drive until you qualify

3 results back to index

The Option of Urbanism: Investing in a New American Dream by Christopher B. Leinberger

addicted to oil, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, asset allocation, big-box store, centre right, commoditize, credit crunch, David Brooks, desegregation, Donald Shoup, Donald Trump, drive until you qualify, edge city, Ford Model T, full employment, General Motors Futurama, gentrification, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Jane Jacobs, knowledge economy, Lewis Mumford, McMansion, mortgage tax deduction, new economy, New Urbanism, peak oil, Ponzi scheme, postindustrial economy, RAND corporation, Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, reserve currency, Richard Florida, Savings and loan crisis, Seaside, Florida, the built environment, transit-oriented development, urban planning, urban renewal, urban sprawl, value engineering, walkable city, white flight

There are obvious short-term cost benefits to consumers in this cheaper construction, but the end result is that modern construction quality is generally considered much worse than almost anything built prior to the 1930s Depression.2 There is an obvious irony in this; today’s Americans make three times more in real dollar terms than our ancestors living in the 1920s, yet we can not seem to build buildings of as high quality as those built then.3 Drivable sub-urban for-sale housing development also results in cheaper land costs per dwelling unit if the consumer is willing to “drive until you qualify.” Various studies have shown that for every mile from an employment center a home buyer is willing to drive, the price of the house drops by between 1.5 and 6.0 percent.4 Housing affordability has therefore been directly tied to transportation. “Drive until you qualify” has become the basic American affordable housing policy. Smaller suburban governments allow households to cluster together in relatively homogeneous jurisdictions—the “birds of a feather flock together” phenomenon described in chapter 2.

…

According to Donald Shoup, author of The High Cost of Free Parking, parking policies are responsible for much of the look of development today.6 In summary, the benefits of drivable sub-urbanism have come down to: terrestrial affiliation—having a piece of land to call one’s own, lower costs, due to inherently cheaper construction and infrastructure subsidies, more land, particularly if one is willing to “drive until you qualify,” lower community taxes, improved public schools, privacy, perceived safety, and abundant free parking. Getting better services, privacy, and more house for a lower cost is about as good as it gets. The domestic policy of promoting drivable suburbanism made the decision what could only be called a “no-brainer.”

…

The above calculations were for a typical car-owning family, but the findings become even more grim for a working-class family. A 2006 study of eighteen metropolitan areas throughout the country found that working families spend even more on transportation than on housing, a reflection of the “drive until you qualify” affordable housing strategy.47 “In their search for low-cost housing, working families often locate far from their place of work, dramatically increasing their transportation costs and commute times.” The unintended consequences do not stop there; this means less time with the family, increased traffic congestion for the region, and greater greenhouse gas emissions.

Ghost Road: Beyond the Driverless Car by Anthony M. Townsend

A Pattern Language, active measures, AI winter, algorithmic trading, Alvin Toffler, Amazon Robotics, asset-backed security, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, backpropagation, big-box store, bike sharing, Blitzscaling, Boston Dynamics, business process, Captain Sullenberger Hudson, car-free, carbon footprint, carbon tax, circular economy, company town, computer vision, conceptual framework, congestion charging, congestion pricing, connected car, creative destruction, crew resource management, crowdsourcing, DARPA: Urban Challenge, data is the new oil, Dean Kamen, deep learning, deepfake, deindustrialization, delayed gratification, deliberate practice, dematerialisation, deskilling, Didi Chuxing, drive until you qualify, driverless car, drop ship, Edward Glaeser, Elaine Herzberg, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, extreme commuting, financial engineering, financial innovation, Flash crash, food desert, Ford Model T, fulfillment center, Future Shock, General Motors Futurama, gig economy, Google bus, Greyball, haute couture, helicopter parent, independent contractor, inventory management, invisible hand, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, Jevons paradox, jitney, job automation, John Markoff, John von Neumann, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, Kiva Systems, Lewis Mumford, loss aversion, Lyft, Masayoshi Son, megacity, microapartment, minimum viable product, mortgage debt, New Urbanism, Nick Bostrom, North Sea oil, Ocado, openstreetmap, pattern recognition, Peter Calthorpe, random walk, Ray Kurzweil, Ray Oldenburg, rent-seeking, ride hailing / ride sharing, Rodney Brooks, self-driving car, sharing economy, Shoshana Zuboff, Sidewalk Labs, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart cities, Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia, SoftBank, software as a service, sovereign wealth fund, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, surveillance capitalism, technological singularity, TED Talk, Tesla Model S, The Coming Technological Singularity, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The future is already here, The Future of Employment, The Great Good Place, too big to fail, traffic fines, transit-oriented development, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, urban planning, urban sprawl, US Airways Flight 1549, Vernor Vinge, vertical integration, Vision Fund, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics

Crashes are unheard of, except for the occasional, colossal late-night robot-on-robot interstate pileup. Travel becomes more like following a hyperlink than embarking on a journey. You click where you want to go and then space out for a while until you pop up somewhere else, swiping or sleeping away the hours in between. “Drive until you qualify,” a home buyer’s mantra for the trade-off between cheaper housing and a longer commute, takes on a whole new meaning when software’s at the wheel and the exurban frontier marches ever farther into the hinterlands. The other school of thought shifts our focus from the periphery to the center.

…

But is there a way to turn this threat into an opportunity? Can we couple two seemingly contradictory impacts of automation—the improvement of transit and the subversion of walking—to mobilize a new kind of neighborhood? Could rovers actually help us improve TOD instead of abandoning it? DURING THE HOUSING BUBBLE of the early 2000s, “Drive until you qualify” for a mortgage became a do-or-die mantra for first-time homebuyers. In a city of rovers, the same might be true, but you’d hop onto a self-driving scooter instead of sliding into an SUV. To understand why, we need to think geometrically. A widely used rule of thumb in urban planning assumes that people are willing to walk only about 20 minutes to a transit stop—in practice that works out to about a one-mile walkshed for TOD projects.

One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger by Matthew Yglesias

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, airport security, assortative mating, Big Tech, Boeing 737 MAX, Boris Johnson, British Empire, business logic, carbon footprint, carbon tax, classic study, collective bargaining, Colonization of Mars, congestion charging, congestion pricing, coronavirus, COVID-19, cross-subsidies, deindustrialization, demographic transition, Diane Coyle, Donald Trump, drive until you qualify, Edward Glaeser, Elon Musk, gentrification, global pandemic, Greta Thunberg, high-speed rail, housing crisis, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, Induced demand, industrial cluster, Kowloon Walled City, low interest rates, mandatory minimum, mass immigration, Mercator projection, minimum wage unemployment, moral panic, New Urbanism, open borders, open immigration, plutocrats, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, secular stagnation, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), self-driving car, Silicon Valley, social distancing, superstar cities, tech worker, the built environment, Thomas Malthus, transit-oriented development, white flight, working-age population, Yogi Berra

Fortunately, for the vast majority of modern Americans who have cars, the solution castigated as “sprawl” by its opponents works perfectly well. A working-class family living in the Oklahoma City metro area may not be able to afford a house in the absolute best school district or nicest neighborhood, but through the logic of “drive until you qualify,” it can get a house somewhere. The expansive urban footprints that result aren’t always very aesthetically charming, and hyperdependence on automobiles raises public health and ecological problems. But “build more highways and make the city bigger” does pretty much work as a solution to the problem of land scarcity.

How to Kill a City: The Real Story of Gentrification by Peter Moskowitz

"Hurricane Katrina" Superdome, affirmative action, Airbnb, back-to-the-city movement, Bay Area Rapid Transit, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, Blue Bottle Coffee, British Empire, clean water, collective bargaining, company town, David Brooks, deindustrialization, Detroit bankruptcy, do well by doing good, drive until you qualify, East Village, Edward Glaeser, fixed-gear, gentrification, Golden Gate Park, housing crisis, housing justice, income inequality, Jane Jacobs, Kickstarter, Kitchen Debate, land bank, late capitalism, messenger bag, mortgage tax deduction, Naomi Klein, new economy, New Urbanism, off-the-grid, private military company, profit motive, public intellectual, Quicken Loans, RAND corporation, rent control, rent gap, rent stabilization, restrictive zoning, Richard Florida, Ronald Reagan, school choice, Silicon Valley, starchitect, subprime mortgage crisis, tech worker, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the High Line, trickle-down economics, urban planning, urban renewal, white flight, working poor, Works Progress Administration, young professional

The struggle just did not seem worth it. The landlord turned the apartment into a one-bedroom, got rid of the high ceilings and wainscoting to make it more modern, and raised the rent to $3,000. That was in 2011; it likely costs even more now. So Oscar did what’s become known in real estate circles as “drive until you qualify”: he searched for two-bedroom condos for himself and his mother farther and farther and farther from San Francisco until he found one that he could afford, here in Concord. The trip between Concord and San Francisco can take thirty minutes or more than an hour, depending on the traffic. There is little in the way of culture or community here.

Green Metropolis: Why Living Smaller, Living Closer, and Driving Less Are Thekeys to Sustainability by David Owen

A Pattern Language, active transport: walking or cycling, big-box store, Buckminster Fuller, car-free, carbon footprint, carbon tax, clean water, congestion charging, congestion pricing, delayed gratification, distributed generation, drive until you qualify, East Village, Easter island, electricity market, food miles, Ford Model T, garden city movement, hydrogen economy, invisible hand, Jane Jacobs, Jevons paradox, linear programming, McMansion, megaproject, Michael Shellenberger, military-industrial complex, Murano, Venice glass, Negawatt, New Urbanism, off grid, off-the-grid, oil shale / tar sands, PalmPilot, peak oil, placebo effect, Stewart Brand, systems thinking, Ted Nordhaus, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Thomas L Friedman, unemployed young men, urban planning, urban sprawl, walkable city, zero-sum game

As the price of fuel contributed to business closures, job layoffs, and rapid increases in the cost of food, clothing, medical care, and travel of all kinds, American homeowners at the margin were pushed beyond their ability to adjust—especially if the houses they had stretched to buy were in the newest, most distant suburbs, whose residents face the longest, most expensive commutes. (“Drive until you qualify” is the mortgage broker’s expression of the inverse relationship between fuel consumption and what buyers perceive to be affordable real estate.) A new house that was barely within reach when oil was $20 a barrel became a financial land mine when oil was $145 a barrel. The global credit bubble would have burst regardless—for too many years, too many financial institutions had aggressively lent money they didn’t have to people who couldn’t pay it back, making it easier for all of us to buy things we couldn’t afford—but the cost of energy was among the proximate causes, and it will always be one of the main factors determining the health of any of the world’s economies, from the poorest to the richest.

Sunbelt Blues: The Failure of American Housing by Andrew Ross

8-hour work day, Airbnb, barriers to entry, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, carbon footprint, Celebration, Florida, clean water, climate change refugee, company town, coronavirus, corporate raider, COVID-19, do what you love, Donald Trump, drive until you qualify, edge city, El Camino Real, emotional labour, financial innovation, fixed income, gentrification, gig economy, global supply chain, green new deal, Hernando de Soto, Home mortgage interest deduction, housing crisis, Housing First, housing justice, industrial cluster, informal economy, Jeff Bezos, land bank, late fees, lockdown, Lyft, megaproject, military-industrial complex, minimum wage unemployment, mortgage tax deduction, New Urbanism, open immigration, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Peter Calthorpe, pill mill, rent control, rent gap, rent stabilization, restrictive zoning, Richard Florida, San Francisco homelessness, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, smart cities, social distancing, starchitect, tech bro, the built environment, traffic fines, uber lyft, urban planning, urban renewal, urban sprawl, working poor

But the overall costs of sprawl, to residents and nonresidents like, are prohibitive, amounting in the US to more than a trillion dollars a year.1 And the financialization of the housing market means that the payoff for individual home buyers is by no means guaranteed. In the years before 2008, for example, lower-income prospective buyers of single-family homes were advised to “drive until you qualify”—only to find themselves saddled with subprime loans and stranded out in the foreclosure belts after the housing crash, dozens of traffic-choked miles from places of employment. Developments under construction became “ghost subdivisions,” riddled with weed-strewn lots and unfinished roads.

Public Places, Urban Spaces: The Dimensions of Urban Design by Matthew Carmona, Tim Heath, Steve Tiesdell, Taner Oc

"hyperreality Baudrillard"~20 OR "Baudrillard hyperreality", A Pattern Language, Arthur Eddington, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, big-box store, Broken windows theory, Buckminster Fuller, car-free, carbon footprint, cellular automata, City Beautiful movement, Community Supported Agriculture, complexity theory, deindustrialization, disinformation, Donald Trump, drive until you qualify, East Village, edge city, food miles, Frank Gehry, Future Shock, game design, garden city movement, gentrification, global supply chain, Guggenheim Bilbao, income inequality, invisible hand, iterative process, Jane Jacobs, land bank, late capitalism, Lewis Mumford, longitudinal study, Masdar, Maslow's hierarchy, megaproject, megastructure, New Urbanism, peak oil, Peter Calthorpe, place-making, post-oil, precautionary principle, principal–agent problem, prisoner's dilemma, profit motive, Richard Florida, Seaside, Florida, starchitect, streetcar suburb, systems thinking, tacit knowledge, technological determinism, telepresence, the built environment, The Chicago School, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Great Good Place, the market place, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Traffic in Towns by Colin Buchanan, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, transit-oriented development, urban decay, urban planning, urban renewal, urban sprawl, vertical integration, zero-sum game

TABLE 2.2 Costs and Benefits of Driveable Suburbanism Source: Adapted from Leinberger (2008: 67, 84–5). Benefits • Terrestrial affiliation – having a piece of land to call one’s own • Lower costs, due to inherently cheaper construction and (hidden) infrastructure subsidies • More land, particularly if one is willing to ‘drive until you qualify’ • Lower community taxes • Privacy • Perceived safety • Abundant free parking. Costs • Automobile dependence, leaving essentially only one means of transportation • Social segregation• Concentration of poverty, resulting in major social problems • Lack of access to jobs for many lower income and minority households • Exclusion of non-drivers from society – those too old, too young, too poor, disabled, or not interested • Secession of the elites, propelling the growth of a two-class society • NIMBY (not in my back yard) development groups, trained to oppose driveable suburban development