This story originally appeared on StrongTowns.org with the title, “Why Building in San Francisco, D.C. and NYC Will Never Solve Our Housing Problem.” We are sharing it in two parts.
Our nation’s major cities have many problems, but they are the problems associated with mature places.
These are not the same problems experienced throughout most of America.
There is no reason for housing to be expensive in this country. Two critical insights about how cities grow, drawn from the growth pattern of all organic systems, can help us break out of the housing trap and rapidly build the housing we need.
This is my daughter, Chloe. Her birth was probably the single most important event in my life. It changed me. I love this kid.
As an infant, there was so much to adore about her. She was innocent and precious, a bundle of potential. I loved snuggling with her and watching her learn new things about the world. Yet, in many ways, infant Chloe was also really challenging. She woke up multiple times a night, so my sleep was always off. Like every baby, she spit up, got ear infections and needed her diaper changed continuously. Suddenly, my days revolved around tending to her urgent needs, on her schedule. Having an infant was periods of beautiful and peaceful calm punctuated by moments of frantically responding to a timebomb that randomly detonated.
Of course, Chloe grew. Her sleep patterns became more normal — to my great relief — and she stopped spitting up, needing diapers and getting frequent ear infections. She became a toddler and then a young child. I loved this phase of Chloe, too. She was an early talker and we had so much fun together, laughing and dancing and just being together. I remember one time she couldn’t sleep and, since I’m a night person, I took her outside to look at the stars. I was in love with this little girl, yet all she was at that point was a spark with a ton of potential.
But let’s be clear: That beautiful little girl was also a monster. She hated transitions. If she was busy coloring and it was time to go somewhere, if you didn’t give her enough time to mentally shift, she would have a major meltdown. This was difficult at home and horrific out in public. She loathed going to bed and so we had a war, of sorts, each evening. She had a very strong personality — “I do” was her early mantra — so good luck getting her shoes on or doing anything else on a schedule that wasn’t hers.
My beautiful Chloe continued to grow, from early childhood to school age, pre-teen to teenager, all the way to adulthood. Each of these phases was like the early ones. There were so many things to love and I cherish every memory of them, all the beautiful moments adding up to a decade of growth and change. Yet, each phase also had its separate trials and special challenges. Each was a beautiful burden, emphasis on beautiful.
This is what it takes to create a mature human. Decades of beauty and struggle. Times of joy and love with moments of frustration, bewilderment and even pain. Being a parent to Chloe, and to my second daughter Stella, is the most important and consequential thing I’ve ever done. This is the fulfillment of my existence, my telos. I think my wife would say the same thing.
I want to draw two insights relating human development — or the growth of any organic system — to the way cities evolve. These insights are critical to understanding America’s housing crisis and our response to it.
Before I do that, let me give you a similar narrative, but for my city of Brainerd. Here it is in its infant phase, a little collection of pop-up shacks built by some lumberjacks in the middle of the woods of Central Minnesota.
You can just imagine the excitement of the people building that billiard hall, the hardware store and the other buildings pictured there. They had to have felt the potential of the place. They believed in its future.
They also would have been really frustrated. No running water. An outhouse behind the building for going to the bathroom. It was cold, smelly and coarse. The people who built those buildings did not aspire for the city to stay that way. They looked forward to better times. They were working for better times.
And their effort produced those better times. This is the exact same street just 35 years later. It’s the same city, the same DNA, transformed into a more mature form. There is a circus parade going through town — how delightful — and people are lining the streets to get a look at it. The shacks are gone as is the untended mud in front of the buildings. Instead, people stand on elevated wooden sidewalks, with a real street at their front and two-story buildings at their backs. Compared to 1870, this city had matured nicely.
Yet, it was far from perfect…
Read Part Two, tomorrow…