Comments ( 27 )

• The 200 highrises built in the city from 1999-2008 suggest that at least some people want something different than what sprawl has to offer.

  ‘Nuff for me..

• I remember reading about survey which found people preferred “traditional” neighborhoods, but generally couldn’t afford them, which is way the far flung exurbs do well; price. When I worked in the burbs, some of my colleagues actually moved closer in because there were too few kids in their subdivisions.

• It’s also possible that more people buy in “sprawl-esque” subdivisions because that’s what developers reflexively build these days.

  I kind of wonder what people’s buying habits would be if 80% of developers in the US actually built complete, mixed-use, walkable suburban communities

• tup,

  A while back I spent some time with a major suburban developer who’d had experience throughout the country.

  When I expresed admiration for the walkable mixed-use portion of his project his response (as close as I can recall) was: “Glad you like them. Nobody else does. They’re our worst sellers.” He went on to contend that similar projects had consistently failed throughout the country. His take: developers were hypnotized, against their better judgment, by starry-eyed new urbanists.

  In the highly competitive sphere of suburban developers customes are providing constant feedback – by buying or not – on what their wants are. Few, it seems, want what you want.

  Just curious – now that you’re living in north suburban Chicago (i.e., Kenosha), what type of living quarters did you and Mrs tup opt for?

• This is where the NIMBYs who are against density and high rise buildings aught to move to instead of standing in the way of the economic development of the city.

• I thought this post, by the very thoughtful blogger ‘the urbanophile’, pertains well to this discussion. I’ll let you make up your own minds:

  http://www.urbanophile.com/2010/02/04/the-power-of-greenfield-economics/

• The NIMBYS, who prevent the construction of dense, transit-oriented medium and high-rise developments in areas where people want to live in such developments, are in the forefront of the fight FOR urban sprawl.

• tup,

  The economic analysis provided in the article you link to is pathetically naive and wrong-headed. It doesn’t square at all with the realities of building on a “blank slate” on new territory, and it ignores many of the most important considerations that actually drive developers.

  The notion that legacy costs are inapplicable in outer-ring suburbs is true to some extent – but irrelevant to taxes. The fact is that taxes are frequently higher in the newer outer-ring suburbs than in established ones because of the infrastructure that needs to be built to support development, e.g. new schools, libraries, parks, 911 centers, law enforcement expansions, etc. etc. etc. Most of these newly expanded towns are extremely inefficient at providing that infrastructure, resulting in inflated costs.

  One small, but highly representative data point. My son bought a new home in a far-out suburb in Lake County in a large new development. His property taxes are more than double what they would be on a comparably-priced home in an inner-ring suburb in Cook County or in the city.

  Again, using my son’s village as an example, the notion that there is no legacy culture to deal with would be ridiculed by the subdivision residents who run head-on into an entrenched small-town culture that is not about to cut them any slack in any way. By the way – from reading the article do you think its author has any clue at all what an institution is?

  Efficiencies of large-lot development? “The planning and zoning process is pretty much the same whether you are building five houses or five hundred.” That statement is totally divorced from reality. Totally.

  I could go on at length, but the article is too muddled in its thinking to merit much of a rebuttal. The author clearly knows next to nothing about the economics of suburban development.

• Joe, having read your arguments versus Aaron Renn’s (spend some time reading his blog before leaping blindfolded to conclusions, as you often seem to do), I think he would rip you to shreds. What’s more funny is that you are so full of yourself that you actually have the gall to call a person who pretty much agrees with 99% of your viewpoint on this issue as “knowing next to nothing”.

  In fact, I dare you to go right ahead and post what you just posted here as a comment to his blog. I don’t think you have the ability to defend most of your rhetorical nonsense against a far more nuanced, thoughtful, and practical-minded individual as Mr. Renn who, unlike you, is actually not too venerable to still see both sides of an issue. Prepare to arm yourself with real evidence as opposed to more anecdotes that involve your children. I’ll watch you from the sidelines. This should be interesting.

• tup,

  I’ll take it on faith and your word that Mr. Renn is a very accomplished individual. He was a partner at Accenture, which is a serious accomplishment.

  Reading his blog, beyond the post you linked, isn’t going to make it onto my priority list. Nor is getting into an extended back-and-forth with him. Perhaps I’ve badly misjudged him based on a single blog post – but it was a truly awful post. I guess we’ve all had those.

  I already spend far too much time responding to people whose only knowledge of development is based on attitudes rather than experience or knowledge. Don’t need another one.

  There are often more than two sides to an issue – and some of them are wholly illegitimate. It’s pretty pointless to engage proponents of that type of an argument in discussion.

  I’m armed with real evidence but not terribly motivated to spend time looking it up and providing cites to it to someone who, in my experience, fequently distorts it or fails to understand its import. I offered an anecdote instead. If you had any serious interest in the facts you could look them up.

  A brief read of Renn’s bio – a self-anointed “opinion-leading urban success strategist and writer on a mission” – leaves little doubt that his Google Alerts will lead him here. He’s welcome to respond to my take.

• Yeah, I can see that you’re far too busy to waste your time with Aaron Renn. Semi-retirement and driving around the city making videos is SO DEMANDING!

  The diversity of viewpoints expressed by the community interacting with Aaron Renn probably isn’t suitable for you anyhow. Of course, I’m positive Aaron would happily engage & welcome your differing viewpoint, which is more than can be said about you.

• tup,

  I’m grateful that you’ve updated me on my workload. Until your comment I hadn’t realized how much time I had on my hands.

  It’s been more than 40 years since I dropped out of a Master’s program in urban planning at UW in Milwaukee. Apart from the grubby but necessary details of infrastructure development it seemed a pointless profession to me then and still does. I see its concerns and objectives, in Eliot’s words, as “remaining a perpetual possibility only in a world of speculation” – and therefore holding little interest for me.

  I love real cities, and shy away from imaginary ones. Fortunately for all of us real cities evolve in response to people’s needs and wants rather than the visions of planners and theorists.

• Easy to say that from the comfort of your little-trafficked website.

  I dare you to comment on Aaron’s blog and say the same stupid, ignorant thing you said above there. He’s not an animal, he won’t hurt you. He may ask you to defend your accusation of calling his ideas “imaginary”, which is probably why you won’t do it. How full of yourself you truly are..

• Little-trafficked? I think we do well considering how narrow an audience we set out to serve – primarily new construction buyers in the city of Chicago.

  Planning theorists have been – rightly – generally ignored. Where their ideas have been implemented they’ve largely failed. The theorists’ response is, typically, that people are ignorant and don’t understand their own best interests like we do. Another response: our ideas weren’t properly implemented.

  One small illustration – the fiasco of pedestrian malls that planners fantasized as a way to revive downtowns. Remember the State Street Mall, tup, and its sorry fate? And similar instances around the country?

  I choose to spend my time serving my customers and my audience rather than engaging in futile discussions with someone else’s. Not because I don’t “dare” to engage, but because I’m acting in what I perceive to be my self-interest. I’m doing what people do – what brings most planners theories to naught.

• Yeah sure, Joe, I can see that. It’s not like you for whatever reason started an obviously contentious thread called “The Fight Against Urban Sprawl in Chicago.” You’re too busy “serving your customers.” I buy that.

• Joe you weren’t nearly so hesitant to jump on another site’s comments in regards to this article:
  https://yochicago.com/call-of-the-wild-realtor-bashing-in-action/13741/

  Why don’t you go ahead and post your comment over at Urbanophile – it’s not like you’d be obligated to respond to him any further past making your initial points. Aren’t you interested in having a dialog and hearing how people respond? Or do you want some kind of echochamber?

  All of this makes me wonder what you consider to be good sources of information – any time someone posts a link that you interpret as going against your worldview, it is derided as not being up to your personal standards. What do you consider to be good blogs? I know when I posted something from Calculated Risk a couple of weeks ago, a site which you’ve used in your newsfeed, it was brushed off.

  I’d also be interested in your earlier point re: large lot development efficiencies of scale. Intuitively it makes sense that dividing a large lot into many lots in one fell swoop would be less expensive on a per unit basis than purchasing many smaller lots and getting them individually rezoned on a piecemeal basis. But this may be my youthful naivete. But poster Ironwood on the Urbanophile seems to concur, and since his experience comes from being a general counsel to a development company and not from merely talking to your son, I’d be inclined to believe him.

• br_add,

  CribChatter‘s a local site whose coverage overlaps ours to some extent, which is why I chime in there periodically, generally in response to wild assaults on the industry or on one of my clients. I don’t participate there on a regular basis.

  Calculated Risk is an outstanding source – as a general proposition. Urbanophile may generally be too, for all I know, for people who are interested in its subject matter – as I’ve noted, I haven’t spent much time there, and don’t plan to. I reacted to a single post that I considered ill-informed and that may not represent the site as a whole.

  You mentioned our news feed. Here’s a link to an xml file at Google Docs which lists all the current sources for our Chicago Real Estate News page. You can download the file and open it in a spreadsheet. You’ll note that I’ve added The Urbanophile to the list.

  Given the large number of sources in our feed and the varying viewpoints expressed in those sources it’s obvious that we’ve made a serious effort to expose people to a range of views. Note also that I’m not the only person selcting items to be included in the feed.

  Merely talking to my son? That’s wildly unfair, and you know it. I used a simple data point out of laziness and an unwillingness to spend time citing facts that tup would only ignore, distort or jeer at.

  I’ve also represented developers as an attorney – many years ago. I talk to developers all the time. I read widely on a lot of related topics.

  In brief, here’s the reality of large lot subdivision development. A developer acquires or options a parcel of land. It’s often a blank slate, e.g. farm land.

  The acquisition is the start of a years-long (sometimes decades long) process, with an uncertain outcome, of having the land approved for development. The developer has carrying costs or option-extension costs, legal fees, architectural and engineering fees, a variety of environmental studies to pay for, travel expenses, etc. etc. etc. Those costs are incurred before the project’s approved and they’re generally substantial.

  After approval the developer has large infrastructure costs – roads, water, sewer, grading, etc. In most places the developer must pay hefty “impact fees” exacted by local governments for a variety of purposes or under a variety of pretexts. It’s not uncommon for these fees to add 10s of thousands of dollars to the cost of each housing unit. Local governments also frequently demand set-asides of land for parks, schools and other purposes, running up the per-unit cost.

  In smaller or infill projects the time-frame prior to building is almost always much shorter and infrastructure is largely in place, resulting in lower costs and less risk. Balancing this is a generally higher per-unit land acquisition cost.

  This is a highly simplified view of the issues – but, I believe, far more realistic than the Urbanophile view.

  Is this helpful?

• http://www.urbanophile.com/2010/02/04/the-power-of-greenfield-economics/comment-page-1/#comment-7166

• tup,

  Your link is the perfect illustration of why I don’t waste my time at sites like that. Let me quote from your link:

  “TUP: I don’t want to say that Joe Zekas is lying, so I’ll just assume he talked to the wrong developers. In general, mixed-use new urbanist developments sell faster and for higher prices than single-use developments.”

  Now, you – or anyone – show me how that quote is responsive to anything – anything – I’ve said. Or how it fairly characterizes anything I’ve said.

  And yet – after blatantly misrepresenting my point the author charitably says I might not be lying but only “talked to the wrong developers.”

  I have little patience for reading-challenged fools. Thanks for clarifying who I’d be dealing with over there. Here’s a link to the bio of the commenter who challenges my knowledge and experience – a 21 year-old first-year grad student in math who’s only recently moved to the US.

  You don’t do your credibility any good with this kind of cite either, but you do make it easy for people to understand where you’re coming from.

• You’ve “illustrated” nothing. One person in that site is a 21 year old grad student and you discount the entire blog? I wonder how many 21 year olds have visited YoChicago–should we go ahead and call this website lacking in “credibility”?

  Unbelievable. Somebody disputes your rationale and you demand an apology, yet you actually expect anyone to take you seriously?

  The bull just jeeps accumulating

• tup,

  You’re disgracing yourself iwth your distortions of my views.

  The writer didn’t dispute my rationale – he blatantly misrepresented my position and suggested along the way that I might be lying.

  If you had any integrity, you’d call him out on it, since you baited the response. If the site’s proprietor had any integrity, he’d call out the writer on it. If any of the other commenters on the site had any integrity … It’s not just one writer; it’s the “community” there.

  Aren’t you even the least bit ashamed of your behavior in citing what you did as proof of anything?

• You call for integrity but you show none of it yourself. You’ve reached an all time low by going to another person’s blog and demanding an apology. For what?

  Completely indefensible behavior. If the idea of a casual internet discussion about issues doesn’t register in your head, then don’t start provocative discussions like this. If you can’t handle people disagreeing with you, then shut your trap.

  Want me to apologize too? Go ahead and ask, I’ve got a response waiting…

• tup,

  When someone suggests, based on a misrepresentation of my views, that I might be lying about my experience, an apology is in order. It should be obvious that I know enough about the environment I operate in to understand that it won’t be forthcoming.

  You’ve amply demonstrated your inability to comprehend that.

• This can go on forever.

  In the interest of moving on…

• It is true that in Chicagoland property taxes are often higher in the suburbs than they are in the city. However, when assessing taxes you need to consider the overall fiscal structure of government. In Illinois. local option sales tax is a significant source of revenue. Many suburbs have much lower sales taxes than the city of Chicago, particularly if you are in the supplemental McPier tax district. Chicago city sticker taxes, are higher. Parking tickets are a “cost of doing business”, etc.

  Part of the “legacy costs” of the city is its underperforming school district which derives from being disproportionately home to the poor, something most greenfield school districts don’t have. Thus middle and upper class residents end up paying for private schooling, a major expense.

  The cost of development also makes housing expensive in Chicago vs. outlying areas. (The median home price may not reflect this as there is plenty of cheap housing in off neighborhoods or which require major renovations, another part of the legacy costs).

  The choice is not necessarily one of city vs. suburbs. One reason people move to Oswego is because they can’t afford Naperville.

  For what it’s worth, I agree that the majority of the people prefer suburban living. I’ve never argued otherwise.

• Aaron,

  You’ve ducked the thrust of my critique of your article, which was that it seriously overstated the economic benefits of greenfield development and studiously denied the very real economic burdens associated with it.

  The city vs suburbs non-property tax burden comparison, on balance probably favors the city. Suburban sales tax rates are lower, but few suburbanites purchase enough taxable goods to offset the higher property taxes. Not to mention the typically higher water and sewer fees, waste collection fees, and other use fees in the suburbs. Whatever – do people really analyze the comprehensive tax burden in fine detail when deciding between greenfield and city development?

  The comparison is beside the point: your contention was that legacy costs are lower in greenfield development. I viewed that as naively simplistic, since the costs of filling in the blank slate of a greenfield development with necessary infrastructure and services are substantial.

  The notion that maintenance costs are lower on a new suburban home than on an older city one is rather strange. Last time I checked the typical city dwellers doesn’t need to pay for snow removal from their driveway, to replenish the salt in a water softener, to maintain a lawn or purchase the equipment and supplies to do so, etc.

  Have we mentioned the costs of the two or more cars that suburbanites often need and city dwellers often don’t?

  I could go on, and I have no doubt that you can provide equally compelling counter-factuals and also go on. But then, again, that’s not the point.

  I believe you started with flawed assumptions and drew radically flawed conclusions from them. You contend, based on your analysis of greenfield economics, that “as a general rule, it seems that only the most affluent suburbs have staying power.”

  Chicago, like every major city, has many inner- and outer-ring suburbs that are not among the most affluent but that clearly have staying power. And they all were once the “greenfields” whose attractions, deficits and fate you completely misconstrue.

• The 2010 census – not just population totals, but the socioeconomic composition, migration patterns, travel/commute choices, and all of the little details – compared not only within Chicagoland but also to peer metropolitan regions – will give us the best opportunity to actually test Mr Zekas’ hypothesis that sprawl has won.

  No doubt the suburbs will have added more residents than the city (if the city even had a net gain), but the devil will be in the details of the composition of households in each little area, aggregated and sliced and diced.

  Educated guess: sprawl is still ‘winning’ by most measures, but the rate at which it’s winning/clobbering the urban lifestyle is slowing down such that a future turning point could be forecast. That said, the cost/price advantage of living in the boonies suggests an inherent value premium on the actual dirt inside city limits rather than halfway to Iowa – something for the urbanist-minded to cheer. Key question there is, how much of that urban land value was speculative in nature, versus based on sound supply/demand economics? Just because the population of the city is stagnant doesn’t mean the market isn’t placing a higher underlying value on that city land, which has some pretty interesting implications from a sociological or consumer choice standpoint.