Comments on: Surprisingly Friendly Suburbs

By: Eric Schliesser

Eric Schliesser — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 03:54:10 +0000

Does the study correct for class or other economic indicators?

By: Robin Hanson

Robin Hanson — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 21:43:45 +0000

This is a noteworthy result, but I teach Urban Economics on occasion, and it still seems that the weight of the evidence is that overall density is too low, rather than too high. It is not obvious that whether or not you know your immediate neighbors is associated with much of a market failure, whereas there are other market failures more clearly associated with low density. Interestingly, instead of correcting for this bias, for the most part government land use policy pushes lower, rather than higher, density. See:
http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2005/11/not_enough_toge.html

By: MCP2012

MCP2012 — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 20:55:46 +0000

Interesting results, Hal. Echoing the late Jane Jacobs (with a pinch of F.A. Hayek thrown in too boot), however, it is arguably the fiasco of (so-called) “urban renewal” and “urban planning” that has screwed-up the *urban* social ecology and its overlapping & evolving “spontaneous orders”, and exascerbated “flight” out into the suburbs over the last 30-50 yrs. That said, however, it IS nice to see some *defense* of suburban (so-called) “sprawl”. Perhaps the answer that will evolve over the next 10-40 yrs is movement(s) toward sophisticated (NON-anthillish) archologies of various sorts, which would provide many of the amenities of the suburbs and yet also many of the logistical niceties of more concentrated “urban” social ecologies. Nanotech and robotech would seem to be congenial/convivial to such an evolution. We shall see. (I myself am, for the nonce, definitely a suburbanite, btw, . )