If the past 50 years or so of housing development has largely been focused on suburban sprawl, cookie-cutter cul-de-sac communities and a car in every driveway, then the next 50 years is supposed to be all about so-called “smart growth.”
The new philosophy emphasizes clusters of increased residential density, centered around shared open space and close proximity to amenities including shopping, entertainment and – most importantly – efficient mass transit to nearby job centers and business districts.
The idea is to foster a more urban lifestyle, one less reliant on the automobile, that is both more environmentally sound and more convenient.
On paper, the fundamental notion of smart growth makes perfect sense. In an era when people are brought closer together through digital communications than ever before, it only makes sense to actually bring them closer through intelligently planned urban centers. Wild space is preserved, carbon footprints are reduced, a greater sense of community is created and we all grow together.
But in practice, as is often the case, the ideas that look so good on paper are marred by a series of unintended – and extremely unfortunate, if not uncomfortable – consequences.
A recent report published by the Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy at Northeastern University, and excerpted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston in its most recent edition of New England Community Developments, highlights several of the unintended consequences too often resulting from new mass transit development.
First and foremost, the report notes, is that development of mass transit – so critical in establishing momentum for the kind of mixed-use development at the center of the smart growth philosophy – frequently changes the surrounding neighborhood. And those changes are, more often than not, not for the better.
Bringing mass transit to a previously underserved area, especially low-income, primarily minority, renter-heavy neighborhoods, creates an instant desirability factor in the area. While this may seem like a good thing, that desirability factor attracts a surprisingly undesirable crowd, at least in this instance – generally wealthy, home-owning, well… yuppie-types, for lack of a better word. Perhaps a more appropriate term for this trend could be gentrification, which, depending on one’s perspective, can either serve to strengthen a neighborhood’s appeal, or destroy its essential character.
Implementation of mass transit in turn attracts further investment in business and housing development. Again, this sounds like a good thing, but in practice this increased investment generally serves to inflate property values and housing costs, thus pushing out the working class, low-income, renting residents best served by mass transit in the first place. In their place, the area attracts homebuyers less apt to use mass transit, in favor of their own cars.
The phenomenon leads to a kind of take it or leave it approach to transit-oriented, smart growth development, the report’s authors found: Either accept that urban transit investment inevitably leads to gentrification and loss of neighborhood diversity, or avoid transit investment projects in low-income, underserved areas entirely.
The key to solving the problems inherent in transit-oriented development, of course, lies in preserving housing affordability once new mass transit lines have been implemented. A robust mix of rental and ownership opportunities, serving a broad range of incomes, would seem to solve the problems of equity and diversity raised by the Dukakis Center report.
But again, we worry that this “simple” solution is anything but. If preserving housing affordability were easy, we’d all be living in comfortably diverse, economically stable, borderline-utopian communities. And we know that’s not the case.
The housing challenges of the 21st century are complex, and getting more so. We applaud the efforts of the Dukakis Center in illustrating the unforeseen and potentially disastrous difficulties at the heart of what has become the housing policy mantra du jour.
Now, having illuminated those challenges, it’s time to start creating solutions, lest we continue down yesteryear’s unsustainable homeownership policies.
