The Rise of the Kingdom of Suburbia

A typical example of suburbanization in the United States

How the Brits Ruined our Fun

Have you ever noticed how different it feels in suburbia—without the life and activity of the deep city, but none of the bucolic comforts of the country? Rather, they feel like islands of solitudes, set against oceans of green grass, devoid of life save for the occasional car passing by. Don’t think of me as some sort of deep, philosophical thinker—that would frankly be embarrassing. The kingdom of suburbia seems to be an ambivert’s dream, with people never separated from you by walls with the thickness of rice paper, but not so far away that you only see another human face once a week. But inadvertently, we have ended up with neither the pleasure of company nor the pleasure of raw, wild solitudes. I blame the British for this.

This isn’t me attacking the British over some grudge from 1776, but analyzing a national obsession with suburban sprawl, with multi-square foot homes with little practical use to its occupants, at the price of shrinking yards to the point that the average dog has just enough room to sit down and do their business. This, I believe, has to do with English manorial culture, passed on first after the revolution, and thereafter with the rise of an American elite educated in Britain.

“The kingdom of suburbia seems to be an ambivert’s dream, with people never separated from you by walls with the thickness of rice paper, but not so far away that you only see another human face once a week.”

In the time of English nobility, the concept of the manor was as a seat of power, with vast, palatial gardens presided over a large house. Even to be a gentry—a landowner without noble status, was to be entitled to vote in parliament. To own such a site entailed its owner with prestige and power, especially if this manor had a lawn.

Now a stupid atavism of British influence, a lawn signified excess—it meant that nobles controlled so much land that they didn’t have to worry about food, instead using the arable land around their manor as a lawn. Nowadays, lawns maintain the same prestige, however it is difficult to grow a green yard outside the gentle clime of the British latitudes. Indeed, in the desert and chaparral of America, a lawn is all but useless, a green elephant if you will. Indeed, it is environmentally damaging, introducing invasive species alongside depleting water reserves.

Manoralism in America had its roots in the super-wealthy, such as the Virginia elite, what with their massive plantations, and their deplorable use of chattel to keep the grounds. The South, ever loyal to the monarchy (Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia were all named after monarchs for a reason), imitated the British pastoral tradition, copying their manors to the new world. Indeed, the Carolinas almost became a haven for the monarchy with their Cassiques—a Native American equivalent to Count—but Article Four, Section Four, Clause One of the United States constitution put an end to that idea. Even so, suburbia remains as an aristocratic testament to the manor.

It took a while for the concept of the manor to trickle down from the top to the middle, and even lower classes, this process accelerated in the 1950s, when a combination of post-war prosperity, a fear of urban crime, and mass production led to suburban boomtowns. Various goods became an aspect of American manoralism, such as the car—how else to navigate that vast ocean of houses?—the grill, the lawnmower, and the famous white picket fence. One shocking difference in those days is the fact that these picket fences did not defend the yard in the same way many modern fences do. Rather, the gap between the fence were wide, and the tips were at around waist height as shown in this picture of the typical neighborhood—making the suburbia of then much less an island than today.

“Now a stupid atavism of British influence, a lawn signified excess—it meant that nobles controlled so much land that they didn’t have to worry about food…”

However, the Kingdom of Suburbia has drifted from a realm of individualism and prosperity to a dictatorship led by hysterical groupthink. Houses in seven shades of beige dominate the landscape, where homeowner associations have (allegedly) handed down secret fines without telling the landowners, removing religious articles, along with an American flag—from a veteran’s yard no less! Indeed, is it true freedom to live in the suburbs when your own lands are run by hysterics that want to spite people for growing the wrong kind of shrubbery? But enough about that.

Another disadvantage of living in suburbia: the distance between people and services. In the city, you can easily access subways, libraries, museums, and parks, whereas in suburbia such services are spread around over a wider area. This makes sense, if you need 100 households to pay for a library, you would want to try and distribute those benefits. In the city, a few towers can hold a hundred households, but the suburbs require a hundred individual houses to achieve the same critical mass required. This results in more spread-out services, and thus a reliance on the automobile. In addition to large interiors that require electricity plus the addition of suburban amenities such as lawns, it makes the suburbs into an energy sinkhole.

A Few Plusses

There are a few reasons for the expansion of the Suburban Kingdom, one of the largest reasons being that a home is a store for wealth, a place for the middle classes to grow their investments. This means houses have become so-called nest eggs, allowing the accruement of debt, so long as such debt remained stable against the value of a home. This is what made the housing crisis of 2008 so potent: home values sank so much that debts went into default, and people had to foreclose. (This is a simplified and thus insufficient model of what happened as negative equities only contributed a small part to the foreclosures, but this model is useful enough as a short explanation) Even so, home ownership is considered an useful investment, if not a safe one.

In addition, suburbia finds itself removed from crime, although the gap between the crime rates of urban and suburban areas has narrowed. This could be part of why white flight has been replaced by gentrification in many urban areas both of which has been treated with consternation by the left—which are the people to choose? For me, I believe that underlying income inequality issues between races need to be dealt with—complaints of gentrification only distract from the real issue at hand.

Alternatives to suburbanization

One issue with suburbia is its propensity for mass consumption. One alternative is given by the tiny house movement, which promises to decrease consumption and waste. There are many facts on their side—even if I view it as suburbanization lite. I believe that this movement will balance the manoral desire rooted in American culture with the moderation offered by tiny houses. There are multiple designs of tiny communities floating around, with tiny homes facing each other across a central courtyard, with a bus stop to connect to public transportation. In essence, this would make these communities open-air apartments, and help to raise the density of the neighborhood and thus increase the concentration of nearby services.

“In the city, a few towers can hold a hundred households, but the suburbs require a hundred individual houses to achieve the same critical mass required. This results in more spread-out services, and thus a reliance on the automobile.”

Another option is to build apartments inspired by people-centered architecture. See, apartments on their own are often cramped and dismal. There is little incentive to provide people with space-wasting amenities such as courtyards when it could be filled up with even more suites. One proponent of people-centered architecture, Friedensreich Hundertwasser, suggested the Window-Right: A person could have the right to paint everything within arm’s reach of the window. No doubt this would send homeowner associations into a tizzy. Indeed, Hundertwasser’s final opus, the Green Citadel, provides an ideal model of such people-centered architecture.

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Pictured: The Green Citadel.

Take note of the central courtyard, with shop signs propped up on the ground floor. This signifies the building is mixed use, allowing concentrated economic activity befitting a city to take place. Such developments minimize car use, reduce food deserts by increasing the concentration of retailers, and encourages healthier living. There are trees in this development, creating both shade and a healthier atmosphere for residents. If one looks hard enough, they can identify open air bistro tables, ideal for socializing.

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Perhaps, as a way of encouraging such people-centered developments, one could encourage positive revenue effects, such as greater tenant retention, added income from commercial establishments, and a greater willingness to pay higher rents for services such as pools, gyms, and so on. This would result in a win-win scenario, stimulating the economic lifeblood of a community while increasing property value. This economic boon could be enhanced if rentiers are allowed to pay toward the ownership of their suites to use as equity, encouraging the tenants to invest in and improve their suites, and raising the land value of the homes as a whole.

A Solution to Gentrification

Typical example of British public housing

This may be controversial, as such a rise in land value might lead to further gentrification. However, it is my belief that if such developments emphasize both mixed use and mixed income in its criteria, the impact can be lessened. On the other hand, imposing rent controls on private apartments would be moronic—even a first year economic student could expose the folly with the concept. If prices are to fall, landowners will be obliged to rent out less, either selling their properties or allowing it to be maintained less, thus justifying the lower rent. Economist Assar Lindbeck characterized rent control as “the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city – except for bombing”.

Another element besides emphasizing mixed income developments could be the addition of public housing. Now, it isn’t perfect. The projects of the 1960s United States led to cramped apartments, a high concentration of poverty, and a lack of employment for tenants. In contrast, public housing in the United Kingdom was so well-liked for its spacious accommodations that people had to be taxed out. Even in Britain, such projects are not perfect, as the corner-cutting which led to the Grenfell Tower disaster proved. A reason why British public housing may have functioned better than in America could be the fact that it was designed for not just the destitute, but also for low-income denizens, thus reducing the impact of poverty concentration. This effect is also enhanced by creating public housing in high income areas, allowing low-income individuals access to better opportunities.

However, the British Conservatives, in their eminent stupidity, have slowly transformed public housing from something for the cash-strapped, and made it into something for the destitute and thereby increasing the concentration of poverty, while also cutting the number of council estates to record lows, backing up wait lists and making mobility more difficult (people have historically refused to move to higher opportunity areas if it hurt their position on a public housing waitlist.)

Even with careful planning, public housing is not a silver bullet to end economic woes associated with gentrification. Public goods are perpetually flawed by their own public nature, without the feedback mechanism that a price signal alongside with economic competition provides. Instead, such options serve more as a compress on a wound—in this case the tacit (albeit decreasing) segregation that still exists between different races more than 50 years after the Civil Rights movement ended.

In Conclusion

In short, suburbia is a desert imposed upon America by an unique quirk in its history: a burgeoning post-war middle class combined with English manoral culture and the unique national propensity for mass-production and standardization. The suburban culture has become characterized by dissatisfaction and group-think. A better solution would be to emphasize tiny homes which creates the same manors at a smaller cost in terms of resources—or to embrace mixed use and mixed income development designed to increase the land value and purchasing power of the nearby area, thereby creating positive externalities. Even positive externalities still have negative impacts such as gentrification, which may be offset by establishing public housing, provided that such public housing is designed in a way to minimize the concentration of poverty, and mixed into high opportunity areas as a way to increase mobility.