Name: Why so many suburbs look the same
Uploaded: 2021-05-18T15:21:27.000Z
Duration: 7 min 20 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Adverbs of degree

You ever feel like you're just going in circles?

So this is Hallsley, a still-developing subdivision in Midlothian Virginia.

This place won the National Association of Homebuilders award in 2017, for best master

Let's just go to the map, save some time.

They're physical evidence of how one federal agency shaped the suburbs — in ways that

English suburban plans inspired early suburbs in the United States

like Radburn, New Jersey, which offered a unique plan.

Founded in 1929, it was designed to be car friendly.

But it introduced a street that served more like an alleyway or service road.

It was almost a prototype for the cul de sac.

Cars traveled and parked in the back of houses, not in front.

People walked to and from the train via footpaths that were car-free.

Though Radburn wasn't totally finished, today you can see the footpaths that still

provide a pedestrian network for residents.

But out of those ideas, it was Radburn's cul de sac — not its footpaths — that

spread, thanks to an agency with the power to do it.

In 1929, the Great Depression crushed the housing market.

“But due to the stimulation of the national housing act, 1935 presents a different picture.”

Before 1934, mortgages required anywhere from 30 to 50% down, paid off as quickly as 5 years.

The new Federal Housing Administration, or FHA, insured mortgages for lenders, shrinking

down-payments to 20% and extending the mortgage to the now standard 30 years.

All that made homebuying affordable and kicked off a housing boom for purchasing and construction.

“This tidal wave of new construction is an important contribution to the economic

Home ownership is the basis of a happy contented family life.”

I know, you're probably like, how does any of this connect to cul de sacs or suburban

The thing is, is that the FHA wanted to ensure that all these investments they were making

So to do that, they ranked and rated neighborhoods and homes, and then they created guidelines for those

And that is where things get complicated.

Some FHA guidelines we'd see today as roughly positive, like minimum property requirements.

Think minimum standards for plumbing and foundation of new houses, to guarantee they weren't

On the other end of the spectrum, the FHA explicitly endorsed segregation as a measure

I.E. segregation equals good neighborhood.

This underwriting manual puts it really clearly: “If a neighborhood

is to retain stability, it is necessary that properties shall continue to be occupied by

So, these guidelines ran the gamut from mundane to appalling.

But developers would be taking a huge risk to ignore the FHA, since these loans sold

Somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, the FHA's recommendations also included city

They started with car-friendly minimum street widths and then expanded.

In bulletins like “Planning Profitable Neighborhoods,” the FHA laid out “ideal” suburban plans

They drew from models like Radburn, but focused on the car and left out the pedestrians.

Other plans — with curvilinear, or winding, roads — were good.

This FHA-labeled “bad” plan shows why curved streets really did make sense sometimes.

The dotted lines show topography — like hills.

A grid plan would have required a ton of construction to work around the landscape.

The good plan — a curvilinear one — reduces construction costs and is just nicer to look

But these plans also insisted on a car-centered vision of the neighborhood, with cul de sacs

designed to slow down vehicles and limit through traffic — while also guaranteeing that cars

This bad plan would have worked well for public transportation and city services, or a walking

The “good” plan was the only safe option if they wanted their houses to sell.

Plans drafted the “bad way” were revised to fit the FHA's vision of the good life.

That was a combination of financial coercion and a quickly evolving sense of what a suburb

Listen, I played kickball in cul de sacs.

They really do slow down through traffic, they create a sense of community, they just

This subdivision here doesn't have much to do with those outmoded FHA guidelines,

but it does exist in a culture that those guidelines shaped.

The cul de sac — it crowded out a million other good ideas.

Ideas that could have had a different vision of the suburbs.

Today, some suburbs are changing the plan.

There's even a way to make existing cul de sacs more walkable.

But it's a little strange that so many places are still beholden to the old FHA's vision

This is a proposed black subdivision near Atlanta, from a 1948 FHA plan.

The plan included a “planting strip” to serve as a visible boundary between white

In the same plan, the FHA plotted very elegant curvilinear streets and cul de sacs.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

Why so many suburbs look the same

episode

physical

evolve

spectrum