More Neighbors, Not More Traffic
How Transportation Can Help Solve Our Housing Crisis
You may ask yourself, "What is that beautiful house?"
You may ask yourself, "Where does that highway go to?"
And you may ask yourself, "Am I right, am I wrong?"
And you may say to yourself, "My God, what have I done?"
- Once in a Lifetime by the Talking Heads
In cities, suburbs, and towns across the country, we have a crisis of housing supply and price. How did we get here?
In 1959, the U.S. saw 18,424,000 new housing units start construction.1 By 2022, the population had grown by 156,000,000 people (88% increase)2 and the GDP by an astounding 5,260%.3 Yet in 2022, the U.S. built 18,615,000 new places for people to live, essentially the exact same number as in 1959. What happened?
The power of incumbent homeowners has contributed substantially to our failure to produce housing where people want to live, work, and play. For longtime homeowners, perhaps still enchanted by a 1950s vision of suburban life, new development sparks a fear of change. This is not unreasonable given the damage from generations of driving-dependent sprawl. The prospect of change also triggers deeper fears—of loss of money from house value, of loss of status from exclusivity, of unknown people who might be different from current neighbors moving in.
The voiced objections, however, tend to focus on more socially acceptable topics like transportation. As transportation professionals, we must support an increase in housing supply by demonstrating in myriad ways that new residents do not have to mean more traffic. We also have a strong role to play in supporting regulatory changes that create places with transportation systems that are more sustainable, equitable, safe, and joyful.
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Two generations ago, baby boomers raised on suburban visions of Leave it to Beaver and Bewitched were buying their first houses. At that time, generous federal support in the form of favorable loans, subsidized highway expansion, and open land rapidly increased the housing supply, keeping pace with the booming demand by sprawling across the landscape. Meanwhile, disinvestment suppressed the social and economic vitality of our existing built environment—the cities, downtowns, pre-war suburbs, and small towns with the compactness, mix of uses, walkability, and transit-friendliness that constitute the “good bones” of urbanism.
Through those same decades, a variety of forces have aligned to reduce housing production. The groundwork was laid before zoning codes, when racial covenants on new development in cities and suburbs excluded Black and other minority communities from the wealth-building power of owning their own homes. Since the 1920s, zoning for single-family, large-lot housing has made up 75% or more of the land in many cities and urban places, further limiting the potential for new housing to meet demand. Modern requirements for large lots, on-site parking, extensive public process, and other elements all add to the cost of new development in the few places where it’s allowed, leaving as a legacy the housing shortage and high housing costs we experience today.
As recently as the 1990s, it was possible for someone early in their working career to buy a place to live in different kinds of places. The exurbs were booming with cheap new housing, and our nation’s most desirable, economically vibrant cities and regions offered opportunity. Prices were manageable, interest rates were low, and most college graduates did not carry substantial debt from their education.
Since the mid-1990s, cities and older suburbs have seen reinvestment from government, business, and individual decisions about where to invest, work, play, and especially live. Places that were previously affordable for many—close to jobs and other attractions, walkable, and served by transit—rose in price. At the same time, younger people were encumbered with ever-growing student debt, and seniors, unable to age in place on retirement incomes amid rising property taxes, began to feel stuck with their large houses.
Not only has the popular dream of homeownership become more difficult to attain, but as its membership has become more exclusive, the power and privilege associated with homeowner status has become both more concentrated and more assumed.
Not only has the popular dream of homeownership become more difficult to attain, but as its membership has become more exclusive, the power and privilege associated with homeowner status has become both more concentrated and more assumed. Homeowners are a distinct identity in the U.S. They tend to be more involved in local politics and policy. They are disproportionately whiter, wealthier, and older on average than other residents of their communities and the surrounding urban areas. They also disproportionately have (or make) time to attend public meetings and otherwise express their opinions. In many places they have effectively used that power for regulatory capture and in effect blocked the creation of more housing, especially multifamily housing in or near exclusionary neighborhoods.
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Often the loudest cries against new development focus on traffic and parking. Won’t new development bring so many cars that it overwhelms the street network, causing more congestion and delay? Will those new people park in front of my house? As transportation professionals, we know that driving-dependent development can lead to terrible traffic. The root causes are not fundamentally development itself, but the sprawling form and accompanying transportation networks, typically featuring sparsely connected street networks, ample free parking, limited safe walking and biking infrastructure, and inconvenient to no transit service. Once a place develops on those bones, it can be very difficult to change course or manage traffic.
In this kind of compact, mixed-use, walkable, transit-friendly place, we have years of evidence showing that traffic and parking work out just fine as more neighbors are added.
But our urban centers have lots of places—including those downtowns, village centers, and older inner suburbs—with better bones. In this kind of compact, mixed-use, walkable, transit-friendly place, we have years of evidence showing that traffic and parking work out just fine as more neighbors are added.
Transportation should not be used as an excuse to continue the exclusionary, inequitable practices of the past. Rather than yielding to fears of change, our job as transportation professionals is to help our communities look forward and articulate key goals and values through their planning processes. These often include sustainability, equity, and health. Creating more housing—and more diverse housing types—helps to meet those goals. Focusing this new housing around transit investments also supports fiscal goals by making efficient use of infrastructure.
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We already have the practical tools to realize these goals. Changing zoning codes can allow more housing and more diverse types. We can ensure that the impacts analysis, demand management, and parking requirements change in support. Examining how our transportation funds are programmed and deployed can reveal unequal attention to the squeakiest wheels or the more privileged neighborhoods. We can help reveal and publicize these practices and work with policymakers to make changes for more equitable outcomes. We can provide data, ask questions, and tell stories that go beyond conventional “level of service” and “minimum parking requirements” and otherwise help our neighbors understand that more neighbors mean better communities, not more traffic.