People Who Live In Suburbs: Classy, Icky, or Dudes?

but again if you want to talk not about markets from the beginning of time or all trading ever but markets as institutions developing in the interstices of medeval societies across feudal europe, you can also tell a story that has the laws coming second.

this is getting kinda off subject but my point was and only was that

a. capitalism and individual markets are ultimately social constructs that require certain social behavior, laws, institutions

b. that being the case it's better to think about sets of laws as things that create theoretical markets and to compare the markets they create and not assume the idea of a perfect and eternal 'market' that is then damaged by laws.

c. laws that benefit everybody in a market are probably 'good'. individuals and institions all want to inside trade, and it's something that's impossible to police 100%. but you will never ever hear anybody say "there should be no laws against insider trading" on CNBC. wall st does promote laws that benefit the finance industry and harm the rest of us, but having a lower bar of regulation and a certain 'fairness' to the game is the only reason why millions of americans allow strangers to put their money to be put in equities etc. that they know nothing about.

I compared this to the rental market. landlords might want to individually not repair buildings. individually they might want to spend as little money as possible on it and would love to have the ability to kick somebody out on a whim. but there will never be a movement by landlords against the law that they have to do repairs, because as a whole, they benefit from a world where people can feel secure knowing that they won't have to pay for a new sink in the place they just moved into - it gives people reason to choose renting.

fwiw, lots of ppl argue all the time that laws against insider trading are typically capricious and generally unenforceable, and actually stand in the way of market efficiency and price discovery.

yr broader argument (which doesn't require any which-came-firsting about markets/laws, i'll grant) is also false in that if landlords got their way they would get rid of laws that said they had to do repairs or couldn't kick tenants out and they have tried to get together and lobby for that sort of stuff. some, more cynically, would argue that they can either "self-regulate" (just like wall streeters argue) or that the market would take care of it (again, just like wall streeters argue), but others basically have the mindset that "it's my property, i should be able to do what i want, and in the end it lets me charge less rent and people can fix their own damn sinks or whatever and if they don't like it they can go somewhere else."

look, in an otherwise 'normal' market, if landlords didn't have to repair your building you would

a. be less likely to rent an apartment without extensively checking every single hole and vent and plug and would be overall less likely to rent (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons
b. would invest v. v. minimally in any repair you did yourself and would thus leave the place in terrible shape when the next person came
c. the price of the apt would have to be, overall, lower, considering that 'the burden of repair' was not priced into your rent.

it 'makes more sense' for the burden of replacing that sink to be put on the landlord when the state of that sink in 5 years from now affects them but does not affect you. it's not something that's being done because america loves renters, it's done because it's really just more logical for the person who owns the building to be doing the long-term investments in the building and for the cost to be indirectly incorporated in your rent.

and again, that does not mean that *individual* landlords don't want to screw you

once you are already paying rent of course they'll try to get you to pay for anything you're willing to pay for. but as an overarching system it would make very little sense for renters to be paying for repairs, and even building owners know that - thus this system is in place across the country -. not because tenants have particularly strong political rights everywhere, because, on the macro-level it doesn't make sense for tenants to pay for repairs.

I’ve been reading up a lot of this subject cause I find it v. inneresting.

when I say laws ‘create the market’, I meant that our current conception of ‘the rental market’ is dependent on common law, all of which itself is historically/culturally dependent. ‘caveat leesee’ has a long and glorious common law history and it made a lot of sense…in a specific period in history, for a rural society:

“It is reasonable that the common law of leases suffered the same development. Leases, at least long term, were largely agricultural. The parties were on an equal bargaining level and conditions were visible. Actual tillers of the soil were either on a sharecropper basis of little political force or were agricultural laborers whose deplorable economic conditions were notorious but accepted. The dissatisfied leesee could always default. Thus the law saw no necessity of placing a protective cloak around the lessee either for economic or social reasons”

(http://scholar.valpo.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2060&context=vulr"> http://scholar.valpo.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2060&context=vulr)

there was nothing ‘more natural’ or ‘more market’ about the extended ‘caveat leesee’ era. it was a fundamental piece of how the rental market operated, but it was ultimately a historical and cultural artifact. ‘the free market’ does not favor the landlord – the set of rules and laws that had been passed down through common law (and came from historical and political contexts) created a market that favored (certain) landlords. again it’s important to highlight the difference between ‘urban tenants have been historically underserved by the market’ and ‘tenants were historically underserved by a rental market that was created by laws that were not in their favor.’

the tenant revolution of the 60s/70s is framed in terms of a welfare transfer from rich landlords to poor tenants – now they have to pay the entire cost of our sink repairs, before they didn’t - and in isolated very poor markets that can be the case (in short - they can’t transfer any of the cost to people who can’t/won’t pay more.) 48 out of 50 states in the country have passed ‘warranty of habitability’ rulings/laws – (colorado has other regulations, arkansas is really the odd man out: http://lawreview.law.uark.edu/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/15-Norman.pdf) often originally with an intent on some level to help the poor. but even outside of that intent, these laws aren’t going anywhere anytime soon because the market they create is a *better market* and one with rules that reflect the information asymmetries and need for complex and long-term repairs that exist w/ contemporary urban housing.

moreover, ensuring that everyone keeps ‘minimum standards’ can keep a neighborhood from descending into a slum – there is, on some level, a prisoner’s dilemma game - landlords all want to spend the minimum they can possibly spend on repairs and are even more likely to do this is a neighborhood w/ little legal power – but if everyone does this, the entire neighborhood loses value. this article is dated but sorta fleshes that out:
http://duncankennedy.net/documents/Photo%20articles/The%20Effect%20of%20the%20Warranty%20of%20Habitability%20on%20Low%20Income%20Housing_Milking%20and%20Class%20Violence.pdf

there is also that same game except on a macro scale – in an era where everyone but the poor has a choice between renting and buying, having a reliable lower bar of standards and decreasing the system-wide information asymmetry about the need for repairs is going to make renting a comparatively less-risky decision.

in both cases landlords are always going to want to ‘cheat’ at the prisoner’s dilemma game and force you to pay for your own repairs, and scummy landlords do their best. stronger tenant legal protection in this situation only harms *bad* landlords who would otherwise be taking advantage of power disparities and not following the law. within this context strong tenant legal protection can be *good* for good landlords, who are otherwise forced to deal w/ the consequences of people not trusting the rental market.

in an era where most middle class americans have a choice between renting and buying, + when housing supply is so fundamentally constrained by zoning policies, I don’t think the overall effect of the warranty of habitability on supply is negative. it should be seen as anything more than a long overdue attempt by the legal system to set rules based on the realities of contemporary urban economies and not...rural england.

anyway 'lol' mostly just wanted to organize my thoughts

er that first link is "Caveat Lessee" by JS Grimes

"Federal housing policies changed the whole landscape of America, creating the sprawlscapes that we now call home"

^^ that's a pretty straightforward, descriptive sentence. you're reading more into it, because of how you feel about the word "sprawl" and what it connotes to you in the context of your understanding of the suburbs and housing issues. i'm not even trying to argue you're right or wrong, or what sugrue "really" thinks or whatever. just, you know, that we should be able to tell the difference between advocacy and historical description.

― s.clover, Thursday, April 5, 2012 4:33 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is kind of disingenuous, i agree that its straightforward and descriptive but dont see how you can read this and say that theres no 'tude there, as though "sprawlscapes that we now call home" is a loaded phrase only to iatee and urban planning nerds, or generally as though surgrue is not smart enough to understand what message is sent by writing a lil historical account about federal housing policies in the wall street journal

Just doing a little blogging about my neighborhood here but:
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20120410/NEWS/304100022/Commute-boost-Des-Moines-wants-rapid-transit-buses

yessss

cool that looks promising

The commenters on newspaper websites are the worst, worst thugs in our society, btw

how many people do you think would be served by that route?

idk, 15-20k at least? It has the benefit of going past two grocery stores while downtown has no real grocery stores, so I could see people downtown using it for that, or for a bunch of people along the route going downtown

my county has a brt system and it is super awesome. cut that particular trip in half at least! they just need to expand it beyond one route (which i know they are looking to do when they have the $$$, but that may be a ways off).

I just had a thought that college is like how we should live all the time. dense with our friends around us.

you mean like people all up in your shit all the time and someone setting a fire on the floor above you by using a space heater to dry out a towel that had been used to soak up spilled everclear? yeah, fuck living like college.

j/k I like your thought, dayo.

yeah yeah suburban loneliness such a cliche but it really is a thing that america is content with, striving to be like daniel boone with a coonskin cap and settling for having the wild unexplored frontier of 5000 sq ft houses that nobody else but your family lives in

my senior year dorm room had a 20 foot vaulted ceiling with skylights over a 475 square foot living room; the guys who lived in it the year before hung a basketball hoop on a wall and used to play horse

so yeah, I advocate living like I did in college

cool, moving to your place asap and setting up a basketball hoop in your living room

(I still miss that room, even though the bedrooms were tiny)

good series of articles:
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/walking/2012/04/why_don_t_americans_walk_more_the_crisis_of_pedestrianism_.html

college dorm rooms are on the way out, all the newer buildings are apartment-style

thx for the articles iatee. they make for a great read and make me miss walking even more. i hate that i moved from basically one of the most walkable cities in the world to one where you can't do anything without a car.

where do you live now jibe? you used to live in paris, right?

yup. went from paris to kuala lumpur. where everyone uses a car and jokes that if you see someone walking, it has to be a tourist.

ah yeah that place is supposed to be a nightmare

well living here's not that bad, but without a car, which is my case, you're helpless. even with a car you can go everywhere but you'd still get to taste the joys of traffic jams all the time. i feel like this is totally the kind of city you'd love to hate iatee !

http://bettercities.net/article/wow-study-says-dc-streetcar-could-add-10-15-billion-value-14461

http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/04/17/_.html

if the second largest city doesn't fit your premise, best not to mention it

LA is quite walkable it's just enormous

in any case author cited the 'top three cities on walkscore' not 'the three biggest cities in america'

Huh, never would have occurred to me that Paterson NJ was one of the most walkable cities, but when I think about the times I've been there, it kind of makes sense.

from the slate articles on walking

The truth is there are relatively few places in America that today would pass what architect Hal Box has dubbed the “Popsicle Rule”—“a child must be able to walk safely from home to buy a Popsicle within five minutes.”

when I visited china as a kid, I used to walk to the front entrance of the apt complex my relatives lived in and buy popsicles from the popsicle dude within 5 minutes, it was great, unlimited popsicles within 5 minutes

Oddly enough, a lot of northeast NJ is pretty walkable. I grew up in a small town 35 miles east of NYC and you could walk pretty much everywhere ... I'd walk down the street to the German deli to get kaubonbons, to school everyday, and downtown to get thrown up against a wall by an angry Puerto Rican kid. Being able to walk out the door and have adventures all day was such a big part of childhood I can't imagine what it's like to be a kid and trapped in your home because you need to drive everywhere.

That's what bikes are for.

http://blackamericanmoney.com/blackbloggers/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/d25d3a6b450pk011811.jpg

kids in the suburbs my parents live in don't ride bikes anymore, they ride razor scooters with gas engines

as a former kid, that neighborhood sounds awesome.

http://www.tnr.com/blog/the-avenue/102753/why-regions-fail-zoning-extractive-institution

That's very interesting

That article fails to make any clear distinction between and all zoning laws as a broad category, and a few, very particular types of zoning laws which tend to segregate neighborhoods by income. Removing all zoning laws would create chaos of a sort that no city could cope with or plan for. Hatred for zoning ordinances is just another stalking horse for extreme libertarianism, ime.

If I know iatee at all, I think what he's taking out of this are the evils of zoning laws that mandate such large lots and low population density.

Those are fine if you want the land to remain agricultural but for mere residency purposes, smaller lots would be better from both an environmental and a poverty point of view.

Also I have to guess he objects to zoning that keeps even light commercial uses out of residential areas? Or recreational use? Because people that want to live on several acres of land don't want a store or restaurant next to them, either, even though it would be walkable and maybe enriching and good for everyone.

well, houston has no zoning laws and manages to operate w/o complete chaos (still sprawlly because of minimum parking requirements and otherwise poor planning)

I linked this upthread, an interesting comparison with french zoning:
http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2011/09/friday-read-zoning-here-and-in-france.html

there's nothing more natural about american style euclidean zoning

there was a marco rubio quote I saw recently about how 'america is the only country in the world where you can start a business in your garage' - which is funny because really, america is one of the worst places to start a business in your garage. most forms of 'starting a business in your garage' are illegal.