I love cities and grew up in Brooklyn, but I don’t think they always produce the social interactions you describe. The anomie of an apartment block is an old cliche. I’m currently living in Provincetown, which only has about 2,500 people in the off-season, and it’s the most tightly knit community I’ve ever been a part of. The houses are definitely close together and everything is walkable and bike-friendly, but on a much smaller scale than. Towns across the US used to be more like this, and villages in England (where I’ve also lived) still are. The issue isn’t cities vs suburbs, it’s about making all communities more dense, livable and human-scale, rather than building them for cars.
I totally agree that there's a difference between cities — Cincinnati, where I lived for four years before D.C., spawned far fewer interactions because it is so much more car-centric; however, pockets of the city, like Hyde Park, are super walkable and did often lead to them. And D.C., of course, is much more walkable (and bikeable!) than Hyde Park.
If I had more space, in this article, I would've dove more into the idea of a 15-minute city, which is more of what I think of when I think of the idealized "city." WaPo has an interesting read I came across when researching about this concept applied to, in all places, the suburbs. https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/11/28/15-minute-city/
Anyways, I appreciate your thoughts, and agree that we need more communities that you describe. And thank you for reading!
It's worth giving some credit to Washington, D.C. (and certain of its suburbs, particularly Arlington), which has done a decent job of building the housing units to actually allow people to live in the City in the last fifteen years or so. It's no Houston or Austin, but it also is not my sclerotic, expensive, New York. If we want to encourage people to live in cities and have the bike-sharing, park-hanging, productive-dynamic lifestyles that we and so many others love, we need to actually permit the building of enough housing to accommodate the people who would want to live there. Otherwise, those same people, those same potential neighbors, colleagues, and friends, will end up in Houston or--god forbid--Ashburn, where we've allowed new houses to be built.
Yeah, I think an untapped article is certainly how unaffordable it is to live in places that are transit accessible (which is probably my favorite part of living in a city) and how we need to encourage development, and therefore more units, in those same areas to bring down the price of rent (that simplifies everything, but you get it). I think a lot about this Bloomberg Opinion article about how Arlington, VA, absolutely nailed it in terms of building a walkable corridor with dense, mixed-use development https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-11-18/how-arlington-virginia-became-the-safest-place-in-america
Also, you know this, but in Zachary Schrag's book on the history of the Metro he lays out the different approaches between Fairfax and Arlington and how we now have places like the Vienna station super underused because it's surrounded by single-family homes as opposed to the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor.
Great point. The premium—both in quality of life and, unfortunately, in rent—for living next to transit is real. Some cities and transit agencies working hand-in-hand by funneling some of that rent premium to subsidize further station and line construction, e.g., Hong Kong, in a virtuous cycle of expansion.
Closer to home, though, Vienna could have rezoned around the station any time in the last 30 years after seeing Arlington’s success next door, right? There are many models—we just don’t, generally speaking, adopt any of the good ones.
I love cities and grew up in Brooklyn, but I don’t think they always produce the social interactions you describe. The anomie of an apartment block is an old cliche. I’m currently living in Provincetown, which only has about 2,500 people in the off-season, and it’s the most tightly knit community I’ve ever been a part of. The houses are definitely close together and everything is walkable and bike-friendly, but on a much smaller scale than. Towns across the US used to be more like this, and villages in England (where I’ve also lived) still are. The issue isn’t cities vs suburbs, it’s about making all communities more dense, livable and human-scale, rather than building them for cars.
I totally agree that there's a difference between cities — Cincinnati, where I lived for four years before D.C., spawned far fewer interactions because it is so much more car-centric; however, pockets of the city, like Hyde Park, are super walkable and did often lead to them. And D.C., of course, is much more walkable (and bikeable!) than Hyde Park.
If I had more space, in this article, I would've dove more into the idea of a 15-minute city, which is more of what I think of when I think of the idealized "city." WaPo has an interesting read I came across when researching about this concept applied to, in all places, the suburbs. https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/11/28/15-minute-city/
Anyways, I appreciate your thoughts, and agree that we need more communities that you describe. And thank you for reading!
It's worth giving some credit to Washington, D.C. (and certain of its suburbs, particularly Arlington), which has done a decent job of building the housing units to actually allow people to live in the City in the last fifteen years or so. It's no Houston or Austin, but it also is not my sclerotic, expensive, New York. If we want to encourage people to live in cities and have the bike-sharing, park-hanging, productive-dynamic lifestyles that we and so many others love, we need to actually permit the building of enough housing to accommodate the people who would want to live there. Otherwise, those same people, those same potential neighbors, colleagues, and friends, will end up in Houston or--god forbid--Ashburn, where we've allowed new houses to be built.
Yeah, I think an untapped article is certainly how unaffordable it is to live in places that are transit accessible (which is probably my favorite part of living in a city) and how we need to encourage development, and therefore more units, in those same areas to bring down the price of rent (that simplifies everything, but you get it). I think a lot about this Bloomberg Opinion article about how Arlington, VA, absolutely nailed it in terms of building a walkable corridor with dense, mixed-use development https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-11-18/how-arlington-virginia-became-the-safest-place-in-america
Also, you know this, but in Zachary Schrag's book on the history of the Metro he lays out the different approaches between Fairfax and Arlington and how we now have places like the Vienna station super underused because it's surrounded by single-family homes as opposed to the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor.
Great point. The premium—both in quality of life and, unfortunately, in rent—for living next to transit is real. Some cities and transit agencies working hand-in-hand by funneling some of that rent premium to subsidize further station and line construction, e.g., Hong Kong, in a virtuous cycle of expansion.
Closer to home, though, Vienna could have rezoned around the station any time in the last 30 years after seeing Arlington’s success next door, right? There are many models—we just don’t, generally speaking, adopt any of the good ones.