common reason cited for high housing costs, yet I have yet to see a number attached to this claim, nor have I seen one case study showing that increased housing supply had an appreciable impact on housing cost. How many more units must NYC build before the costs start to come down? Housing costs are high in NYC because it is a desirable place to live for a wide variety of reasons (and no doubt exclusivity plays a part). True, many folks move to the suburbs because they can't find an affordable unit in the city, but many also move to the suburbs because they believe it suits their value system - they don't want to live in a city with all it's associated "problems" (real and perceived). More development is not the answer.

Skeller

Yes, the political art of using public money to profit from the demand for suburban living reached a high point during the last half century. The recent use by Dennis Hastert of a budget "earmark" to pay for a highway past land he owned, enabling him to make over $2.5 million in pure profit on an original investment of $339,000, is the process in a nutshell.

People wanted to leave cities, in part, because they were ruled by a sort of mob composed of businessmen, politicians, and the Catholic Church, and in part because cities were polluted. The exodus eventually broke the power of the old mob, and clean government has also cleaned up the cities.

At the bottom line, Bruegmann is arguing for the continuance of subsidies (freeway building) for a lifestyle that can't continue without them. People like living in the suburbs, but usually not enough to pay the real costs of transportation or dealing with the problems created by them living there.

As for cashing in on all the wonderful benefits for car owners, that's like using the two-for-one dinner coupon at the Hungry Heifer. But don't believe me- go spend your Saturday at the strip mall and see how that makes you feel. If you like it, you will absolutely love America.

Ha! Well, the average costs of car ownership are approximately $8,000 per year, so you can afford more house without a car. I also think you are correct that increasing density (i.e., increasing housing supply) in a city should cause prices to decline, according to conventional economic theory of supply and demand. That's why I agree with J:Lai that it is important to encourage urban housing production through reduced regulation, and more generous zoning. People will complain that this is lining the pockets of already-rich developers, but I think the urban developers ought to be rewarded for creating an environmentally friendly and socially important product.

The more recent revitalization of many cities, since about the mid 1990s, proves that centralized cities are anything but a dying form of habitation. However, suburbs are here to stay. They do represent a way of living that many people prefer, and people can and do pay a premium to live there.

Also, let's not overlook the way that decisions made at the city-level of urban development have encouraged the growth of suburbs (can't blame everything on federal transportation policy.) NYC has undersupplied housing for decades, largely due to zoning, regulation, and other disincentive to development. That is the #1 reason why housing is so expensive, and it is a driver for at least some people in making the decision to live in the suburbs.

On the other hand, socialization and interaction indisputably are "innate" human urges. Cities foster those things; suburbs (like where I grew up) stifle them.

I don't know much about urban planning, but I'd love to find a solution to this, as I think it's one of the major contributors to sprawl. My instinct tells me that increasing density would drive down housing costs, but (if Vancouver, BC, Paris, and NYC are any indication)it seems to have the opposite effect--I assume because it increases a city's desirability. I'd love to hear others' ideas about this.

P.S. - I totally agree about the broader, global consequences of sprawl. Perpetuating our car-centric culture will have catastrophic consequences--not just for us, but for the world.

In any event, "even when they *want* to find something different it’s hard for them to adapt."- The inability to adapt to changing conditions has led to the collapse of countless societies. Suburbia will be no different.

Who stopped giving a fuck about cities? Frankly I don't buy this argument at all. They have low taxes in rural areas because they have low expenditures. Maybe that's in part because they are subsidized, but I don't think that's most of it. And cheap oil, whether we like it or not, has helped cities too. And the super-highways aren't exactly skipping cities.

I think there's a mentality of false poverty. Cities have the resources and the talent to fix these problems -- NYC more so than anywhere -- and we can't wait for someone to give us more money before we start trying. I'm all for lowering federal taxes and giving control to local communities; I'm sure we could use our tax dollars better locally than they are used federally. But that's not something we can wait for.

"Suburbanites have always been critical of the values of urbanites. I believe we should just accept that this is, in fact, an irreconcilable clash of values."

What, because they want to own their home? They want a place for their kids to be able to play outside? They want to buy affordable groceries for their family without making a big production of it? Because many of their *jobs* are already in the suburbs?

There's lots of suburban values that aren't very appealing, but there's lots of values and priorities that are very understandable. There's a lot of work that needs to be done to make our cities family friendly. Because they haven't been we have a generation of people who only know the suburbs, and even when they *want* to find something different it's hard for them to adapt.

Another important argument for reduced car usage -- especially in the city -- is that it gets in the way of productive commercial use of the roads. I think an eye towards traffic efficiency doesn't always conflict with the goals of a more humane cityscape.

Sprawl is a decentralized development and it requires a decentralized transportation system (cars and trucks -- trucking is just as essential to sprawl as cars). The result isn't just people moving to the suburbs, it's also light industry moving to the suburbs and beyond. And why wouldn't they? The land is cheaper and the infrastructure is more logistically efficient, and the cost of living is at least somewhat lower, meaning that wages can be lower.

To me, arguments that transportation policy drives sprawl are kind of weak. The cities we have are pretty broken logistically. The suburbs are broken too, but in different ways, and in some important ways they've been less broken. People who like cities (and I'm one of those people) should look to *fixing* the cities, not whining about things that enable the suburbs. We should want a better country for everyone. Arguing only that people's values are misplaced when they choose suburbs is not very constructive, but that's a lot of what anti-suburb arguments are made of.

We don't want the city to be like the suburbs, we don't want to lose the values of the city, but we don't have to. Instead if we fix the non-value-based problems with the city we can give people real reasons to stop sprawl.