Hello and welcome back to the Deep Dive. We are
so, so glad you're here with us today. You know,
I had a bit of a moment this morning. I was taking
the dog out, just the usual loop, nothing special,
the same route I take every single day at like
7 a .m. The morning ritual. Exactly. But for
some reason, maybe it was the light and maybe
I just hadn't had enough coffee yet. I actually
stopped. I stopped and I looked around. I mean,
really looked. You saw the Matrix. I think I
did. I saw the way the hedges were perfectly
aligned, the specific gentle curve of the road
that slows cars down just enough but not too
much. And the way all the houses are set back
from the sidewalk at almost the exact same distance,
you know, like little soldiers in a row. Right.
And it hit me. We spend the vast majority of
our lives in these environments. We sleep here.
We eat here. We raise our kids here. We argue
with spouses here. But how often do we actually
stop to analyze the, well, the machine that we're
living inside? It is remarkable when you actually
pause to see it, isn't it? It is the backdrop
of our entire existence, the stage set for our
lives. Yet. It is arguably the most engineered,
regulated and artificial environment humans have
ever created. We tend to think of cities as engineered
and the suburbs as natural or open. But the residential
area is a machine of its own. Exactly. A machine.
We just call it home or the neighborhood. It
feels natural because it's where we keep our
stuff. But today on this deep dive, we are going
to peel back the vinyl siding and look at the
studs we were talking about. The residential
area. The very concept. And I have to tell you,
looking through the stack of research you've
pulled together, articles, history books, zoning
codes, this isn't just about architecture. It's
about invisible rules, a surprising history involving
like assembly lines and streetcars and some very
specific design choices that dictate everything
from your daily commute to whether or not you
actually like your neighbors. That's right. It's
so easy to assume that our neighborhoods just
happened or that they look this way because it's
the only way they could possibly look. But the
reality is that the residential area is a very
specific and actually a relatively modern concept.
And to really understand it, we have to start
with the absolute basics. If we look at the high
level definition from the source material, we
are talking about land use. A residential area
is defined specifically as Land where housing
predominates. Predominates, as in it's the main
thing. As opposed to industrial or commercial
use, exactly. Right. So in the simplest terms,
it's where we go to power down. It's distinct
from the factory, the office tower, or the marketplace.
It's the off switch to the city's on switch.
Precisely. But that distinction, that separation,
is the key to everything we're going to discuss
today. As we dig into the source material, our
mission is to decode the anatomy of these spaces.
We're going to look at everything from these
technical metrics, like the floor area ratio.
Which sounds incredibly dry. Right. It sounds
dry, but it actually determines how much sky
you can see from your window and how close your
neighbor's window is to yours. We'll get into
that, and then we'll go all the way back to the
history of the streetcar suburb. And finally,
we'll look at some of the modern critiques of
how we build. Because as it turns out, the way
we design our streets might be causing more arguments
with our neighbors than we realize. Oh, I can't
wait to get to the arguments with neighbors part.
I feel like everyone has a story about a parking
spot feud or a fence line dispute. I definitely
do. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Let's
start with the basics. When we say residential
area, what actually counts? Are we just talking
about the classic white picket fence, suburban
house? Because that's the image that immediately
pops into my head. Not at all. That is the stereotype,
certainly, but the definition is actually quite
broad. Housing varies significantly between different
residential areas and even within them. Okay,
so what else is in the bucket? Well, we are talking
about single -family housing, which is what most
people picture, the detached house on its own
lot. But it also includes multifamily residential
units. So think of apartment complexes, condominiums,
duplexes, and even mobile homes. The core identifier
isn't the shape of the roof or the materials
used. It's the primary function of the land.
Is this land for living? Then it's residential.
Simple as that. Okay. So it's the function. But
who decides that function? Because I can't just
decide to open a welding shop in my garage, right?
I mean, I shouldn't for safety reasons. I'd probably
burn the house down. But there's also a rule
against it. I can't just turn my living room
into a 7 -Eleven. Right. And that brings us to
the DNA of a neighborhood. Zoning. Zoning. It's
one of those ones that makes your eyes glaze
over a bit. It sounds like pure bureaucracy.
But reading the notes, it seems like it's actually
the most powerful force in our daily lives. It
is incredibly powerful. Zoning is the invisible
framework that dictates what can and cannot happen
on a piece of land. It's a legal tool used by
local governments. So the city council draws
a map and says, this area is for this, that area
is for that. In a nutshell, yes. In a residential
zone. The regulations might permit some small
services or work opportunities. Think of a home
office, maybe a small daycare, or perhaps a religious
institution. But in many cases, they totally
exclude business and industry. So it's fundamentally
an exclusionary rule. It's saying this stuff
belongs here and the noisy, smelly, busy stuff
belongs over there. Exactly. And historically,
that was the entire point. You didn't want a
tannery or a chemical plant next to where you
slept. That makes a lot of sense. Sure. But zoning
goes deeper than just house versus factory. It
also dictates density. It determines whether
you can build a skyscraper or just a bungalow.
And this is where we run into that technical
metric from the sources called the FAR or floor
area ratio. OK, FAR. I've seen this acronym in
city planning articles, but I've never really
understood the math. It feels like one of those
things you just nod out while pretending to understand.
Break it down for us. So floor area ratio is
essentially a measurement of density. It's the
relationship between the total amount of usable
floor area that a building have and the total
area of the lot on which that building stands.
Okay, let's try to visualize this. Let's say
I have a piece of land that is, I don't know,
a thousand square feet, a nice square patch of
dirt. Perfect. So you have a thousand square
foot lot. If the zoning code says the FAR is
1 .0, that means you're allowed to build a structure
that has exactly 1 ,000 square feet of total
floor space. So I could build a one -story house
that covers the entire lot, edge to edge, like
a box. Theoretically, yes, if there were no other
rules, like setbacks, which there always are.
Or... You can build a two -story house that covers
only 500 square feet of the lot, so half the
land, leaving the other half in open space. Ah,
because 500 square feet on the first floor, 500
on the second, that adds up to 1 ,000. Exactly.
500 times two floors equals 1 ,000. The ratio
is still 1 .0. You can build up or you can build
out, but you can't exceed that total volume.
I see. So it's a volume control. It limits the
total amount of building relative to the land.
Exactly. Now, here is where it shapes your neighborhood.
Commercial zones, especially in a city center,
often have very high FARs, maybe 5 .0, 10 .0,
or even higher. This allows for skyscrapers.
You can stack floor upon floor upon floor. You're
maximizing the economic utility of that dirt.
Right, you're trying to squeeze as much rent
as possible out of that square footage. Every
inch counts. But residential zoning. We tend
to prioritize open space, or at least the idea
of it. Residential zones usually include a much,
much smaller AFAR than business or industrial
zoning. Often it's 0 .5 or even less. So if the
FAR is 0 .5 on my 1 ,000 square foot lot, I can
only build a 500 square foot house. Correct.
No matter how many floors you build, the total
floor area can't be more than 500 square feet.
That means you must leave land empty. You are
legally mandated to have a yard or air or distance
between you and the next house. That's fascinating.
So we think of the suburban lawn as this cultural
choice, like we all just collectively decide
we love mowing grass, but it's actually a byproduct
of a math equation in the city code. It's a deliberate
design choice encoded in the law to ensure lower
density. It creates the feeling of the suburb,
the airiness, the separation. It guarantees,
by law, that you aren't living right on top of
your neighbor. And I assume this scale varies
wildly. Oh, immensely. A residential area can
be very small, just a few streets in a pocket
of a city. Or it can be massive, stretching for
miles and miles. And the dynamic changes completely
when we move out of the city and into more rural
contexts. Oh, that's a good point. I grew up
near some pretty rural areas, and residential
there meant something totally different. You're
not exactly walking to get a coffee. In fact,
if you tried to walk to get a coffee, you'd be
gone for three days. No, you certainly aren't.
In the sources, they refer to this as the rural
dynamic. In these residential areas, you often
have large tracts of land, maybe 2, 5, 10 acres
per house, but with absolutely no services whatsoever.
None. No corner store, no post office, and crucially,
not even municipal infrastructure like sewage
or water. So you are basically on an island.
You have your own, well, your own septic tank.
You are the mayor of your own tiny kingdom. An
island surrounded by land. And the consequence
of that design is crucial. Residents must use
a private motor vehicle. It is not an option.
It is an absolute necessity. If you need milk,
you drive. If you need to see a doctor, you drive.
If your car breaks down, you're stranded. You're
effectively stranded. It creates a fragility,
doesn't it? If you can't drive, maybe you're
too old or have a disability or you lose your
license, you can't live there. Wow. It's not
a place designed for all stages of life. Not
at all. And because of that dependency, we see
a very specific pattern in how these areas grow.
Land development almost exclusively follows existing
or planned transport infrastructure. It follows
the road or the rails. Yes. You don't build a
house out in the field and then hope a road shows
up. The road is the lifeline. The development
clings to it. Everything sprouts from that central
artery. So we have zoning. setting the rules
the far the density the separation from industry
and we have infrastructure setting the path but
i was reading in the deep dive material about
something else something that feels a little
more private maybe a little more sinister or
at least more restrictive ah yes you talk about
restrictive covenants yeah this blew my mind
a little bit Because we tend to think the government
sets the rules, but apparently there's a whole
other layer of law that comes from the property
deed itself. This is where it gets really interesting
and frankly quite complicated. A restrictive
covenant is a clause written directly into the
deed of the property. It's a private agreement
between the land developer who first built the
neighborhood and every subsequent buyer. So when
the developer builds a subdivision, they write
in a bunch of extra rules. Exactly. Rules that
say you cannot build a fence higher than four
feet, or you cannot paint your house pink, or
you cannot run a business from this home, or
even you cannot hang laundry outside to dry.
Wait, wait. So these aren't laws passed by the
city council. The police aren't going to arrest
me for hanging out my socks. No. These are civil
matters. They are private contracts attached
to the land itself. But here is why they matter
so much and why they are so powerful. They are
incredibly difficult to change. Why is that?
If I own the house and I want to paint it pink,
why can't I just ignore the rule? Because your
neighbors can sue you. The homeowners association
or even an individual neighbor can take you to
court to enforce the covenant. And usually, changing
one requires the agreement of all property owners
in that development. All of them. So if I live
in a neighborhood with 200 houses and I want
to change a rule about fence height, I need 200
signatures. Essentially, yes. It varies by jurisdiction
and by the specific language of the covenant.
But generally, it requires a supermajority or
unanimity. And remember, many of the property
owners might not even live there. Oh, right.
They could be landlords living in another state
or investment firms holding the property for
rental income. Good luck getting them to care
about your fence. So you end up with a situation
where the development patterns and the character
of the neighborhood are locked in by these private
legal agreements from decades and decades ago.
Exactly. It's like the neighborhood is frozen
in time. Based on what the developer thought
was a good idea 50 years ago, it creates a tremendous
amount of inertia. It's the invisible hand that
keeps the neighborhood looking a certain way
long after the original builder has moved on.
It really highlights how little control we sometimes
have over our own property despite owning it.
We were really just stewards of a pre -approved
aesthetic. And that aesthetic is protected fiercely.
We will touch on this later. But often these
covenants are defended not just for looks, but
to protect property values. It's financial anxiety
disguised as neighborhood rules. That makes so
much sense. Your pink house lowers my resale
value, so I'm going to enforce the covenant.
It's not about taste. It's about the bank account.
At the end of the day, that's what it comes down
to. So we've got these rules zoning and covenants,
but let's zoom out a bit. If we were looking
at a map, how do geographers make sense of all
this? Because when I look at a city map, it just
looks like chaos. Sprawl everywhere. To the untrained
eye, yes. But geographers love models. They love
to find patterns in the chaos. And one of the
most famous ways to categorize residential areas
is the concentric zone model. Sounds like a target.
That's a good way to visualize it. Imagine the
city center as the bullseye. That's the central
business district. High density, high FAR, all
commercial. Then moving outward in rings, you
have different types of residential areas. Okay,
so what's the first ring? Right outside the bullseye,
you might have the transition zone. This is often
older housing, maybe some light industry mixed
in. It's often where new immigrants first land
because it's the most affordable. And then? Then
the next ring out is the working class homes,
smaller, closer together. Then you get to the
middle class suburbs with more space, bigger
lots. And finally, on the outer rim, you have
the commuter zone, the exurbs, where people have
large houses but very long commutes back to the
center. So it's a way of mapping out how the
city expands and where people live relative to
that economic center. Sort of like tree rings.
Exactly. It helps us understand that residential
areas aren't just random clusters. They are part
of a larger organism that grows outward. The
wealthy tend to move to the periphery to get
more space and newer housing, leaving the older
inner rings for lower income groups. It's a constant
outward pressure. But to really understand why
it grows the way it does and why we have this
obsession with the detached house on the periphery,
we have to go back in time. Yes. The history
segment. My favorite part. I love this part because
the house feels so timeless. We think humans
have always lived this way. But the way we buy
and build them is actually pretty new, isn't
it? It is radical, actually. If we look at pre
-industrial living, so going back a few centuries,
the concept of residential development as we
know it simply did not exist. So what did you
do? If you needed a house in 1800, what was the
process? Well, it depended entirely on your bank
account. There were really only two main categories.
If you were rich, and I mean properly wealthy,
the top 1%, you bought a town lot. Then you hired
an architect or a contractor, and you built a
bespoke mansion. Bespoke, like a tailored suit.
Exactly. It was completely customized for your
family, your needs, your taste. You were the
driving force. You picked the doorknobs. You
decided where the kitchen went. You were the
developer of your own life. Okay, and if I wasn't
rich? Which, let's be honest, is statistically
where most of us would have been. Then you were
likely living in a shantytown, a self -built
shack on the edge of town, or a crowded rental
tenement in the city center. You crowded into
whatever structure was available. You rented
a room or maybe just a bed in a room. So it was
either a custom mansion or a crowded rental.
There was nothing in between. Right. And here
is the key point that defines the modern era.
Single -family houses were seldom built on speculation.
Speculation meaning building it before you have
a buyer. Just hoping someone will come along
and want it. Correct. The modern idea of driving
past a construction site, seeing a finished house
with a for sale sign and say, I'll take that
one. That just didn't happen. No one was building
houses for a future unidentified buyer. Why not?
It seems like a good business model. It was far
too risky. Capital was scarce. Mortgages were
not common for the working class. If a builder
built a house and it sat empty for a year, he
would go bankrupt. You built when you had a specific
paying customer lined up. So the missing middle,
the affordable single -family home owned by the
occupant, wasn't really a product yet. No. Housing
wasn't a product. It was a bespoke creation or
a rental service. So when did that change? When
did we start seeing this shift towards the subdivision?
The turning point is really the late 19th century.
We see the introduction of the subdivision. The
subdivision. Even the word sounds organized.
We are taking this land and dividing it into
subunits. It implies dividing a larger whole.
And the catalyst here was the streetcar suburb.
I love that term. It sounds so romantic, almost
quaint. But practically, what did it mean for
the average person? It meant that for the first
time, Development was linked explicitly to mechanical
transit. Before this, you had to live within
walking distance of your job, maybe a horse ride
if you're lucky. But the streetcar allowed you
to live three, four, or five miles away and still
get to the factory or the office reliably every
day. So the city could spread out. It could breathe
a little. Exactly. Cities were expanding, the
middle class was growing, and crucially, mortgage
loans were becoming more and more commonplace.
Ah, the money piece. Always the money piece.
Suddenly, a broader group of people could borrow
money to buy a home. So developers started buying
up farmland at the edge of the city, wherever
the streetcar lines ended, and subdividing it
into lots for this new emerging middle class.
So the streetcar line is the artery, and the
houses grow around it like... I don't know, moss
on a branch. A very organized moss. But yes,
however, if the late 19th century was the spark,
the post -World War II era was the absolute explosion.
This is where we get the American model that
spread globally. Right. The 1940s and 50s, the
soldiers are coming home. American dream pie.
The geographic focus here was really New York
City and Los Angeles. The demand was unprecedented.
We had millions of GIs returning, starting families,
the baby boom. And we had a massive housing shortage.
We needed thousands, hundreds of thousands of
new homes. And we needed them yesterday. And
the old way, hiring an architect, building one
house at a time, the bespoke method, just wasn't
going to cut it. Not even close. Impossible.
It was too slow and way too expensive. So a new
type of businessman emerged. Now, interestingly,
these large -scale practitioners disliked the
term property speculator. Oh, why is that? It
sounded risky, maybe a bit shady, like a gambler.
So they coined a new term, residential developer.
A little rebranding exercise? I'm not a gambler.
I'm a developer. I'm building the future. It
sounds much more stable, doesn't it? More respectable.
And the process they invented was purely industrial.
They would take entire farms and ranches, huge
tracts of land, hundreds or thousands of acres,
and subdivide them. But unlike the past, where
maybe they just sold the lots to individuals
to build on, one entity controlled everything.
Vertical integration. Precisely. They controlled
the entitlement. The permits from the government.
Right. Then the land development, so grading
the dirt, paving the streets. Then the infrastructure,
so laying the sewage pipes and power lines. And
finally, the construction of the housing itself.
They were building the whole world from scratch.
They weren't just building houses, they were
building entire towns. Specific examples that
define this era are places like Levittown on
Long Island. or Lakewood, just south of Los Angeles.
The pace was absolutely staggering. We're talking
about sales rates of more than one house a day.
One a day. That is insane. I can't even fathom
that. Imagine signing the closing papers on a
brand new house every single day of the year.
And to achieve that, they had to mass produce
living. They applied the principles of the Industrial
Revolution, standardization, assembly lines,
repetitive tasks, to where we sleep. I want to
drill down on this assembly line concept. How
do you assembly line a house? It's stuck to the
ground. You can't put it on a conveyor belt.
You reverse the conveyor belt. In a Ford factory,
the car moves and the workers stand still. In
Levittown, the house stood still and the workers
moved. You had a crew that only poured concrete
slabs. That was their whole job. Their entire
job. They would pour a slab at house one, then
move to house two, then house three. Right behind
them came the framing crew. They only did framing.
Behind them, the roofing crew. Behind them, the
guy who only installed kitchen sinks. So instead
of a craftsman spending months on a single beautiful
staircase, you have a guy whose only job is to
install staircases, and he does 10 a day. Exactly.
He becomes hyper -efficient. He doesn't need
to look at the blueprints anymore after the first
week. He knows exactly where the nails go. Standardization
of design was absolutely key. You couldn't have
custom requests. You had a few models, you picked
one, and that was it. This allowed for a smooth
flow. of capital and materials. They could order
lumber by the trainload. And all this efficiency,
it must have dropped the price dramatically.
Significantly. And here's where it gets really
interesting for the listener, because this is
the economic flip that changed the world. This
shift, combined with government -backed mortgages,
especially the GI Bill for veterans, it created
a strange economic reality. It became cheaper
to own a brand new house. and a new residential
development than to rent a cramped old apartment
in the city. Wow. That's the pivotal moment.
That's when the suburb becomes irresistible.
You get more space, a new house, a yard for the
kids, and it costs you less per month out of
pocket. It was revolution. It reshaped the American
landscape and the American dream. It turned a
nation of renters into a nation of homeowners.
It linked American identity to the ownership
of the single -family home in a way that had
never happened before. But like any product,
you can't just sell the same Model T Ford forever.
People get bored. They want features. They want
to feel special. True. As the industry matured
into the 60s, 70s, and 80s, developers had to
compete. The basic box wasn't enough anymore.
So we see the evolution of the modern suburb.
Okay, so how did they start to differentiate
the product? What kind of features started popping
up to lure buyers? Well, we started seeing curving
streets instead of rigid grids. This was huge.
The grid felt urban and old. The curve felt natural
and countryside. We saw green -built parks woven
through the development. Neighborhood pools became
a must -have amenity. What was it in the notes?
Community entry monumentation. Yes. You know
what this is. Is that the big stone wall with
the neighborhood name in gold letters whispering
pines or eagles landing? That is exactly what
that is. It's branding. It signals prestige.
It says you are entering a distinct place. It
separates us inside this wall from them outside
the wall. And I assume the houses themselves
changed too. They stopped being identical little
boxes. They did. Or rather, we got the illusion
of choice. Developers started offering diverse
floor plans with different room counts. You could
get the three bedroom or the four bedroom. But
my favorite term from this era is the elevation.
The elevation. Explain that. So the floor plan
is the map of the inside where the walls are.
The elevation is the architectural drawing of
the outside, the face of the house. Developers
realized they could build the exact same house
on the inside. Same plumbing, same framing, same
electrical, but slap a different face on it.
Like putting a different mask on the same actor.
Precisely. Maybe one looks Tudor with some fake
timber beams. One looks colonial with some non
-functional shutters. One looks Mediterranean
with stucco and tile roof. So it looks like a
diverse street, but underneath it's all the same
skeleton. Exactly. It's incredibly efficient
for the builder. The crews still know exactly
where the pipes go. But the buyer feels like
they got a unique home. And the competition moved
to the package. The package. The amenities package.
Who has the best kitchen appliance package? Who
includes the upgraded granite countertops? Who
offers the jetted tub in the master bath? It's
like buying a car. You want the sport package
or the luxury package? Very much so. It commoditized
the home. And if we look at the contemporary
layout, what a typical development looks like
today, we see some very specific design choices
driven by safety and exclusivity. I noticed this
in the notes, traffic calming. Yes. If you drive
through a modern suburb, you rarely find a straight
line that connects two major roads. You have
slowly winding streets, dead end roads, which
we call cul -de -sacs or looped roads that bring
you right back where you started. And the goal
there is strictly to slow people down. To slow
down cars within the residential zone and, just
as importantly, to discourage through traffic.
The logic is, if the road winds, you can't speed.
If it's a dead end, no one can use it as a shortcut
to get to the highway. It makes the street theoretically
safer for kids and pets playing out front. But
it also makes it a nightmare to get anywhere,
right? If I'm in the middle of the maze, I have
to drive in circles just to get out. We will
definitely get to that in the critique section.
But yes, it creates a labyrinth. But this layout
has formed the stereotype of suburban America.
It is the image of the middle class. But we have
to acknowledge the exclusivity here. These developments
offer a very narrow range of age, price, and
size. Right. If you're a single person who doesn't
need a four bedroom house or if you can't afford
the entry price, you are effectively zoned out.
There's nothing for you there. Or if you are
elderly and need specialized care or if you are
poor, the monoculture of housing creates a monoculture
of people. And the ultimate expression of this,
of course, is the gated community where the exclusivity
is made physical. You need a code to even enter.
So we've built these incredibly efficient, safe,
manicured environments. We have achieved the
dream of the residential area, but nothing is
perfect. And the source material highlights some
pretty significant critiques of this model. Indeed.
And these aren't just nitpicks. They're fundamental
structural problems with how these developments
function in the long term. OK, so let's get into
it. Let's start with connectivity or maybe the
lack of it. Right. The source material calls
this the mesh problem. Developments often do
not mesh well with the greater community around
them. The mesh problem. I like that visualization.
Ideally, a city is a woven fabric where you can
move easily from one part to another. Exactly.
In a traditional city grid, you have unlimited
choices of routes. If one street is blocked,
you just take the next one over. It's resilient.
But many residential developments are isolated
pods. They often have only one entrance and one
exit connecting to a main arterial road. I know
neighborhoods exactly like that. It's like a
bag of marbles. The marbles are near each other,
but they don't touch or connect. If there is
a traffic accident at the main gate, nobody is
getting home for dinner. And beyond the traffic
issue, it creates a profound physical isolation
because these are often commuter towns. They
serve no purpose for the greater community. There
is no commerce. There's nothing to draw anyone
else in. Right. Nobody from the next town over
drives into my subdivision to buy shoes or get
a haircut because there are no shops there. Exactly.
It is a destination only for the people who sleep
there. So the residents are forced to leave for
everything. Unlike a mixed -use area where you
might live above a bakery and across from a dentist,
here you are geographically separated from all
of your daily needs. Which leads us directly
to the transportation trap. The car dependency.
Because there are no great streets connecting
these pods, and because there are limited exit
points, getting around takes a pointlessly lengthy
time span. Pointlessly lengthy. I feel that in
my soul. A trip that should be five minutes as
the crow flies takes 20 because you have to wind
through the maze to get to the arterial road,
wait at the light, drive down the arterial, wait
on another light, and then wind back into the
commercial pod where the grocery store is. And
this impacts more than just drive time. It makes
walking and cycling difficult, if not downright
dangerous. If the only way out of your neighborhood
is a six -lane highway with no sidewalk, you
aren't going to ride your bike to the store.
You aren't going to let your kids walk to school.
So even though we move to the suburbs for open
space and safety, we end up trapping ourselves
and our children in cars. And then there's the
issue of where we put all these cars. The notes
mention parking wars. This is a fascinating social
consequence. Modern roads in these developments
are often packed with what the sources call unattended
vehicles. Unattended vehicles. That's a very
polite way of saying cars clotted along the curb.
It is unsightly, certainly, but it also blocks
pavements, making it hard for people with strollers
or wheelchairs. And it makes roads more dangerous
for children because it reduces visibility. If
a child runs out from between two parked SUVs,
a driver cannot see them in time. But the human
element is what stands out. It is often the source
of endless arguments between neighbors. Oh, absolutely.
You parked three inches in front of my driveway.
Or why is that van not moved in three weeks?
Or my favorite, stop parking in front of my house.
That's my spot, even though it's a public street.
It creates so much friction. We designed these
spaces for cars. We gave everyone a driveway
and a garage. Yet the presence of the cars becomes
a constant nuisance. And you have to ask, why
is that? Why don't people park in their garages?
Because the garage has become the attic. We have
so much consumer participation, so much stuff,
that the garage is full of kayaks and Christmas
decorations and old furniture. So the car, the
very thing the suburb was built for, gets kicked
to the curb. It's a real irony. We move there
for more space, fill the space with stuff, and
then the car clutters up the street. And speaking
of space, let's talk about the greenery. Because
the promise of the suburb is the garden, right?
The connection to nature. That is the promise.
But the reality is what we might call the greenery
paradox. Okay, unpack the paradox for me. Well,
consider the front nursery. This refers to those
low -walled, well -cared -for front gardens.
The manicured lawn. The prize -winning hydrangeas.
The perfect edging. Yes. There is a psychological
aspect here. The sources point out. Residents
keep a very close eye on these spaces. They secretly,
or not so secretly, try to outperform their neighbors.
They're keeping up with the Joneses effect. Look
at Bob's lawn stripes. I need to up my game.
Exactly. It is a performative space. It's a display.
But here's the paradox. Many developers, in an
effort to cut costs, remove the distinctions
between public and confidential space. What does
that mean, confidential space? Private space.
Space that feels like it's yours. They might
eliminate the verge, which is that strip of grass
between the sidewalk and the road. Or they'll
get rid of specific boundary markers like fences
or hedges in the front. The result is often places
that become unused, disliked, and neglected.
Why? Because if a space isn't clearly mine to
use, if I feel exposed to the street, I won't
sit there. I won't use it. It's a stage set,
not a living room. You look at it, but you don't
hang out in it. Precisely. If you put a lawn
chair on your front lawn in a modern suburb,
people look at you funny. It's for viewing, not
for living. It becomes a burden, something you
have to mow and maintain rather than a genuine
amenity. And then there is the issue of trees.
Everyone claims to love a tree -lined street.
It's the idyllic image of a neighborhood. The
dappled sunlight, the shade, the cooling effect
in the summer, it's beautiful. But new developments
frequently overlook them, and it's not just an
oversight, it's systemic. Highway authorities
often actively deter trees and hedgerows. Why?
Do they just hate nature? They worry about root
damage to the road, or visibility issues at intersections,
or maintenance costs when branches fall. It's
all about liability. So the path of least resistance
for them is to minimize the green. So we end
up with what? Just wide streets and grass? We
end up with developments dominated by hard materials.
Concrete sidewalks, asphalt roads, brick houses.
They often appear colorless and stark. That is
depressing. We moved out of the gray city to
find green and we built a gray suburb. That is
the crux of the critique. We mass produced the
house, but we may have value engineered the living
out of the neighborhood. We prioritize the car
and the curb appeal over the actual human experience
of connection and nature. Wow. Okay, that is
a heavy thought to sit with. So let's try to
summarize where we've been today. This has been
quite a journey through the machine we live in.
It has. We started with the definition, the simple
idea of land used primarily for housing. We looked
at the invisible rules of zoning, the FAR, the
separation of uses, and the stubborn power of
restrictive covenants that lock neighborhoods
in time. And we traveled from the bespoke mansions
of the rich and the tenements of the poor through
the streetcar era and into that industrial explosion
of the post -WWII suburb, the Levittown model
of assembly line living. We saw how that model
evolved over time, adding curves, monumentation
and traffic calming to become the product we
recognize today. And finally, we looked at the
cost of that efficiency. The isolation, the car
dependency, the parking wars, and the paradoxical
lack of real usable nature. And it is so important
to remember that this field is vast. We have
barely scratched the surface of the varieties
out there. The notes mention agri -hoods. What's
an agri -hood? Suburbs built around working farms
where the community is centered on agriculture.
There are McMansions, those oversized houses
on small lots. We have gentrification, the process
of changing neighborhoods. NIMBYism. Not in my
backyard. The list goes on and on. It just shows
how complex the simple act of living somewhere
actually is. It's economic. It's political. It's
social. Indeed. It's everything. So, as we wrap
up, I want to leave our listeners with a final
thought. Something to chew on the next time they
pull into their driveway. I've been thinking
about this. We built these areas to escape the
cramped, dirty city. We wanted comfort. We wanted
ownership. Remember, it became cheaper to own
than to rent. But I have to ask, have we engineered
neighborhoods that look perfect on the outside,
the front nursery, yet actually discourage the
very community interaction they were meant to
house? That's the question, isn't it? Are we
lonely by design? If the streetcar suburb was
defined by the streetcar, a vehicle of shared
public transport, the modern residential area
is defined by the unattended vehicle, a private
capsule sitting empty on the street. How does
that shape who we are? If our streets are designed
for parking, not for people, what does that say
about our community? The unattended vehicle.
It's a powerful image. It's there. It's big.
It's in the way. And it's empty. Maybe it's time
we filled our streets with something else. Maybe
a lemonade stand. Or just people walking. It's
a start. Thank you so much for joining us on
this deep dive. I know I'm going to be looking
at my zoning codes a little differently tonight.
As should we all. Until next time, keep looking
deeper. Bye for now.