urbanism
1973
Click here to read Part 2, in which I attempt to make a case for the benefits of urban density and for the importance of having substantial areas of high-density (by San Antonio standards) as part of the mix. 
incident light
1953
respond
He grudgingly acknowledges that urban density holds an attraction for “the Birkenstock/NPR crowd,” but then declaims: “Look around you. Look at the numbers. The overwhelming majority of us live in the suburbs, and we live there for a reason. We’ve picked cars over bikes, backyards over balconies, gardens over planter boxes. If we wanted hard-core urban living, we could have it. There are some places to live in downtown San Antonio, and there are many cities that offer the lifestyle you find so attractive. “We didn’t choose to live there. We didn’t choose New York, or Chicago, or Los Angeles—we chose San Antonio. And you need to come to terms with the fact that many of us chose San Antonio not in spite of the fact that it’s the kind of city that it is, but precisely because it’s the kind of city that it is.”
A case for urban density, Part 1
Did we really ‘choose’ suburbia?
August 8, 2014 I did not have a strong opinion about the now-shelved plan for a 5.9-mile streetcar line serving downtown and the emerging urban neighborhood along lower Broadway. On balance, I favored the project,  although a strong argument probably can be made for bus rapid transit as adequate to serve the next five or 10 years of population growth in the Broadway corridor.  The most provocative, if wrong-headed, commentary on the scuttling came from Daniel Puckett, who was briefly a colleague of mine at the San Antonio Express-News.   In a blog post,                                                                                                       Mr. Puckett crystallizes what I think is the cultural core of the local opposition to rail transit. In his view, the battle over streetcar is a proxy for “a war over what kind of city we want San Antonio to be.” More specifically, Mr. Puckett expresses a distaste for urban density:  “We live in a low-density city that’s big enough to offer urban amenities but small enough to maintain the small-town feel that San Antonio is famous for,” Mr Puckett writes. “We want it to stay that way. You [that is, the establishment] want it to change, and we’ve watched you try to change it for decades.”      Correction: Mr. Puckett did not choose San Antonio. He chose Converse. For nearly a century Converse had reposed as a tiny rural village, but starting in the early 1970s it quickly became overgrown with the tract housing of suburbia.  Converse today, it is fair (turnaboutwise) to assume, provides contentment to the tasseled loafers/Rush Limbaugh crowd. Mr. Puckett misconstrues so much about so many subjects — about the role of “the establishment” in San Antonio’s development, about the reasons why the suburbs look and function the way they do, about the value of density as an engine of  economic development, and indeed about “the kind of city” San Antonio is — that I scarcely know where to begin to respond.  Let’s begin with “the kind of city.” With respect to  population density and patterns of urban form, San Antonio is many kinds of city, as is every other large city. “The kind of city” that Mr. Puckett can see from hisConverse rumpus room is not relevant to the urban core, which is the only area of San Antonio that is relevantin connection with streetcar and the main target area for advocates of urban density. It is both ignorant and presumptuous of Mr. Puckett to vilify increased density in the urban core on the grounds that it would change “the kind of city” San Antonio is. In the historic urban core, small apartment buildings are very commonly situated along major thoroughfares, such as San Pedro where it borders Alta Vista, and mixed in among single-family detached houses away from the major thoroughfares. We even have a couple of grand high-rise aprtment buildings dating from the 1920s. The density that streetcar proponents envision, and that has already begun to materialize, is not a radical break from historic patterns but fully consistent with them. Now, let’s examine the word “choose.” Mr. Puckett assumes that we are free to choose whatever we desire and can afford. But that isn’t the case. Most of us are free to choose only among the housing options that developers have made available to us. Moreover, the available options might include few, if any, that comport with all of our wishes. We compromise. Parents with school-age children, for example, often sacrifice a short commute for (the perception of) better schools. Some young adults with strong family ties in urban-core neighborhoods end up moving to the distant suburbs because, for them, price per square foot trumps all other considerations. When I was searching for a house in 1988, I hoped to find a small urban house with a minimal yard. The one available property that matched my ideal was pricey, and it was snatched up before I could make an offer. I had to settle for a larger house and a larger yard, farther from downtown — at a lower price. For fully five decades after World War II, housing choice was increasingly constrained in San Antonio. It was constrained in ways that pushed most buyers and renters into the suburbs, and into one particular type of suburban form (I call it “sprawl”) that made the automobile the only practical means of reaching virtually any destination.  Free choice had little to do with it. Great numbers of people did not suddenly wake up one morning and think, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful to live where the nearest supermarket is four miles away, and the nearest apartment for Mama is three miles in the other direction, and the kids can’t bike to school?” After World War II a combination of factors contributed to population decline and disinvestment in the old city while favoring outward expansion. Both the push and the pull constrained the choices of people seeking a place to live in. On the push side: Urban “renewal” projects, Interstate highways, HemisFair and expanding public institutions bulldozed vast swaths of inner-city neighborhoods and eliminated two entirely. A lot of white residents fled the inner city in the wake of civil rights legislation because they didn’t want to share their schools and swimming pools and restaurants with darker-skinned people. The 1965 zoning code deemed many residential lots in older neighborhoods to be too small for houses, so that dilapidated structures on those lots could not be replaced. New land-use regulations inhibited other infill development. Jobs were lost as some industrial employers died and others moved to larger facilities in outlying areas where land was plentiful.  On the pull side: In the decade after World War II, huge pent-up demand for housing for returning military veterans could be met only by suburban expansion. VA and FHA loan policies favored new houses and excluded much of our older housing from eligibility. The South Texas Medical Center was planted at the edge of the city. Later, the UTSA campus was built way out in the middle of nowhere, not because of any locational advantage, but in order to enrich a handful of well-connected land owners.  And here’s the big one: It became clear in the late 1970s that geographically unbalanced suburban expansion and loss of population and tax base in the urban core were threatening the ability of the city to provide services and maintain infrastructure. City planners proposed polices to channel new development into a more compact and easily serviceable pattern, and to reverse the decline of the center. But the suburban developers, builders and real estate brokers who ran San Antonio would have none of that. An obedient City Council decreed in 1979 that the city should not plan future growth, but should “accommodate” growth, after the fact, wherever the developers wanted to put it — mostly on cheap land far from existing infrastructure.  That’s a very expensive and frankly stupid way to run a city, and its repercussions are still being felt today. The current controversy over proposed toll lanes on US 281 is one consequence.   One reason why “the overwhelming majority of us live in the suburbs” is that San Antonio’s “establishment” — comprising almost exclusively suburban interests — would not allow the majority any other option. Only in the past decade or so has the urban core gained a countervailing concentration of economic and political power sufficient to make the center thrive once again. There is still much work to be done. Only when that process is far advanced will “choice” in housing be a full reality, rather than an empty slogan. Mike Greenberg   
“Open letter to the San Antonio establishment,”
Along Perrin-Beitel Road, the charming small-town feel of low-density suburbia
1967
2014
Converse: From rural village to sprawling suburbDetail from US Geological Survey map
1800 Broadway apartments with street-level retail (including Clay Williams’s San Antonio Bike Shop) exemplifies urban density near downtown.
Converse: From rural village to sprawling suburbDetail from US Geological Survey map
August 8, 2014 I did not have a strong opinion about the now-shelved plan for a 5.9-mile streetcar line serving downtown and the emerging urban neighborhood along lower Broadway. On balance, I favored the project,  although a strong argument probably can be made for bus rapid transit as adequate to serve the next five or 10 years of population growth in the Broadway corridor.  The most provocative, if wrong-headed, commentary on the scuttling came from Daniel Puckett, who was briefly a colleague of mine at the San Antonio Express-News.   In a blog post,                                                                                                       Mr. Puckett crystallizes what I think is the cultural core of the local opposition to rail transit. In his view, the battle over streetcar is a proxy for “a war over what kind of city we want San Antonio to be.” More specifically, Mr. Puckett expresses a distaste for urban density:  “We live in a low-density city that’s big enough to offer urban amenities but small enough to maintain the small-town feel that San Antonio is famous for,” Mr Puckett writes. “We want it to stay that way. You [that is, the establishment] want it to change, and we’ve watched you try to change it for decades.”      Correction: Mr. Puckett did not choose San Antonio. He chose Converse. For nearly a century Converse had reposed as a tiny rural village, but starting in the early 1970s it quickly became overgrown with the tract housing of suburbia.  Converse today, it is fair (turnaboutwise) to assume, provides contentment to the tasseled loafers/Rush Limbaugh crowd. Mr. Puckett misconstrues so much about so many subjects — about the role of “the establishment” in San Antonio’s development, about the reasons why the suburbs look and function the way they do, about the value of density as an engine of  economic development, and indeed about “the kind of city” San Antonio is — that I scarcely know where to begin to respond.  Let’s begin with “the kind of city.” With respect to  population density and patterns of urban form, San Antonio is many kinds of city, as is every other large city. “The kind of city” that Mr. Puckett can see from hisConverse rumpus room is not relevant to the urban core, which is the only area of San Antonio that is relevantin connection with streetcar and the main target area for advocates of urban density. It is both ignorant and presumptuous of Mr. Puckett to vilify increased density in the urban core on the grounds that it would change “the kind of city” San Antonio is. In the historic urban core, small apartment buildings are very commonly situated along major thoroughfares, such as San Pedro where it borders Alta Vista, and mixed in among single-family detached houses away from the major thoroughfares. We even have a couple of grand high-rise aprtment buildings dating from the 1920s. The density that streetcar proponents envision, and that has already begun to materialize, is not a radical break from historic patterns but fully consistent with them. Now, let’s examine the word “choose.” Mr. Puckett assumes that we are free to choose whatever we desire and can afford. But that isn’t the case. Most of us are free to choose only among the housing options that developers have made available to us. Moreover, the available options might include few, if any, that comport with all of our wishes. We compromise. Parents with school-age children, for example, often sacrifice a short commute for (the perception of) better schools. Some young adults with strong family ties in urban-core neighborhoods end up moving to the distant suburbs because, for them, price per square foot trumps all other considerations. When I was searching for a house in 1988, I hoped to find a small urban house with a minimal yard. The one available property that matched my ideal was pricey, and it was snatched up before I could make an offer. I had to settle for a larger house and a larger yard, farther from downtown — at a lower price. For fully five decades after World War II, housing choice was increasingly constrained in San Antonio. It was constrained in ways that pushed most buyers and renters into the suburbs, and into one particular type of suburban form (I call it “sprawl”) that made the automobile the only practical means of reaching virtually any destination.  Free choice had little to do with it. Great numbers of people did not suddenly wake up one morning and think, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful to live where the nearest supermarket is four miles away, and the nearest apartment for Mama is three miles in the other direction, and the kids can’t bike to school?” After World War II a combination of factors contributed to population decline and disinvestment in the old city while favoring outward expansion. Both the push and the pull constrained the choices of people seeking a place to live in. On the push side: Urban “renewal” projects, Interstate highways, HemisFair and expanding public institutions bulldozed vast swaths of inner-city neighborhoods and eliminated two entirely. A lot of white residents fled the inner city in the wake of civil rights legislation because they didn’t want to share their schools and swimming pools and restaurants with darker-skinned people. The 1965 zoning code deemed many residential lots in older neighborhoods to be too small for houses, so that dilapidated structures on those lots could not be replaced. New land-use regulations inhibited other infill development. Jobs were lost as some industrial employers died and others moved to larger facilities in outlying areas where land was plentiful.  On the pull side: In the decade after World War II, huge pent-up demand for housing for returning military veterans could be met only by suburban expansion. VA and FHA loan policies favored new houses and excluded much of our older housing from eligibility. The South Texas Medical Center was planted at the edge of the city. Later, the UTSA campus was built way out in the middle of nowhere, not because of any locational advantage, but in order to enrich a handful of well-connected land owners.  And here’s the big one: It became clear in the late 1970s that geographically unbalanced suburban expansion and loss of population and tax base in the urban core were threatening the ability of the city to provide services and maintain infrastructure. City planners proposed polices to channel new development into a more compact and easily serviceable pattern, and to reverse the decline of the center. But the suburban developers, builders and real estate brokers who ran San Antonio would have none of that. An obedient City Council decreed in 1979 that the city should not plan future growth, but should “accommodate” growth, after the fact, wherever the developers wanted to put it — mostly on cheap land far from existing infrastructure.  That’s a very expensive and frankly stupid way to run a city, and its repercussions are still being felt today. The current controversy over proposed toll lanes on US 281 is one consequence.   One reason why “the overwhelming majority of us live in the suburbs” is that San Antonio’s “establishment” — comprising almost exclusively suburban interests — would not allow the majority any other option. Only in the past decade or so has the urban core gained a countervailing concentration of economic and political power sufficient to make the center thrive once again. There is still much work to be done. Only when that process is far advanced will “choice” in housing be a full reality, rather than an empty slogan. Mike Greenberg 
Converse: From rural village to sprawling suburbStill from Orson Welles’s film “The Trial"