Fair enough, and I do appreciate good sarcasm. I will, however, repeat the first sentence of my post:

“We often get emails and comments informing us that the most desirable real estate in the country is in ‘walkable, transit-friendly, less car dependent places’ like Dupont Circle, Greenwich Village, Haight-Ashbury, etc.”

My point was to explain to the walkable/bikeable/transit-friendly crowd — who are very quick to throw around Dupont Circle real estate prices as examples of how America is moving toward a car-free utopia — that there are valid non-transportation reasons why many Americans don’t want to live in urban centers. This idea that Americans flock to the suburbs so they can drive their cars is at best an unproven hypothesis.

And you’re right, there are many valid reasons why other Americans would never live in “suburbs” like McLean. No one here was arguing otherwise.

Um.

It’s sorta like how literally millions of people choose not to live in McLean, Va. everyday? One of the toniest drivable suburbs in the country, with great schools, low crime, and roads galore; where many in DC power positions choose to buy their estates. Prices are high, and it’s desirable.

But I’m noticing that it’s completely unattractive to millions of people. I mean, I know like at least 1,000 people off the top of my head who choose not to live there. And there’s gotta be like close to 300 million more people who I don’t know.

Good point.

Makes me think, though. Did you know that literally millions of people choose not to live in McLean, Va. everyday? One of the toniest drivable suburbs in the country, with great schools, low crime, and roads galore; where many in DC power positions choose to buy their estates. Prices are high, and it’s desirable. But it’s completely unattractive to millions of people. It’s just like Dupont Circle, man.

First, the definition of “desirable” changes from person to person. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Clearly, there are enough people who want to live in Dupont Circle that it costs $1,700 for a decent 1 bedroom (actually, more like $2,000+). To these people, it’s a very desirable area, which is reflected in the real estate prices, since their demand for real estate in Dupont is greater than the supply. That said, a large number of Americans, myself included, would never live in Dupont because of the cost of living, high taxes, bad schools, crime ridden surroundings, and weenie liberals. To us, the Dupont area isn’t worth $2,000 per month for a 1 bedroom.

Second, I’ve never mentioned Youngstown, Ohio, but I find it funny that you bring it up, considering that your name links to a website called “Design New Haven.” Just as Youngstown is a declined steel town, New Haven (like Bridgeport) was once a center for highly skilled manufacturers. Then the jobs left, and New Haven with left with the gangbangers, drug addicts, homeless people, and assorted petty criminals who wreaked havoc on the local population. After decades of apathy, Yale University was essentially shamed into pouring its $15 billion endowment into the surrounding area.

You can scoff at Youngstown all you want, but New Haven is essentially the same city plus a wealthy benefactor.

Care to explain this thinking? Last time I checked, desirability was the main reason why places like Stockholm, Monaco, Connecticut, central Bombay, and Manhattan were expensive while places like Dessau, Detroit, North Dakota and Norilsk were not.

At least there is finally someone out there who would prefer to live in a foreclosed house in Youngstown and be able to drive everywhere without needing to stop at a crosswalk.

Not to mention that its “Pancakes Across America” Month at IHOP.

Maine Bluberry is the best, followed by California Strawberry.

Don’t take my work for it.

G-D Bless,

See you at IHOP.

Mr. Kaag.

That’s interesting. Where’s the focus shifting to? Do you think Capital Pride and the Dupont Circle High Heel Race will eventually move to new locations?

We don’t think there will be nuclear powered automobiles, there will be electric ones - in fact, there already are. But what we think will happen is that the automobile manufacturers will invest in battery technology to make these cars more viable, and people will fuel them the same way they fuel existing electric vehicles - they’ll plug them in at home.

I don’ think there will be millions of little nuclear reactors driving around, nor would I want that.

I disagree with the assessment that it will be that expensive, most of those costs will be bourne by the people who buy the new cars, which the will do anyway, and the industry that develops the technology, which they have an incentive to do to retain their market share.

The government will front the cost of the nuclear power plants, but they’re going to have to move in this direction anyway.

It sounds to me like you are the one disparaging choices people make.

Why don’t you enlighten us as to why so many people prefer living in DC since we don’t seem to know what we’re talking about and you so clearly speak for the average American in a way that we cannot?

I do know, however, that it sounds expensive. And if you want it to happen then it’s going to take a vast array of your dreaded “taxes, tolls, fees, fines, surcharges, and regulations” to make it happen.

If you wait til oil is $500/barrel (or even $150), then America will already be too broke to build pretty much any infrastructure. And our all money is in the pockets of other countries, many of whom hate us.

The time is now to use govt to help industry help Americans transition to the next economy.

If I lived in Dupont, or Greenwich Village, or Brooklyn, or any of the other bikeable, walkable, transit-friendly locales, there’s no way I would own a car! Cars are a huge drain on personal income and a big pain in the ass! Lots of suburbanites would agree with me.

Another personal anecdote. I bought a car about 6 months ago from CarMax, which cost me $12,000. I just took it in for the “60,000 mile service,” which cost $400. I have to pay for gas at $50-75 per fill-up. I have to pay for parking, tolls, etc. The main reason that I would ever consider living in Dupont or any of the other places is the fact that I wouldn’t have to own a car!

I just finished up grad school in DC, and took the Metro to work everyday and then the bus. Two years of no car payments, gas payments, service charges (where they really screw you), tolls, fees, fines, etc. Wonderful!

If you go and read some of our other posts on Commuter Outrage, you’ll find that Lewis and I are HUGE proponents of mass transit. We spend a lot of time bashing the DC Metro, and the incompetent fools that run it. We want more cars per train. We want extensions way out into the suburbs. We want better qualified operators. We want a Metro that would rival the Paris Metro.

Here’s the dirty not-so-secret truth. WMATA refuses to take the smart and necessary steps to properly maintain and expand the Metro. For instance, there’s minimal advertising on DC Metro trains and stations. The stations are almost completely bare! I want to see wall to wall advertising, raking in money every minute the Metro is in operation. There’s plenty more where that came from.

In our opinion, mass transit is wonderful and necessary. In fact, one of the main purposes of Commuter Outrage is to aggressively push for more of it.

That said, we don’t believe in jamming behaviors and attitudes down peoples throats. Thus, we don’t think it’s our place to convince other people to get out of their cars (esp. when there’s no alternatives for them to begin with). We believe that the individual American should be allowed to make up his mind about how to get from point A to point B. We don’t think the government should be incentivizing / decentivizing attitudes and behavior through taxes, tolls, fees, fines, surcharges, and regulations.

If oil goes to $500 a barrel and people start dropping off their gas-powered cars at the junkyard and hollering for more mass transit and electric cars, we’re all in favor of it. Power to the people.

The problem with Streetsblog, from our extensive reading, is its nonstop bashing of gas-powered cars and their drivers, its proliferation of conspiracy theories about how the government and big business have tricked the majority of Americans into driving all over the place, and its propagation of wildly unrealistic utopian visions of a bikeable, walkable, transit-friendly, CAR-FREE world (which, let’s be honest, is going to be very hard to create).

As Lewis has pointed out already, here’s the likely go-forward scenario (in our view) as we near the end of oil. At some point, America is going to wise up about nuclear energy. We’re going to de-wussify ourselves, realize that Chernobyl and Three Mile Island were anomalies rather than the norm, and take the necessary steps to invest in and build nuclear power plants all over the country. These power plants are going to provide cheap, clean, efficient energy which will power a new generation of electric cars, which will be used by the majority of Americans.

Again, this is what we think is the likely outcome of the current oil crisis. That said, if the majority of Americans say, “Screw the car. We want to bike and walk and take mass transit,” we’ll support that too. We’ll bash anyone who says individual citizens shouldn’t get the transportation choices they want.

Streetsblog needs to convince Americans that they’re better off walking, biking, or taking mass transit to work. Unfortunately, these are not options right now for most Americans, due to a whole array of historical, sociological, political, economic, and ideological reasons. So we disagree with any tax or regulatory attempts to move these Americans away from their cars towards these non-existent alternatives.

Thanks for your comments.

I ask my question again: Why can’t “walkable, transit-friendly, less car dependent” urban environments incorporate the attractive elements of the suburbs?

Judd,

I suppose it depends on what you think the attractive elements of the suburbs are but this, in many ways, is the goal of Streetsblog and the Livable Streets movement, as I read it.

Not every dwelling unit in the city can have a garage built into it (if that’s what you think is attractive about the suburbs) but Streetsblog argues, day after day, that there’s no reason why cities can’t become healthier, greener, more accomodating human habitats.

And while there are certainly challenges in bringing transit to a low-density place, there’s no reason why suburbs can’t become more walkable, bikeable and transit-oriented as well.

But it does require making some trade-offs. One of those trade-offs, almost certainly, is to stop pouring so much of our nation’s public and private wealth into automobile infrastructure and to create more incentives and encouragement for developers to build the walkable, transit-friendly, less car-dependent communities that so many Americans really seem to prefer to live in when given the choice.

If you plan and build and invest for cars and traffic, you get cars and traffic.

If you plan and build and invest for transit-friendly, walkable, bikeable places, that’s what you get.

You’re completely right that the Dupont area is “some of the most desirable real estate in the entire United States.” The evidence is clear and unassailable: the high price of real estate.

My point is that even though Dupont is very attractive to many people, it’s very unattractive to many other people.

As of 2005, Census data shows that DC’s population is declining, while Virginia’s and Maryland’s populations are increasing. According to the Washington Post, “Demographers point out that much of the city’s revitalization has focused on singles and childless couples, while those leaving largely have been families with a few children.”

I don’t like to operate in the anecdotal space, but many of my friends and acquaintances who live in Virginia would never live in DC for the completely non-transportation related reasons listed above.

Fact is that the “transit-rich, walkable, bikeable” parts of America are mostly located in urban areas. In urban areas are urban problems that many Americans don’t want to deal with. That’s why they live in the suburbs.

“Big box auto-sprawl” is more than just big box stores and cars everywhere. Factors such as price, taxes, schooling, crime, and neighbors play a big role into why people live in these areas.

I ask my question again: Why can’t “walkable, transit-friendly, less car dependent” urban environments incorporate the attractive elements of the suburbs?

The market says otherwise. It says that the residential, office and retail real estate around Dupont and in the more transit-rich, walkable, bikeable parts of D.C. is some of the most desirable real estate in the entire United States.

The market says that Americans want take back the towns, villages and cities that they lost to big box auto-sprawl. That market signal is only growing louder as gas prices go up.

Maybe Alexandria is more your thing?