Interesting article for those with a WSJ sub. Honestly, makes sense - we used the dining room like once a month at most when I grew up:
Home sizes are shrinking the most in some of the hotter markets of previous years. The Seattle area, where the size of newly built homes is 18% smaller than it was five years ago, tops the list. New homes in Charlotte, N.C., and San Antonio shrank by 14%, Livabl by Zonda said.
Even these multi-million dollar houses being built today are often stepping away from the formal rooms of yesteryear. I keep finding myself surprised when I see a large $2M+ house without a formal room.
I think that these younger buyers are perfectly happy to give up these spaces that they wonât use as long as they can maximize their experiences in the spaces that they do use.
Interesting article in INDY Week from March about Raleighâs sprawling city limits (apologies if this has been posted in another thread and I missed it):
In addition, for the city to get peak revenues, the development has to be dense and mixed-use, Young said. However, a lot of developers in the last few years have passed that up in favor of building only traditional or ranch-style homes. For example, âwhen 540 was extended in western Wake, the communities out there decided to allow almost exclusively single-family development,â he said. â[That type of development] is often revenue-negative growth.â
Depressing. Land is cheap and developers donât give a shit.
540 was a mistake. Too late now though the sprawl is coming.
Could the city charge the real cost of maintaining sprawling infrastructure to both the developers and property owners in low-density areas to discourage sprawl? Is this already done?
Maybe it could be similar to how they have tiered water rates based on usage, but instead base some amount of property taxes and utility fees on density.
If you start actually charging appropriate ratios for extending utilities for those development on the outskirts, I bet the cost comparision would start looking better for density vs sprawl. Sure, the land is cheap, but you want me to actually pay more to get water/power/gas/etc??? I like your thinking, Deb!
Or better, stop encouraging it by continually adding highways and road widening. If you want to live far, far out, there has got to be a point where you need to âpayâ for it with less road infra.
Just going back to another conversation from another thread. Developers trying to build density and revenue positive structures for the city are constantly hounded to provide affordable housing. But, the developers that build revenue negative housing for the city arenât. Itâs completely backwards and incentivizes the wrong things.
The INDY tends to have a foundation of âRaleigh badâ in its narrative.
In reality, Raleigh hasnât sprawled like it did prior to the change in NC annexation laws in (I think) 2012. Itâs no coincidence that they chose to compare the 2022 number against the very first year after the law went into effect and as the country was still climbing out of the great recession.
Raleigh keeps getting more densely populated as the years go by. Thatâs a reversal from decades of it becoming less dense in the 2nd half of the 20th Century.
For sure - the lede paragraph alone tells you everything you need to know about what they think about growth as a concept:
Everyone who lives in Raleigh knows rent is going up, traffic is getting worse, and a cup of coffee costs more than ever. But growth isnât just happening inside the city limits.
Everyone who lives in Raleigh knows rent is going up, traffic is getting worse, and a cup of coffee costs more than ever. But growth isnât just happening inside the city limits.
As if those things arenât happening in Durham as well⌠Guess those Indy endorsements didnât help much?
IndyWeek started in/is based in Durham IIRC, so theyâve always had a pro-Durham/anti-Raleigh slant. Theyâre nothing but a local âold man yells at cloudâ rag anyway, these days.
âŚand interestingly, Raleigh is more densely populated than Durham, and itâs not even close! Cary is even more densely populated than Durham.
(((I do believe their anti-Raleigh slant is just jealousy/projection))) 
I have a hard time agreeing with your example. The âsoulless single use housing complexesâ link you gave takes to present day Durâm. Hereâs the before and after. I donât think thereâs anything âworseâ about it. Brought lots of people to live downtown instead of a sketchy industrial area.
2007:
2022:
We have RTP to thank for the success of this whole area. Along with it the roads with cars, people, spending their money and everything. I wish we had more transit but that will eventually come.
to be fair, the other two links were the âbeforeâ. way better if those had been kept. but yes, even this single-use housing block is better than the car dealership wasteland.
I think you missed my point and did not click on the links that show this neighborhoodâs history. Before the âbeforeâ:
Most of this last image is of the railyard, but the bit of the neighborhood on the upper side of the image is striking in how dense and seamlessly integrated Haytiâs residential areas were with the commerical corridors. This wouldâve felt like one of the most walkable and vibrant areas of the city in its heyday. You could easily walk from your home to theaters, business schools, hotels, cafes, and grocery stores. The construction of the highway displaced 120 black-owned businesses that used to exist in this area.
The point of my comparison was not to say whatâs there now is worse than what was there ten years ago. Obviously not⌠the land sat empty for decades after the neighborhood was bulldozed for no reason. But if you walk through this area today, which I do regularly because I live nearby, there is zero street-life, no retail or businesses, and nowhere for anyone who doesnât live there to go to, despite it being the most densely populated corridor of the city. What weâve rebuilt in place of the thriving â15-minuteâ district of a century ago is worse in almost every way.
If this image is indicative of Durhamâs urban planning and development, then Iâm disappointed in how narrow the sidewalks are.
Another analogy about why I really donât care about Gallup polls ask about âdo you ever dream about a little house in the countrysideâ: half of Americans either are too young to drink, or abstain from alcohol. 1/3 of adult drinkers said they had zero drinks last week, for another 16% of the US population. So even accounting for the 1-2% of Americans who are teenaged drinkers, TWO-THIRDS OF ALL RED-BLOODED AMERICANS did not drink alcohol last week. Thatâs a HUGE MAJORITY OF AMERICANS voting with their dollars!
By the logic of âmajority rules!!! minority can get lost!!!â, thereâs no use producing any more alcohol, and we should just go and, uhhh, prohibit its production and sale.
But guess what? Prohibiting the production of anything other than single-family sprawl is exactly what almost all cities have done with most of their land!
Soooooooo I really donât care if a majority of Americans have been brainwashed by the trillion-dollar auto/oil/sprawl industries into thinking that sprawl is good for them.
The suburban life is definitely good for me. It makes me happy. Live the way you want and we will live the way we want. That way everybody is happy.
