And the really wild thing is âthereâs nowhere to walk toâ is usually legally mandated through local zoning codes.
Every town and city in America writes its own zoning laws, which dictate what you can and canât put in any one area of the town. And thereâs good reason for this! You donât want to put a big huge factory that makes lots of noise 24/7 in the middle of a place where people live, for example. Pretty much every place has zoning. Zoning is not inherently the problem.
The problem is the type of zoning the US uses. Most of the US has extremely restrictive zoning. For example, something like 90% of all post-WWII urban and suburban housing in the US is in neighborhoods zoned R-1 (Residential 1) or the equivalent. And R-1 is crazy restrictive.
You can put exactly four things in an R-1 zone. You can put single-family houses, schools, parks, and places of worship.
You canât put: little neighborhood shops, grocery stores, hair salons, multi-family dwellings, or anything else. You are an accountant who wants to set up shop in your garage because thatâs cheaper than renting office space? Too bad for you! No businesses are allowed in an R-1 zone, even if youâre running them out of your home, and if you try and your city finds out, you could be in a lot of trouble.
Oh, but wait, thereâs more! R-1 zoning also has laws about density! Each home has to have a good-sized lot. Usually thereâs a requirement for how much front yard there has to be (20 feet from the house to the curb is a fairly standard number) as well as a requirement that the house can only take up a certain percentage of the lot (often around 15-20% of the land). This means that the houses are fairly far apart.
You canât build apartments, condos, row houses, or any form of high density housing there, because it is illegal. Everyone is very spread out. When you combine that with ânothing but houses, schools, parks, and churches,â and 90% of housing zoned R-1, you can have vast expanses of suburbs where the nearest thing other than houses and parks is miles away. It would take hours to walk anywhere from your house, so nobody does it. So the cities donât build sidewalks. Which also cuts down on the people walking.
This is what is known as âurban sprawl.â This is why Americans drive so much. This is also why American cities are so congested: everyone has to drive everywhere, and you have to drive relatively long distances. Even just going to the store for a gallon of milk can be a ten mile drive. And if every single person has to drive for every single trivial errand, well, for any decently-sized city it simply isnât possible to build enough streets and highways to accommodate all the traffic.
This is also why housing in America is so expensive. People who would be just fine with an apartment are often forced to rent a suburban home because there arenât enough apartments. And R-1 houses are designed for the upper middle class. If you canât afford that ... sucks to be you. It drives the prices up for everyone.
And itâs also why so many cities in the US have infrastructure problems, financial problems, and regularly teeter on the verge of bankruptcy! Infrastructure is expensive, and a lot of it (roads, water and sewer pipes, etc) has expenses based on how far it has to go. It costs the same amount to repave a block of street whether there are eight households along that street or twenty households along that street. The taxes on houses in R-1 zones would have to be absurdly high to pay for the cost of maintaining the infrastructure. To the best of my knowledge, no city in America breaks even on R-1 suburbs. They spend more maintaining the infrastructure than they take in in taxes.
So for people who arenât American and are sitting here wondering what the fuck, hereâs why it stays that way:
1) Lack of imagination. For eighty years, this has been the way most American homes are. This is normal. People assume that it is inevitable and the way things just naturally should be.
2) Privileged assholes. Upper-middle-class white people are the ones who are by far the most likely to go to the city council and city zoning meetings where such things are decided, and they overwhelmingly oppose changes to the R-1 zoning code. Why? Because they are afraid it would damage their property values. They are sure that if the zoning in their neighborhood changes, someone will come in and build a huge concrete block of an apartment complex right across the street. And if there were low-income housing built anywhere in the city, the city would attract poor people! And addicts! And criminals! And people of color! And if there were too much low-income housing, why, even if it wasnât in their neighborhood, it would bring housing prices down everywhere in town, which would mean their house would be worth less than it is now, and their investment would be damaged! (because of course the most important thing about housing is âdoes everyone have a safe place to liveâ but âhow much money can I make by buying and selling houses.â) ... and then they wonder why their kids canât afford to buy a home like they could at that age ...
