This article left me with a lot of impressions about the future of home building in Ohio (and the US):

 

http://www.mydaytondailynews.com/news/news/local/26-mile-plan-would-complete-dayton-cincy-metroplex/nkQFD/?source=ddn_skip_stub#e72a2577.3546996.735665

 

Here's some quotes from Steve Feldmann, ‎Director of Government Affairs at Home Builders Association of Greater Cincinnati:

 

 

Feldmann and a representative of the Ohio Valley Development Council objected [to the Gateway West Planning District proposal] on several grounds, including concerns about whether enough room was left for affordable housing.

 

“Warren County already has an affordability issue,” Feldmann said. “It takes a very highly desirable area and it exacerbates the problem.”

 

So affordability as a reason to not build walkable, sustainable, desirable communities? More on this line of thought:

 

Gateway West calls for design standards like those already planned for Union Village, a 1,400-acre new urbanist community where people walk or ride a bike between home and work.

 

“Very few people want to live like this,” Feldmann said. “This goes toward the wealthy.”

 

This screams easy cop-out - developers don't want to cut ino their profit margins to build places where people actually want to live.

 

It, more than anything, has made me officially realize the mindset of most suburban developers. The Atlantic IMO hit the nail on the head with this article:

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/02/why-are-people-still-building-sprawl/385741/

 

 

And this DDN article drove the point home (literally, for me at least).

 

So what do you all think? How could a cultural shift take place to get developers to come off their high horse and build places people want to live?

This article left me with a lot of impressions about the future of home building in Ohio (and the US):

 

http://www.mydaytondailynews.com/news/news/local/26-mile-plan-would-complete-dayton-cincy-metroplex/nkQFD/?source=ddn_skip_stub#e72a2577.3546996.735665

 

Here's some quotes from Steve Feldmann, ‎Director of Government Affairs at Home Builders Association of Greater Cincinnati:

 

 

Feldmann and a representative of the Ohio Valley Development Council objected [to the Gateway West Planning District proposal] on several grounds, including concerns about whether enough room was left for affordable housing.

 

“Warren County already has an affordability issue,” Feldmann said. “It takes a very highly desirable area and it exacerbates the problem.”

 

So affordability as a reason to not build walkable, sustainable, desirable communities? More on this line of thought:

 

Gateway West calls for design standards like those already planned for Union Village, a 1,400-acre new urbanist community where people walk or ride a bike between home and work.

 

“Very few people want to live like this,” Feldmann said. “This goes toward the wealthy.”

 

This screams easy cop-out - developers don't want to cut ino their profit margins to build places where people actually want to live.

 

It, more than anything, has made me officially realize the mindset of most suburban developers. The Atlantic IMO hit the nail on the head with this article:

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/02/why-are-people-still-building-sprawl/385741/

 

 

And this DDN article drove the point home (literally, for me at least).

 

So what do you all think? How could a cultural shift take place to get developers to come off their high horse and build places people want to live?

 

Why, precisely, should they make less money in order to do the things the way "urban planners and smart growth advocates" think they should? 

 

Perhaps they realize that people may answer a survey one way, but do things differently when it's a life-defining decision being made.

 

Who's actually on a "high horse"?

It's not just a survey supporting that people want this, so that point is a little bit moot. The trend in where people are choosing to live, where the most development is occurring, and where the greatest increase in housing costs has occurred support a desire for walkable, urban locations.

 

With that being said, I don't think many developers would really desire changing their status quo, regardless of money. For example, Drees has no clue what they're doing in general, but they somehow duped enough people into buying their pathetic houses to make a ton of money. If that's still working for them then don't expect them to change their methods.

 

But some developers who know what they're doing and can actually handle the additional challenges of urban development have shifted because they're capable of adapting and will do so naturally. We're seeing this in Cincy with Hueber Homes, Greiwe, and several others.

 

It'll occur naturally when sprawling development stop making money. Which is still a ways off.

It's not just a survey supporting that people want this, so that point is a little bit moot. The trend in where people are choosing to live, where the most development is occurring, and where the greatest increase in housing costs has occurred support a desire for walkable, urban locations.

 

With that being said, I don't think many developers would really desire changing their status quo, regardless of money. For example, Drees has no clue what they're doing in general, but they somehow duped enough people into buying their pathetic houses to make a ton of money. If that's still working for them then don't expect them to change their methods.

 

But some developers who know what they're doing and can actually handle the additional challenges of urban development have shifted because they're capable of adapting and will do so naturally. We're seeing this in Cincy with Hueber Homes, Greiwe, and several others.

 

It'll occur naturally when sprawling development stop making money. Which is still a ways off.

 

If you read the article, what the developers are saying is that what people say they want changes when they are actually making buying decisions.  The buyers who were interviewed back that.

 

These guys do this for a living, and the consequences for being wrong are much more profound than is the case for advocates and planners.

I understand what the developers interviewed are saying. But again, national trends support a major shift occurring. Some developers will stick around in sprawl like I said but that's mostly because the quality competition is leaving the suburbs.

 

I wouldn't put so much faith in the intelligence of suburban developers. Their work is incredibly simple and basic and requires essentially zero planning, almost no commitment to a community, and very few challenges.

 

Step 1: Buy land.

Step 2: Subdivide into however many plots you desire and clear out every bit of natural barrier to ease construction.

Step 3: Buy enough home plans online to build a handful of designs.

Step 4: Profit.

Step 5: Change your company name and structure so that in five years when your poorly built houses start falling apart you're harder to sue.

 

And this isn't coming from the sidelines where I'm just guessing how things are. I'm an architect and see this everyday. Developers are very rarely sophisticated in their approach to anything, including business.

 

Less and less are choosing to continue the suburban sprawl model so those who do stay out in the fringes still get just as much work and therefore have a bit of a skewed viewpoint. But it's not because sprawl is as healthy as ever, it's because there's less competition out there these days. The recession also helped get rid of many smaller developers who weren't big enough to survive several years with very little inventory coming online.

 

Drees has no clue what they're doing in general, but they somehow duped enough people into buying their pathetic houses to make a ton of money. If that's still working for them then don't expect them to change their methods.

 

 

Step 5: Change your company name and structure so that in five years when your poorly built houses start falling apart you're harder to sue.

 

 

Read more: http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php?action=post;topic=29936.0;last_msg=747599#postmodify#ixzz3TtPGG0PN

 

Please, some evidence to back up your claims.  I respect the fact that your an architect, but not sure how that alone gives you the last word on developers.  If people didn't want what the developers were providing, they wouldn't be buying them.  I have no ties to Drees, but I have friends who bought Drees properties 40 years ago, and they are fine homes.

I understand what the developers interviewed are saying. But again, national trends support a major shift occurring. Some developers will stick around in sprawl like I said but that's mostly because the quality competition is leaving the suburbs.

 

I wouldn't put so much faith in the intelligence of suburban developers. Their work is incredibly simple and basic and requires essentially zero planning, almost no commitment to a community, and very few challenges.

 

Step 1: Buy land.

Step 2: Subdivide into however many plots you desire and clear out every bit of natural barrier to ease construction.

Step 3: Buy enough home plans online to build a handful of designs.

Step 4: Profit.

Step 5: Change your company name and structure so that in five years when your poorly built houses start falling apart you're harder to sue.

 

And this isn't coming from the sidelines where I'm just guessing how things are. I'm an architect and see this everyday. Developers are very rarely sophisticated in their approach to anything, including business.

 

Less and less are choosing to continue the suburban sprawl model so those who do stay out in the fringes still get just as much work and therefore have a bit of a skewed viewpoint. But it's not because sprawl is as healthy as ever, it's because there's less competition out there these days. The recession also helped get rid of many smaller developers who weren't big enough to survive several years with very little inventory coming online.

 

The "poor construction" issue should be addressable by making it easier to track successor companies.

 

But what I read is that they had trouble selling the urbanist developments at all. 

 

If there's money to be made at it, someone will try it.  But if the actual demand is less than people seem to think, then the results we are seeing will follow.

The street I grew up on was involved in a class action lawsuit against Perry Homes in Cleveland who was difficult to find because they had changed their company name 3 times since leaving the area. The lawyer the street was using to sue works exclusively on cases where developers have done all they can to be impossible to sue when things hit the fan.

 

It's fine that your friends have a 40 year old Drees home, but that means it was built 40 years ago. Long before the typical mcmansion garbage they're building now which is what I'm speaking of. Their past methodology might have been quite different but their new homes they're putting up these days are plagued with problems.

 

When a client hires you to work on their developer property and you find problem after problem and corners that were cut left and right, it's hard to call their product "fine." When a company thinks it's fine to cut out a portion of a steel header because the doorway they built wasn't quite 6'-8" and then covered it back up, that's not fine. That's illegal. And dangerous. When you've completely left off the waterproofing layer on a roof except in a small patch (likely where the inspector looked), your product is not fine. When your 25 year rated roof fails after 15 years, that's not fine. When your foundation wasn't allowed to cure properly before being built upon resulting in extreme settling which results in cracked walls, cracked foundation, trim coming apart, etc. your product isn't fine. When you use 2x4s on your exterior walls, 3/8" drywall, and cheap batt insulation that's installed poorly just to save a handful of dollars, your product isn't fine.

 

I could go on for hours. I've yet to work on a developer home built from the 80s on that followed the rules correctly. I've yet to work on a developer home that didn't have corners cut to the point where the house is a better off being gutted and starting over. They're a problem.

There is a Ryan Homes add on the page right now! Ha!

All this article told me is that people don't want to buy "urban style" homes 20 miles outside of Las Vegas in neighborhoods where there isn't actually anything to walk to.  Duh.  That's half a loaf of urbanism.  People who want urban styles of homes are going to want them to be in urban neighborhoods.

To answer the question posed in the heading of this thread....It is easy (building in a green field) compared to other types of residential and it is what they know how to do.  The smaller guys are not rocket scientist and the bigger guys already have too much invested in large plots of land in the middle of nowhere from years ago.

I understand what the developers interviewed are saying. But again, national trends support a major shift occurring. Some developers will stick around in sprawl like I said but that's mostly because the quality competition is leaving the suburbs.

 

I wouldn't put so much faith in the intelligence of suburban developers. Their work is incredibly simple and basic and requires essentially zero planning, almost no commitment to a community, and very few challenges.

 

Step 1: Buy land.

Step 2: Subdivide into however many plots you desire and clear out every bit of natural barrier to ease construction.

Step 3: Buy enough home plans online to build a handful of designs.

Step 4: Profit.

Step 5: Change your company name and structure so that in five years when your poorly built houses start falling apart you're harder to sue.

 

And this isn't coming from the sidelines where I'm just guessing how things are. I'm an architect and see this everyday. Developers are very rarely sophisticated in their approach to anything, including business.

 

You missed/left out quite a few steps.  Mainly the carrying costs of buying the land, financing it, clearing it, getting utilities/streets installed, marketing the property.  It can take years and years before these unsophisticated developers ever see a dime back on their initial investment.  If the market turns south during that course of years, or the land takes more to develop than anticipated, the small profit margin that was initially expected can be wiped out.

I was clearly just generalizing for the sake of not having a 30 point list.

 

But the fact that there's huge risk financially doesn't mean they have a sophisticated planning system in place to manage that risk. It means that they rely on a huge inventory that brings in a steady stream of money while continuing to build more inventory. And the only way to do that is to build quickly and cheaply. There's no other option. You can't spend a year building a single home properly in this business model so you spend 6 months throwing something together while cutting corners and hope for the best.

 

The moment it's thrown out of balance the developer falls into trouble. Adopting a methodology that others have used and just endlessly applying it to every single situation doesn't work long-term.

I was clearly just generalizing for the sake of not having a 30 point list.

 

But the fact that there's huge risk financially doesn't mean they have a sophisticated planning system in place to manage that risk. It means that they rely on a huge inventory that brings in a steady stream of money while continuing to build more inventory. And the only way to do that is to build quickly and cheaply. There's no other option. You can't spend a year building a single home properly in this business model so you spend 6 months throwing something together while cutting corners and hope for the best.

 

The moment it's thrown out of balance the developer falls into trouble. Adopting a methodology that others have used and just endlessly applying it to every single situation doesn't work long-term.

 

Cutting corners is a separate issue, as one can assume it would also happen with any new denser developments. 

 

One could tighten up building codes and inspection requirements, but that has its own drawbacks.

 

I have to assume there are developers who do things the "right way" or would prefer to.  Why not take a page from automotive manufacturing and set up a certification system similar to ISO-9000, where independent third party auditors verify conformance to basic requirements?

The fact that the data show a trend towards greater demand for walkable urbanist communities doesn't mean that the suburb is dead.  Far from it.  The disparity between the two was so wide before that a small gain on the urbanist side still leaves the suburbs with a commanding lead in terms of overall demand.

 

We can (and do) talk about how much the value proposition of the suburbs reflects highly subsidized price points due to autocentric infrastructure.  But taking the current lay of public infrastructure investments as a given, the suburbs are still going to be where most development happens.  Thus an exciting new development in a city might be 100 units, and in a suburb, it's 1,000.

The problem is that it's a lot less likely for a home to be built correctly when the plans are bought from a site online and never really truly reviewed before being constructed. In a situation like what's happening in OTR the architect and contractor become intimately knowledgeable about a building and as a result a higher quality of design and construction usually results. Not always, but it's a lot more common for things to be done correctly when working in an urban location because you can't just slap down a predesigned building on a plot and call it a day.

 

I really wish the system of codes and inspections would be reworked. It's a mess as it is and too many major issues slip through the cracks (sometimes literally) and it results in people misunderstanding the true cost of constructing something correctly. When you have a 3,200 square foot house that only cost $250k, something is amiss. Some aspect was poorly done in order to get it that low. And then when something is the same size yet done correctly people can't understand why it's so much more. and it's difficult to explain to a normal person why it's worth it to spend thousands upon thousands more than they're used to for a product that's visually exactly the same.

I can't believe how accepting people today are of terrible finish carpentry. It's like they've never seen it done right from growing up in '80s-and-up sprawl. That's how they really got people is by building things crappy for a long time so that they don't expect quality. Go into the average '70s house and compare it to new spawl construction- and materials-wise. Night and day.

 

What's worse is that when people who grew up with terrible finish carpentry go in and rehab something from say 100 years ago and put in today's cardboard doors, plastic trim and boring white stuff like they grew up with in Mom and Dad's 1990s McMansion.

The problem is that it's a lot less likely for a home to be built correctly when the plans are bought from a site online and never really truly reviewed before being constructed. In a situation like what's happening in OTR the architect and contractor become intimately knowledgeable about a building and as a result a higher quality of design and construction usually results. Not always, but it's a lot more common for things to be done correctly when working in an urban location because you can't just slap down a predesigned building on a plot and call it a day.

 

I really wish the system of codes and inspections would be reworked. It's a mess as it is and too many major issues slip through the cracks (sometimes literally) and it results in people misunderstanding the true cost of constructing something correctly. When you have a 3,200 square foot house that only cost $250k, something is amiss. Some aspect was poorly done in order to get it that low. And then when something is the same size yet done correctly people can't understand why it's so much more. and it's difficult to explain to a normal person why it's worth it to spend thousands upon thousands more than they're used to for a product that's visually exactly the same.

 

ISO 9000 is a lot more comprehensive than simply inspection, it gets into design, contract review, complaint resolution, and things like that.  ISO and NIST have already gotten into home building standards, but those have gotten tainted with political issues that might not fly in places like Sagamore Hills and Brunswick, and you’d want this to be comprehensive.  So create a new board like the NFPA, call it the Residential Construction Reliability Group (RCRG) or something, and have it develop certification standards.

 

The way ISO 9000 works is a company contracts with an independent registrar that audits and evaluates our systems for conformance to the standard.  Those registrars have to maintain their own accreditation with the Registration Accreditation Board, so sweetheart deals do not happen.

 

It would take some marketing, but credible builders could get certified, then build the marketability of the seal.  Potentially, municipalities could require that builders in their borders have RCRG certification.

 

I actually quite like that idea. Builders and architects could become certified and the result would be competition for a better product, not who can squeeze the most profit out of a cheaply built home because those homes wouldn't be built anymore.

 

Unfortunately builders hold a lot of power because they're responsible for a massive portion of the housing in the country today. And people have lived with that for so long that they don't realize how detrimental to the quality of the built environment home builders really are.

The street I grew up on was involved in a class action lawsuit against Perry Homes in Cleveland who was difficult to find because they had changed their company name 3 times since leaving the area. The lawyer the street was using to sue works exclusively on cases where developers have done all they can to be impossible to sue when things hit the fan.

 

It's fine that your friends have a 40 year old Drees home, but that means it was built 40 years ago. Long before the typical mcmansion garbage they're building now which is what I'm speaking of. Their past methodology might have been quite different but their new homes they're putting up these days are plagued with problems.

 

When a client hires you to work on their developer property and you find problem after problem and corners that were cut left and right, it's hard to call their product "fine." When a company thinks it's fine to cut out a portion of a steel header because the doorway they built wasn't quite 6'-8" and then covered it back up, that's not fine. That's illegal. And dangerous. When you've completely left off the waterproofing layer on a roof except in a small patch (likely where the inspector looked), your product is not fine. When your 25 year rated roof fails after 15 years, that's not fine. When your foundation wasn't allowed to cure properly before being built upon resulting in extreme settling which results in cracked walls, cracked foundation, trim coming apart, etc. your product isn't fine. When you use 2x4s on your exterior walls, 3/8" drywall, and cheap batt insulation that's installed poorly just to save a handful of dollars, your product isn't fine.

 

I could go on for hours. I've yet to work on a developer home built from the 80s on that followed the rules correctly. I've yet to work on a developer home that didn't have corners cut to the point where the house is a better off being gutted and starting over. They're a problem.

 

Thanks for your explanation!  I think you covered it all!  I have no ties to Drees, I guess I was just confused by your comments that bad developers change their names often, and you consider Drees a bad developer, yet when I lived in Cincinnati, they were fairly well thought of compared to Ryan and Crest.

The tract home builders up here in C-bus have also gone through a lot of corporate restructuring and name changes. There was Dominion, Borror and M/I Schottenstien. Now I only know of M/I (no Schottenstien) left out of those. There's also America's Home Place and American Heritage, which must be said in one of those clenched-jaw conservative male accents you hear call in to WLW.

Some have become such a large entity that there isn't any reason to be shady but their product is still poor. Drees falls into this category in my mind.

 

Then there are smaller developers that dismantle their LLC after a few years and create a new one and continue doing the same thing. Perry Homes was one of those developers. And there are a lot like them around.

 

You do get a handful that do seem to care a bit more than others though for sure. I think it's Zillich in Cleveland who does decent work as far as developer homes go. I don't know if they're still around since I know they were having trouble during the recession since their homes were a good 100k more than comparable Drees homes.

 

The problem with huge builders like Drees is that they have an in house "architect" and in house contractor (at least I believe Drees does, someone correct me if I'm wrong on that front) or a contractor that works exclusively for them and therefore the architect and contractor do what's best for the company's bottom line, not what's best for the eventual client. That's where the problems come from. A contractor or architect working for a client and not a developer are going to be much more concerned with making sure everything is done properly and the final product reflects them correctly.

All this article told me is that people don't want to buy "urban style" homes 20 miles outside of Las Vegas in neighborhoods where there isn't actually anything to walk to.  Duh.  That's half a loaf of urbanism.  People who want urban styles of homes are going to want them to be in urban neighborhoods.

 

This is the elephant in the room right here.  Urbanism is a total package that requires mixed use and transit in order to properly function, and it involves far less emphasis on owner occupation.  But these builders build for-sale houses.  That's it.  They also speculate on greenfield land.  As such, they have a vested interest in promoting single-use residential neighborhoods in the suburban format because that's precisely what they sell. 

 

That's why developers' statements must be examined critically.  Yes they're experts... but their expertise is limited to their narrow specialty, and more importantly, their positions are driven by a self interest in promoting that specialty.  So of course they're going to say that what they prefer to build is what people prefer to buy.  And in large part, they're not wrong.  They're just not speaking for all people.  They're speaking for their own customer base, and they want that category to remain open ended.  Everyone who chooses urbanism instead represents money out of their pocket.

The fact that the data show a trend towards greater demand for walkable urbanist communities doesn't mean that the suburb is dead.  Far from it.  The disparity between the two was so wide before that a small gain on the urbanist side still leaves the suburbs with a commanding lead in terms of overall demand.

 

We can (and do) talk about how much the value proposition of the suburbs reflects highly subsidized price points due to autocentric infrastructure.  But taking the current lay of public infrastructure investments as a given, the suburbs are still going to be where most development happens.  Thus an exciting new development in a city might be 100 units, and in a suburb, it's 1,000.

This is true. But it also means changes in the suburbs, which will increasingly be urbanizing and densifying. Dublin, an ultimate high-end sprawling suburb (population under 700 in 1970 and over 43,000 today), is in early stages of a major redevelopment around its early village core and along the Scioto River. Why? Because it knows the next generation of homebuyers, and employees of the businesses there, will not come unless there are housing options beyond the McMansions scattered all over the city. City officials know the city needs apartments and condos near riverfront recreation and downtown restaurants and businesses, and that it also needs smaller, more tightly packed single family homes that are walkable.

 

The city's director of strategic initiatives and special projects recently told me that Dublin tries as a community to lure young professionals who are renting their last home before buying, in order to get them into the community. He said that means Dublin needs more apartments -- but they also have to be senior-friendly to accommodate all the empty nesters who will be selling their McMansions to move to a smaller place downtown. He said it requires options -- different kinds of housing.

 

He said: "Young Professionals represent the talent that business wants and the money that your stores want. If you think this is going to be condos, you need to think again. A lot a apartment builders are chasing the same high-end demographic. But there are so many dynamics (within the trends) it’s hard to know about the need for affordable single-family homes. This will be a sea change from the last 40 years. We’ve been lazy and failed to extrapolate (the trends of what young professionals want and what empty nesters want). ...

 

"The boom was driven by auto-oriented, single-family, strip-mall development. That’s stopped. It ended in 2010. It’s not happening. Most development – vastly – has been in the suburbs over the last 40 years. The new densification also will be in the suburbs, mostly – even as cities see new growth."

 

I was clearly just generalizing for the sake of not having a 30 point list.

 

But the fact that there's huge risk financially doesn't mean they have a sophisticated planning system in place to manage that risk. It means that they rely on a huge inventory that brings in a steady stream of money while continuing to build more inventory. And the only way to do that is to build quickly and cheaply. There's no other option. You can't spend a year building a single home properly in this business model so you spend 6 months throwing something together while cutting corners and hope for the best.

 

The moment it's thrown out of balance the developer falls into trouble. Adopting a methodology that others have used and just endlessly applying it to every single situation doesn't work long-term.

 

Cutting corners is a separate issue, as one can assume it would also happen with any new denser developments. 

 

One could tighten up building codes and inspection requirements, but that has its own drawbacks.

 

I have to assume there are developers who do things the "right way" or would prefer to. 

 

There are developers who do things the right way and sell quality, craftsman built homes.  Of course in the Cleveland area, those start at $400k.  Those builders exist in the City, some examples in Tremont, and out in the burbs alike.  There are cheaply built homes in & outside the city too.  I have friends in construction that told me of siding held on with a single nail that blew off in the first rainstorm, windows that leaked from day 1, basements that weren't built properly, etc etc.  In short, you get what you pay for.  To answer the whole question of this thread, why are they still building it?  Because people are still buying it.

Solon is also attempting the same thing on the east side of Cleveland -- adding more apartments in a walkable setting. And longtime Solonites who see drive-or-die sprawl-style development patterns as holy are freaking out that their community will be destroyed by it.

This article left me with a lot of impressions about the future of home building in Ohio (and the US):

 

http://www.mydaytondailynews.com/news/news/local/26-mile-plan-would-complete-dayton-cincy-metroplex/nkQFD/?source=ddn_skip_stub#e72a2577.3546996.735665

 

Here's some quotes from Steve Feldmann, ‎Director of Government Affairs at Home Builders Association of Greater Cincinnati:

 

 

Feldmann and a representative of the Ohio Valley Development Council objected [to the Gateway West Planning District proposal] on several grounds, including concerns about whether enough room was left for affordable housing.

 

“Warren County already has an affordability issue,” Feldmann said. “It takes a very highly desirable area and it exacerbates the problem.”

 

So affordability as a reason to not build walkable, sustainable, desirable communities? More on this line of thought:

 

Gateway West calls for design standards like those already planned for Union Village, a 1,400-acre new urbanist community where people walk or ride a bike between home and work.

 

“Very few people want to live like this,” Feldmann said. “This goes toward the wealthy.”

 

This screams easy cop-out - developers don't want to cut ino their profit margins to build places where people actually want to live.

 

It, more than anything, has made me officially realize the mindset of most suburban developers. The Atlantic IMO hit the nail on the head with this article:

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/02/why-are-people-still-building-sprawl/385741/

 

 

And this DDN article drove the point home (literally, for me at least).

 

So what do you all think? How could a cultural shift take place to get developers to come off their high horse and build places people want to live?

 

Why, precisely, should they make less money in order to do the things the way "urban planners and smart growth advocates" think they should? 

 

Perhaps they realize that people may answer a survey one way, but do things differently when it's a life-defining decision being made.

 

Who's actually on a "high horse"?

 

If everyone plays by the same rules, than there shouldn't be a difference. And even if all developers are (they aren't), they can still make a healthy profit margin. Developer profits shouldn't be a top priority when considering the fact that we are stuck with whatever they build indefinitely. Or until some one pays (a lot) to have it removed. And sadly, normally the group who pays for removal is the government of the municipality many years after the fact, at the expense of the citizens who live there.

 

Developers need to be held to a far more stringent standard than they are currently. The free market is great, but we're playing with the lives of many generations to come. Safety, quality, and longevity need to be top concerns, not a quick buck.

 

To your later post in response to jmica about ISO - sounds like a good solution. If communities could mandate anyone building a house within their city or township limits held those credentials and designed specifically to meet set quality, safety, sustainability, and longevity standards then that would probably make tremendous strides towards solving slash and burn development.

I understand what the developers interviewed are saying. But again, national trends support a major shift occurring. Some developers will stick around in sprawl like I said but that's mostly because the quality competition is leaving the suburbs.

 

I wouldn't put so much faith in the intelligence of suburban developers. Their work is incredibly simple and basic and requires essentially zero planning, almost no commitment to a community, and very few challenges.

 

Step 1: Buy land.

Step 2: Subdivide into however many plots you desire and clear out every bit of natural barrier to ease construction.

Step 3: Buy enough home plans online to build a handful of designs.

Step 4: Profit.

Step 5: Change your company name and structure so that in five years when your poorly built houses start falling apart you're harder to sue.

 

And this isn't coming from the sidelines where I'm just guessing how things are. I'm an architect and see this everyday. Developers are very rarely sophisticated in their approach to anything, including business.

 

You missed/left out quite a few steps.  Mainly the carrying costs of buying the land, financing it, clearing it, getting utilities/streets installed, marketing the property.  It can take years and years before these unsophisticated developers ever see a dime back on their initial investment.  If the market turns south during that course of years, or the land takes more to develop than anticipated, the small profit margin that was initially expected can be wiped out.

 

This is precisely why we need intelligent people building communities, not meat heads.

 

Because if developers were intelligent, they would know better ways to mitigate land disruption. They could build their developments so that the majority of land within them not sold can still be farmed, used for grazing, etc. They would implement sustainable community design and build houses on smaller lots to minimize overall environmental impact.

 

Portland and much of Europe has solved this problem with development barriers.

^Suburbanites hate farming activity, though They don't like the dust, smells, noises, tractors on the road and all that. I remember when they first started building tract housing in southern Delaware and NW Fairfield Counties the people who moved in hated the tractors on the road especially.

People can build and live wherever they choose (within reason), but it's long past time that sprawlers start taking on more of the burden to move to these far-flung areas. Building new interchanges, the extension utilities infrastructure, heck I even think there's an argument that when they leave one area and insist on duplicate services in a new area that they should responsible for some of the budget shortfall caused in the places they're leaving behind. You can't complain about taxes when the behavior in which you engage necessitates tax increases for everyone.

Did that guy just say that no one wants to live in a walkable community with an easy commute to work and amenities?  And that such communities are just for rich people?  This is the dumbest thing I've seen in quite a while.  Those communities aren't expensive because only the wealthy demand them, but because so few communities are built this way that the demand for them constantly exceeds supply. 

 

This past weekend I drove around the late 1980s condo complex where a relative lived and remembered how the developer slipped town before building the entrance to the condo complex.  Ever since the thing was built in 1987~ the 100+ unit complex has had to drive on a sort of temporary access road to an adjacent condo complex and use their roads to reach the main drag.  What's really funny is that the complex's clubhouse was built oriented toward the front entrance that was never built, so the whole thing has a weird feel to it.  The condo association never built the originally planned entrance because they decided that they didn't want "people" to "drive through", even though they themselves have to drive through another 100 unit complex to get to theirs.     

so much of the shifty developer behavior that everyone seems to have stories of, can all be prevented with proper governance.... obviously having a strong building code and building inspection department is essential but so is approving a site plan, entering a contract with the developer with site plan as an exhibit, holding a performance bond that all items be completed by a certain date...  if the developer skips out, you pull the bond & have it done by others.  These are standard industry practices

^Suburbanites hate farming activity, though They don't like the dust, smells, noises, tractors on the road and all that. I remember when they first started building tract housing in southern Delaware and NW Fairfield Counties the people who moved in hated the tractors on the road especially.

Subsidized farming (big farms raising corn, soy, wheat, cotton, rice) doesn't mix well with suburbanization because of the dust, noise, odors, and machinery you mention. (I once heard a farmer at an anti-sprawl meeting say, "Folks, you haven't lived until you've driven a 14-foot-wide piece of equipment down a 12-foot-wide road and come face to face with a BMW.")

 

But growing local food for local consumers (which not only is unsubsidized by the feds, but until recently was sort of the bastard stepchild of the USDA) can coexist nicely with development. Here's an article I wrote last year for Planning Magazine that includes farming and food processing as part of a new subdivision in Fort Collins, Colo.:  https://cityofevanston.org/assets/Planning%20Mag%20Food_PDF.pdf

Sprawl Post-Recession - Why Are Developers Still Building It?

 

In short? Many are lazy and Americans (especially my age [i'm 47] and older) are too ignorant to know that an alternative exists. When an alternative to sprawl design is presented to them in focus groups, these wide-eyed Americans prefer walkable, neo-traditional settings to sprawl.

This past weekend I drove around the late 1980s condo complex where a relative lived and remembered how the developer slipped town before building the entrance to the condo complex.  Ever since the thing was built in 1987~ the 100+ unit complex has had to drive on a sort of temporary access road to an adjacent condo complex and use their roads to reach the main drag.  What's really funny is that the complex's clubhouse was built oriented toward the front entrance that was never built, so the whole thing has a weird feel to it.  The condo association never built the originally planned entrance because they decided that they didn't want "people" to "drive through", even though they themselves have to drive through another 100 unit complex to get to theirs.     

Maybe they were counting on a future permitted access off the main road when they designed and build the complex which was later denied by the agency?

I'm not certain but I think what happened was the developer turned the development over to the HOA after completing the items required in its contract, but it had misled everyone who bought the first units into thinking that the developer was obligated to pay for the entrance.  Instead it turned out that it was under no obligation to do so and residents quickly settled into a routine and saw no pressing need to complete the entrance and definitely didn't want to pay for it. 

Buyer beware.

I think to answer it in a word, it's schools. Sprawl is still thriving because most urban areas (not all) mean terrible school systems, and families with small children generally do not want to live there for that reason. They don't want to have to go the private route or charter or whatever.

I think to answer it in a word, it's schools. Sprawl is still thriving because most urban areas (not all) mean terrible school systems, and families with small children generally do not want to live there for that reason. They don't want to have to go the private route or charter or whatever.

 

That's certainly the reason many I know even from the inner ring are moving outward.  It's important to note that no one is disrespecting city/inner ring educators in general.  Some are great, and do wonderful things against terrible odds.  The main problem is some of their fellow students.  The behavior of these kids outside of school also causes people to move.

I don't know about the rest of the state but Cincinnati has numerous good magnet schools.  SCPA (the performing arts K-12) requires auditions and Walnut Hills (7-12, I think) requires an entrance test.  Suburbanites are scared that their perfect child doesn't have what it takes to get into those schools, and doesn't want to face that possible embarrassment. 

It's everything, not just schools.  Its also crime, housing and shopping options, commute proximity, having a yard, etc.  certain things like this will just never be available in the city, in a dense urban environment.

I don't know about the rest of the state but Cincinnati has numerous good magnet schools.  SCPA (the performing arts K-12) requires auditions and Walnut Hills (7-12, I think) requires an entrance test.  Suburbanites are scared that their perfect child doesn't have what it takes to get into those schools, and doesn't want to face that possible embarrassment.

 

How do you come up with this stuff?

My exwife finally took the kids to the burbs because we both became tired of parenting for other parents.  Kids by nature are all good.  But when their lazy, addicted, useless parents let them run wild and have zero respect for other adults, authority, etc, it becomes tiring trying to correct them and make sure your own kids understand what they are doing is wrong.    Where we lived in Lakewood we had an entire street full of these kinds of kids,  because their parents had moved there to escape Cleveland schools.  I respect them for that, but you also have to step up your parental responsibilities.

 

Sure, the same exists in the suburbs.  But it's in far less numbers.  It's easy to keep your kids away from the one or two bad kids, rather than an entire street full.

Agree with gotta plan. I think "families" is really my answer, moreso than simply "schools."

Agree with gotta plan. I think "families" is really my answer, moreso than simply "schools."

 

Yep.  That's why I'm skeptical when some doubt how younger people are moving towards the cities.  This has been happening, perhaps to a lesser degree, for at least 25 years.  But they haven't stayed once they have kids.

^Except they are staying these days which is where the huge difference is coming. Not everyone obviously, but the percentage of millennials living in cities with children is higher than any other generation in decades.

^ Yes. Parents who want to live in the city -- and DON'T want to move to the suburbs -- are staying in the city and trying to change the schools. There are three such groups of parents in different Columbus neighborhoods. Chicago also have a movement among young parents determined to stay in the city to strengthen the city and schools.

 

And rockandroller is right that a big part of why urban schools are "failing" is people who aren't fully engaged in the schools, the community or their own families. Then again, those families in turn are victimized by a society that is increasingly stratified and an economy that does not provide them with a fair wage or enough hours to get health coverage, etc.

 

This is largely about Chicago, but also apples to Cleveland and other places: https://urbansurfin.wordpress.com/2015/03/07/failing-schools-failing-cities/

 

I don't know about the rest of the state but Cincinnati has numerous good magnet schools.  SCPA (the performing arts K-12) requires auditions and Walnut Hills (7-12, I think) requires an entrance test.  Suburbanites are scared that their perfect child doesn't have what it takes to get into those schools, and doesn't want to face that possible embarrassment.

 

How do you come up with this stuff?

 

Because I've been through this argument 30-40 times in the past 15 years with people.  People blow up when you pinpoint the true motive for their elaborate dance. 

 

I don't know about the rest of the state but Cincinnati has numerous good magnet schools.  SCPA (the performing arts K-12) requires auditions and Walnut Hills (7-12, I think) requires an entrance test.  Suburbanites are scared that their perfect child doesn't have what it takes to get into those schools, and doesn't want to face that possible embarrassment.

 

How do you come up with this stuff?

 

Because I've been through this argument 30-40 times in the past 15 years with people.  People blow up when you pinpoint the true motive for their elaborate dance. 

 

 

They also blow up when you make stereotypical assumptions not based on reality.  Perhaps the parents in question would rather their kids go to "normal' schools, but not ones filled with kids who believe learning is some form of cultural treason.