Long ago Fairfax City was a suburb. Then the bulldozers came along and made the City of Fairfax part of an amorphous megaloposis. But that by itself wasn't fatal. Suburbs can survive it the leadership allows it.

Then came the Honorable David L. Meyer, elected to the city council with the help and physical resources of his employer, the U.S. Department of Labor.

This is what we got: An outspoken pro-slavery Civil War buff who has milked the Americans With Disabilities Act to record levels because of his disability:

     Many years ago one of his testicles was removed.

So instead of getting on with his life after all this time and just being happy that it kept him out of the Army and more importantly, out of Viet Nam, Meyer has found the most innovative ways to use the ADA to get things like a large corner office with a stunning view of the Washington Monument and free parking, at a cost of over $300 per month.

With elected officials like that, global warming and the energy crisis are the least of suburbias worries.

in fact I have it on DVD, and I probably need to dig it out to play it again.  My fiancee stumbled upon Kunstler's website over the weekend, and found it pretty depressing.

If you still have the DVD, watch the bonus features.  There is some really campy and comical archival stuff from the 1950's, including a cartoon from the American Petroleum Institute.

Kunstler can be quite the polemicist.  Stirring the pot as it were, and while some of the things he says may be a bit over the top, in part I suspect it is to get people's attention.

Long Emergency is indeed a polemic, but generaly spot on. A rather lengthier but still depressing example of same-idea is Diamond's Collapse. They have the same message, I think: humanity has brought itself to the edge, we are destroying our own foundations for our future living, and the only thing we have going for us is that we supposedly have the intelligence to understand this dilemma and some how short-circuit our final destruction. I keep thinking of Easter Island (one of Diamond's historical examples); as the Easter Islanders did to their little speck of wooded paradise we are doing to our planet, our island in space, our own spaceship Earth.

It may be that this one incipient catastrophe trumps every other so-called burning "issue."  

What do people not understand about the fact that we cannot sustain the sprawling wasteland that northern virginia is turning into? We have been warned repeatedly about this. I guess there will be a few who regret opting for the 3 car garage on the front of the mcmansion in Gainesville.  

It is literally every city in the United States that has created this unsustainable suburbia.  Some are better than others, of course, and some are constrained geographically.  But all cities have this.

And for that matter it isn't limited to the United States.  There are other countries around the world that also have this.  China is rushing as fast as possible to emulate us, for example.

Fairfax County has pursued a scheme of snob zoning for 50 years.  Most of the acreage of the county is zoned for housing at less than 1 house per acre.

The result is that large numbers of people who work in FFX commute from Winchester, Martinsburg, WV, Hagerstown MD and Harriaburg, PA.

This is a problem caused by misguided local government regulation.

If it was just Fairfax snob zoning, then they would live in Loudon or PW and not WV.

Loudoun, PWC, Fauquier, Spotsylavania, Stafford and Clarke have each adopted an ever more exquisitely restrictive form of snob zoning to the detriment of the Commonwealth and the region. It started in Fairfax and moved south and west.  It will continue until the General Assembly intervenes.

have legitimate reasons for not wanting sprawl however.  In the end, what's the difference between snob zoning and trying to prevent more sprawl?  In the end they are just trying to cork the bottle and it just forces the development to go elsewhere.

In the long term, it will be Fairfax and Arlington counties that will have to re-absorb the population from the exurbs..

For example, Loudoun can't say that it wants 120,000 new employees (as it does in its comp plan) but not provide 60,000 new single family houses and 15,000 multi-family units which every demographer says those jobs will require.

Local governments are not allowed to "cork the bottle" and "beggar their neighbor."

State law already requires local governments to provide in their comp plan for all of the housing needs of their employers and a share of regional housing demand.

None of the outer counties meet this requirement.

In the long run the employers move to Winchester, Martinsburg, hagerstown, Harrisburg which hurts Va's economy or exacerbates  traffic and pollution problems. Or they go to North Carolina where jobs and housing stay in balance.

What is it you're proposing that the GA do?  And suppose the GA had all the power it needed and the will to implement your vision, what specifically are you seeing as the solution?

it delegates it to local government.

If local government continues to employ snob zoning, there will be law suits, as in Pa, NJ, Ma and other states, that compel local governments to provide enough housing opportunities for the number of people who work in their jurisdiction.

The most famous case is the Mount Laurel decision in NJ.

following what you'd like to happen.  

I take it you don't want "snob zoning" (is your definition of snob zoning 1+ acre lots?  something else? please define).  But, assuming we get rid of "snob zoning", what would you like to replace it with?

A locality's comp plan and zoning scheme must provide housing for all the employees that will work in the non-residential space authorized by the comp. plan and zoning ordinance.

Existing Va case law says that 3 acre zoning is snob zoning but lot size ain't the issue.

The number of single family dwellings and multi-family units per job is the issue: balance.    

But in the end it makes no sense whatsoever for people to be commuting from this far out, and that was the point of the movie, really.  You either need to have jobs and housing essentially co-located in the same general area, or good transit to get people to jobs elsewhere.

and does nothing for the 70% of trips not related to commuting.

Furthermore, for transit to be cost effective requires densities that snob zoning adherents will not tolerate: 10-12 dwelling untis per acre for miles around each station.  Otherwise, the subsidies choke local budgets (as Loudoun will find out when Metro gets extended).

in the sprawl model.  Of course it is, because the densities are too low to support anything but individual car-based transportation.  The whole point of "The End of Suburbia" is that the sprawl model is completely unsustainable.  Among other things, what we need now is smart growth, aka "high density development." Then, transit and high-speed rail links between high density hubs will be absolutely crucial.  And that's no joke! :)

to live in the high-rise style mutli-family housing now being plan around Metro stations.  For more than 50 years through all kinds of economic times and troubles, every survey has shown that 80% of Americans want a single family detached house and they'll put up with high gas prices to do it.

We can get rid of the internal combustion engine but we, as a nation, are not giving up our single occupancy vehicles.  They provides autonomy and freedom which will not be given up readily and transit takes too long.

So, yes, transit is an extremely expensive, ineffective joke that serves too small a percentage of total trips for the total costs imposed on society.

 

We have a winner!

Whether you meant to or not, you've nailed the problem.  It's that people have, more or less, been getting what they want.  

I'm not sure if your numbers are completely accurate (no sources) but they're good enough for arguments sake.  Most people don't want to live in high density.  Most people don't want to travel in high density (i.e. mass transit).  And for the most part, they've been getting that for the past 50 years.  And when they haven't gotten it, they've indicated in surveys that they at least wanted it.

And therein lies the point.  It's not about what we've been getting, or about what are currently getting, or what we want to get, it's about what model is best for our society when everything (that includes the environment) are factored in.  And this suburban model may be what we want, but it's far, far from ideal when viewed from an encompassing systemic point of view.

A simple analogy - many people like fast food or other unhealthy dietary options.  And they like to eat huge quantities of it.  They indicate they like it by their actual habits - and I'm sure there are surveys which would also back it up.  Yet the choice of unhealthy eating habits is ultimately very bad for the individual.  

What people do, or say they want to do, is certainly not a good indicator of what should be done.  Just because they want it doesn't make it right.  And so you've correctly identified the problem.  Thank you.

that gets the left in trouble every time.

The preference that Americans have for single family detached housing can actually be traced all through American history, through colonial times to as far back as Roman times. See Crabgrass Frontiers by Jackson and Street Car Suburbs by Warner.

But that doesn't matter because you know better and you believe you get to decide that something else is more important than the freedom of choice to live where one wants in the type of housing one chooses.  That right to choose is actually a protected constitutional right!

But, hey, we're throwing away constitutional rights away in the Democratic party today, so let's take the freedom to travel and add it to the bonfire along with the 4th Amendment.

Thank you, commissar, the totalitarian state has arrived in the U.S. I'm glad I didn't miss the  memo.

"The End of Suburbia."  I think it does a great job at showing how people didn't just "want" suburbia, it was manufactured and sold to them in the context of huge implicit and explicit subsidies.  In other words, people did not - and DO not - make their decisions in a vacuum, but in the context of a variety of factors. In the case of suburbia's growth, there certainly was NOT a level playing field as the oil companies, car companies, etc. worked to destroy the cities and convince people to live in "the country."  

that Americans preference for single family detached housing is an induced demand created by the oil companies and other evil doers.

Sorry, bambi. It ain't so.

Americans have demostrated a preference for single family detached housing and individual transportation autonomy dating  through colonial times back to Roman times. See sources cited above.

These kinds of glib, slick screeds get us nowhere in eliminating the internal combustion engine and snob zoning.  

It doesn't matter what people want.  I want to play 1st base for the Red Sox - doesn't mean it is going to happen.

As oil and gasoline prices go higher and higher, living way out in the suburbs will not be affordable.  Doesn't matter what people want or prefer.  It just won't be doable.

it's not sustainable either from an environmental or national security perspective. End of story.

as we send hundreds of billions of dollars a year overseas to pay for oil, and as the average household gets nailed by energy costs of $4, $5, $6 (how high can it go?) per gallon.

as we send hundreds of billions of dollars a year overseas to pay for oil, and as the average household gets nailed by energy costs of $4, $5, $6 (how high can it go?) per gallon.

Americans historically lived in two types of places: cities and farms.  The boom in suburbia took place after World War II, driven (literally) by government policies that heavily subsidized and otherwise encouraged sprawl, while decimating our cities. You can stick your head in the sand and not believe that, but you're just plain wrong.  

By the way, "Americans back to Roman times?"  I never knew... :)