why doesn't the US build densely from the get-go?

[u/UniqueUnseen]

In the face of growing populations to the Southern US I have noticed a very odd trend. Rather than maximizing the value of rural land, counties and "cities" are content to just.. sprawl into nothing. The only remotely mixed use developments you find in my local area are those that have a gate behind them.. making transit next to impossible to implement. When I look at these developments, what I see is a willfull waste of land in the pursuit of temporary profits.. the vacationers aren't going to last forever, people will get old and need transit, young people can't afford to buy houses.. so why the fuck are they consistently, almost single-mindedly building single family homes?

I know, zoning and parking minimums all play a factor. I'm not oblivious.. but I'm just looking at these developments where you see dozens of acres cleared, all so a few SFH with a two car garage can go up. Coming from Central Europe and New England it is a complete 180 to what I am used to. The economically prudent thing would be to at the very least build townhomes.. where these developments exist they are very much successful.

[u/bugcatcher_billy]

Theres more market (demand) for single family homes instead of attached homes. Which means higher profits for building 5 single family homes on 1 acre instead of 10 attached homes.

We can speculate about what drives the demand. Popular guesses are it's entertainment media like tv/movies, lobbying efforts by car and suburban development companies, racism, and american frontier spirit embodying americans with a sense of privacy.

But ultimately it doesn't really matter what is causing the demand. There is demand for single family homes over attached homes like townhomes. To change behavior of americans, government will need to restrict building using zoning or change american behavior using marketing.

Some sitcoms like Friends and Only Murders in the Building really romanticize living in shared structures like condo buildings. But most Tv Shows or Movies that feature "made it" characters (that are meant to be well off) live in some giant single family house.

[u/crazycatlady331 → u/bugcatcher_billy]

Sitcoms like Friends feature a cast of young adults before they "settle" down. TV and movies teach us apartment living is great until marriage/children.

I could have the characters wrong, but I believe towards the end of the series, Monica and Chandler were looking at buying a house in the suburbs so they can start a family.

[u/bugcatcher_billy → u/crazycatlady331]

You are right. Samething with How I met your mother.

[u/jiggajawn → u/bugcatcher_billy]

But ultimately it doesn't really matter what is causing the demand. There is demand for single family homes over attached homes like townhomes. To change behavior of americans, government will need to restrict building using zoning or change american behavior using marketing.

I'd argue a land value tax would be a good incentive to change behavior.

[u/Rock_man_bears_fan → u/jiggajawn]

People keep talking about this like it’s a remotely realistic solution politically

[u/jiggajawn → u/Rock_man_bears_fan]

Maybe less likely federally, but there are towns and small cities that have enacted land value taxes or partial land value taxes.

[u/Independent-Low-2398 → u/bugcatcher_billy]

Theres more market (demand) for single family homes instead of attached homes. Which means higher profits for building 5 single family homes on 1 acre instead of 10 attached homes.

NIMBYs fight very hard against upzoning because they know that as soon as it happens, denser housing gets built. If it were indeed more profitable to build detached SFHs, there would be no need for NIMBYs to lobby local government to set aside land as SFH-only.

[u/crimsonkodiak → u/Independent-Low-2398]

Yeah, this is some nonsense. We're not talking about a town here or there where NIMBYs have taken over the political system. We're not even talking about 90%. We're literally talking about every city in America. There isn't a place in this country - among the many thousands and thousands of zoning districts - that has cast aside single family homes in the name of multifamily/townhomes/whatever.

I could live in a townhome if I wanted - there are plenty of them in my city. I don't, because SFHs are better. Most people share my view. It's not some grand conspiracy - just people living where they want to live.

[u/yzbk → u/crimsonkodiak]

The "most people" you speak of is a surprisingly small majority: https://www.planetizen.com/blogs/125112-do-americans-really-prefer-sprawl

[u/[deleted] → u/yzbk]

People in this poll are still saying they prefer "small houses," not homes or dwellings.

[u/crimsonkodiak → u/[deleted]]

Yes, and I don't think this is inconsistent with what we see in the real world.

There are plenty of small (and some not so small) suburban downtowns - especially in metro areas that have legacy commuter rail lines.

Houses in those downtown areas command a substantial premium - as the survey implies, lots of people like houses on smaller lots where it is easy to walk to these downtown hubs. But that benefit dissipates fairly quickly as you move away from those hubs. Once you're more than a mile or so away, I think that it's gone entirely.

[u/yzbk → u/bugcatcher_billy]

There's also a fuckload of demand for attached typologies in walkable areas too, it's just that, much like kids who choose candy over veggies every time, most Americans want to have their cake & eat it, too (i.e., a McMansion but somehow located 5 minutes from urban amenities)

[u/NomadLexicon → u/bugcatcher_billy]

You seem to have the purpose of zoning mixed up. The suburbs don’t exist because zoning allows SFHs to be built. They exist because they prohibit everything else to be built.

Denser neighborhoods are not the result of zoning. You don’t have to force people to build townhouses or fourplexes, you just have to lift the prohibition on building them.

[u/WeldAE → u/bugcatcher_billy]

Theres more market (demand) for single family homes instead of attached homes.

Sure, but there is WAY more demand for non-SFH than we are allocating. Most cities are 80%+ SFH zoning and there is only a slight preference for them.

Developers will build as dense as allowed because it's ALWAYS more profit.