ArchBoston Book Club (Book #1 - Abundance)

[KCasiglio]

Is this something people would be interested in? I'm actually surprised this hasn't already come together considering there are several threads about individual books. I've ditched all social media over the past two years, and while I think it has been a massive improvement for my overall mental health and quality of life one of the few things I do deeply miss is being able to easily discuss what I'm reading with others.

 

[393b40]

Im terrible at reading stuff on deadlines but would at least love to know what folks are considering must reads.

 

[KCasiglio]

I'm going to interpret likes as at least a maybe. In which case let's go ahead and talk about some potential books! I'll throw a few out there. Something new/forward looking, something "classic", and something Boston focused.

Something Forward Looking: Abundance (2025) by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson - "To trace the history of the twenty-first century so far is to trace a history of unaffordability and shortage. After years of refusing to build sufficient housing, America has a national housing crisis. After years of limiting immigration, we don’t have enough workers. Despite decades of being warned about the consequences of climate change, we haven’t built anything close to the clean-energy infrastructure we need. Ambitious public projects are finished late and over budget—if they are ever finished at all. The crisis that’s clicking into focus now has been building for decades—because we haven’t been building enough."

Something Classic: The High Cost of Free Parking (2011) by Donald Shoup - "One of the American Planning Association’s most popular and influential books is finally in paperback, with a new preface from the author on how thinking about parking has changed since this book was first published. In this no-holds-barred treatise, Donald Shoup argues that free parking has contributed to auto dependence, rapid urban sprawl, extravagant energy use, and a host of other problems. Planners mandate free parking to alleviate congestion but end up distorting transportation choices, debasing urban design, damaging the economy, and degrading the environment. Ubiquitous free parking helps explain why our cities sprawl on a scale fit more for cars than for people, and why American motor vehicles now consume one-eighth of the world's total oil production. But it doesn't have to be this way. Shoup proposes new ways for cities to regulate parking – namely, charge fair market prices for curb parking, use the resulting revenue to pay for services in the neighborhoods that generate it, and remove zoning requirements for off-street parking. Such measures, according to the Yale-trained economist and UCLA planning professor, will make parking easier and driving less necessary. Join the swelling ranks of Shoupistas by picking up this book today. You'll never look at a parking spot the same way again."

Something Boston Focused: A City So Grand: The Rise of an American Metropolis, Boston 1850-1900 (2011) by Stephen Puleo - "In A City So Grand, Stephen Puleo chronicles this remarkable period in Boston’s history, in his trademark page-turning style. Our journey begins with the ferocity of the abolitionist movement of the 1850s and ends with the glorious opening of America’s first subway station, in 1897. In between we witness the thirty-five-year engineering and city-planning feat of the Back Bay project, Boston’s explosion in size through immigration and annexation, the devastating Great Fire of 1872 and subsequent rebuilding of downtown, and Alexander Graham Bell’s first telephone utterance in 1876 from his lab at Exeter Place. These lively stories and many more paint an extraordinary portrait of a half century of progress, leadership, and influence that turned a New England town into a world-class city, giving us the Boston we know today."


Happy to hear other suggestions if people have any! I'll make a poll at the top of the thread in a few days.

 

[KCasiglio]

Having not received any other submissions, poll is live! Closes in 5 days.

 

[KCasiglio]

Bumping because poll closes tonight.

 

[KCasiglio]

Thank you those who voted! Our first book will be Abundance!

If you're planning to participate, I'd ask that you please pick up the book and read the introduction by next Friday, 4/25. Trying to keep this accessible I was thinking a one chapter per week cadence. That works out to roughly 33 pages a week over seven weeks. If that's too slow or fast of a cadence for people feel free to chime in. Feel free to post your own thoughts as you make your way through, but I'll post some discussion questions on Friday the 25th to prompt conversation.

Edit: Lol what r dates

 

[stefal]

(For those holding out on buying, I noticed today by chance there's an Audiobook version for free available on Spotify Premium)

 

[DBM]

I'm going to interpret likes as at least a maybe. In which case let's go ahead and talk about some potential books! I'll throw a few out there. Something new/forward looking, something "classic", and something Boston focused.

Happy to hear other suggestions if people have any! I'll make a poll at the top of the thread in a few days.

In the Something Classic category, the following trio remains indispensable:

Crabgrass Frontier
Asphalt Nation
Cadillac Desert (yes, by definition a non-Boston tale--but you can't tell the story of Boston, New England, and the Northeast in general in the 20th-century without also accounting for the relentless growth--metastization?--of the arid regions west of the 100th meridian and below the Pacific Northwest, requiring massive hydraulic interventions in order to sustain our modern lifestyle, and everything that means and portends)

 

[Stlin]

I'll add a couple to a future "something else" pile; even if not for discussion these are some of my book recs!

Land is a Big Deal, a more approachable introduction to the principles in Progress and Poverty by Henry George, which in my opinion is an essential work to read on land policy.

Gaining Ground is an excellent book about the history of land reclamation in Boston, the how and the why. It's a comprehensive text, but approachable. (Pricy to buy, but available at BPL and to borrow online from the Internet Archive at link.)

Order Without Design is probably the best recent urban economics book that isn't a straight up textbook, but explores the intersection of market demand and planning action.

 

[Longfellow]

Not to jump the gun at all but I am an author actually! My book is coming out this summer — it’s fiction but features urban renewal heavily in the plot. Partially inspired by things I’ve learned on this forum. Would be happy to help get people copies if people agreed to read it. But it’s still a few months out.

 

[KCasiglio]

Hope folks have been able to pick up the book and go through the introduction. Thus far it is certainly more "dreamy" than I was expecting, though perhaps in part because its the introduction rather than the meat of the book, but I was anticipating going in it being a little dry and weeds-y.

Some questions, feel free to respond to one, some, or none and just share your own thoughts:

1) As I see it, one of the biggest challenges with the author's vision of abundance in the future is that in the cultural zeitgeist success and the American Dream is still seen predominantly as a white picket fence with a big yard in the suburbs. There is a timeline where abundance minded policy is geared towards making this specific lifestyle more abundant, which is a timeline in which we see incredible warming and are dependent on an autonomous vehicle revolution to address the road safety crisis. How do we uplift the townhouse of condo in a walkable community to pride of place in the American psyche? Particular in other parts of the country?

2) Backlash to "DEI" "Wokeness" or whatever other buzzword is in vogue on the right is a very real backlash to the emphasis on equity that culminated in the policies of the Biden administration (Justice40 for example), but we also see deep opposition in our own communities to the idea that new housing will mean "outsiders" or "transient renters" moving in via the MBTA communities act. Never mind the political implications of housing prices returning to mid-century levels. Can abundance be achieved without provoking a massive middle class backlash?

3) The authors paint a picture of the future they want to see. What does your urbanist dream in 2050 look like, how is it similar or differs from the one the authors put on display?

 

[stefal]

Hope folks have been able to pick up the book and go through the introduction. Thus far it is certainly more "dreamy" than I was expecting, though perhaps in part because its the introduction rather than the meat of the book, but I was anticipating going in it being a little dry and weeds-y.

(I read/listened ahead...which is book club rule #1 to not break (but I unfortunately now sit in quite a bit of traffic some days..). I don't really remember much of the specific details of the introduction, because the meat of the book does contain a lot more weeds and dryness. I will say I almost stopped a few paragraphs in with the very, very early mention of AI saving the world..)

1) As I see it, one of the biggest challenges with the author's vision of abundance in the future is that in the cultural zeitgeist success and the American Dream is still seen predominantly as a white picket fence with a big yard in the suburbs. There is a timeline where abundance minded policy is geared towards making this specific lifestyle more abundant, which is a timeline in which we see incredible warming and are dependent on an autonomous vehicle revolution to address the road safety crisis. How do we uplift the townhouse of condo in a walkable community to pride of place in the American psyche? Particular in other parts of the country?

This is a difficult question - it held me from replying sooner, and I'm still not sure I have the right answer. I think we need to fundamentally change the general public's perception of worth, and that requires going outside the bounds of just housing. We need people to be comfortable in their job, whether they're a cancer researcher or janitor, the size of their family, their education status, etc., and from that, encourage people that they're not worth something based off one criteria of "do you have a big house, big yard, and white picket fence? Do you have an advanced master's degree?" but rather "are you doing things that are worthy to people in society, and did you do so without people suffering?" This will require a pretty big shift in the economic system and policies over generations for it to take a true hold in my opinion, so in the meantime, I think our only option is to show that the government can deliver on a vision of a walkable community with vibrant public spaces, schools, jobs, social connections, works...

Is it possible? I can point to The American Dream itself. It was standardized and suburbanized on purpose through mortgage policy, suburban expansion, postwar economic design, and decades of media reinforcement, and if it was made once, it can be remade. As the authors allude to: someone has to break the spell first. And once it's broken in one place, it can spread.

2) Backlash to "DEI" "Wokeness" or whatever other buzzword is in vogue on the right is a very real backlash to the emphasis on equity that culminated in the policies of the Biden administration (Justice40 for example), but we also see deep opposition in our own communities to the idea that new housing will mean "outsiders" or "transient renters" moving in via the MBTA communities act. Never mind the political implications of housing prices returning to mid-century levels. Can abundance be achieved without provoking a massive middle class backlash?

NIMBYs are a symptom of the system in place. Abundance is about changing and adopting a new mindset, but also changing some fundamental aspects of our economic and political systems. It's difficult to say what those changes must be, but likely involve some new forms of security, ownership models, and (most importantly) shifting the narrative on what abundance means. This book, I think, is primarily about laying the cultural and emotional groundwork for that shift for what it could mean.

Abundance shifts who holds power, how value is distributed, and what the future looks like. The middle class, who see housing not only as a shelter, but as their retirement strategy (perhaps this is anecdotal, but it's unfortunately been my parents' retirement plan), status marker, and/or some sort of appreciating asset/money maker, will perceive any effort to increase housing supply (and thus lower prices) as a threat to their personal security. This is admittedly not entirely irrational. It is built into the way we have structured our economy around homeownership as the principal vehicle for wealth.

There's a belief today that my gain must mean your loss, and vice versa. Abundance means building systems where my success is tied to your opportunity, not threatened by it.

I can imagine a world where abundance is viable if we somehow:

• Align self-interests in a way that shows they are better off, not as neutral or sacrifice, i.e. have the government effectively deliver better schools, safer neighborhoods, new local businesses, better infrastructure, alongside allowing more homes to be built.
• Tie it into patriotism/culture or a political movement (as the book is suggesting to tie it with the left). People need an identity to belong to, not just policies to comply with.

To your question - can it be achieved? It's a big maybe for me, at least in today's climate. I think it heavily depends on question 1 and how we perceive worth and if we can build a system that supports this type of worth.

3) The authors paint a picture of the future they want to see. What does your urbanist dream in 2050 look like, how is it similar or differs from the one the authors put on display?

I've been pondering abundance without really knowing there was any kind of movement of the like, especially with the Trump Admin in place, and wondering how we can operate more regionally in the U.S. In my mind, in 2050, I don’t necessarily imagine an abundant America collectively all at once. I think it will take off regionally, and closer to home, have pondered an Abundant New England/Northeast. This book only accelerated that thinking, and of course, I'm pushing it to the extremes here.

In this future, we've mastered land use. Research has freed us from the need for massive "suffering-based" agriculture. Vertical factories near cities grow meat, produce, grains allowing us to feed growing populations without devouring more land. While I'm wholly uninformed in this area, it only makes sense if our biotech industry expands our skills in agricultural technology, that we figure out how to do it right in cities, and Boston becomes a hub for agricultural tech. Our population shifts inward: exurbs have emptied or shifted toward true village structures, local commons, or start their return to wilderness (considering this is only 25 years away, I envision a full return to wilderness taking many decades). Cities and inner suburbs revitalize. We've figured out how to build successfully at varying densities in Lowell, Manchester, Burlington, Portland, Worcester, Springfield, Hartford, Salem, Revere, etc. and each adopt or grow with their own character, opportunities, and affordable lifestyles, while Boston serves as its (growing) hub, with interconnected regional rail, connecting homes everywhere with local and regional jobs. We have excellent bones in the Northeast for several dense cities of 100K-300K people surrounding a ~2M Greater Boston population, but seem to be over-focused on Boston only. Rail, economic corridors, and cultural ties across the Northeast allow people to live where they love, not where they are economically trapped.

Further stretching/expanding the idea: Ideally we've mastered large-scale desalination and localized manufacturing for critical goods, removing our vulnerability to fragile trade relationships. Government has reclaimed its role in delivering public abundance: excellent schools, new or revitalized third/public spaces, improved utilities and clean energy access (ideally, abundant clean energy, although I bring up Jevon's Paradox), making cities attractive for families and a broader general population. In this scenario we've finally learned to balance the carbon and water cycles without asking ordinary people to sacrifice the small joys of daily life.

It'd be interesting, and I go back and forth on whether or not this is a real goal for any political party to adopt as a talking point/goal.. as you allude to, it can quickly go off the rails if just a few things go wrong..

 

[sean99090900]

I read through the introduction but not beyond that so my perspective is a little limited rn. I think the intro works pretty well given my understanding of what the authors' goals seemed to be from how people talk about the book as offering an alternative set of heuristics for liberals to judge policy.

Scattered thoughts:

1) As I see it, one of the biggest challenges with the author's vision of abundance in the future is that in the cultural zeitgeist success and the American Dream is still seen predominantly as a white picket fence with a big yard in the suburbs. There is a timeline where abundance minded policy is geared towards making this specific lifestyle more abundant, which is a timeline in which we see incredible warming and are dependent on an autonomous vehicle revolution to address the road safety crisis. How do we uplift the townhouse of condo in a walkable community to pride of place in the American psyche? Particular in other parts of the country?

I'm interested in seeing how the (classically liberal?) authors go about answering these types of population/preference engineering questions lol. My intuition is that because fewer people have kids every year, the attitude is already changing. Improving urban schools to the quality of like Lexington/Acton-Boxborough or whatever would probably do a lot to draw in many of the family minded as well.

2) Backlash to "DEI" "Wokeness" or whatever other buzzword is in vogue on the right is a very real backlash to the emphasis on equity that culminated in the policies of the Biden administration (Justice40 for example), but we also see deep opposition in our own communities to the idea that new housing will mean "outsiders" or "transient renters" moving in via the MBTA communities act. Never mind the political implications of housing prices returning to mid-century levels. Can abundance be achieved without provoking a massive middle class backlash?

I think people would need a direct financial incentive for the general progress of the economy more than the existing real-estate heavy balance in middle class wealth, greater stock market exposure maybe. who knows

There's a belief today that my gain must mean your loss, and vice versa. Abundance means building systems where my success is tied to your opportunity, not threatened by it.

It would also directly link the markets' understanding of positive sum transactions to people which might facilitate changing beliefs.

3) The authors paint a picture of the future they want to see. What does your urbanist dream in 2050 look like, how is it similar or differs from the one the authors put on display?

In terms of environment, I think I'm a lot more concerned about global climate change than wilding existing areas. My dream would be a country that can prioritize threats of global catastrophe and local damage more sensibly. I very much support the authors' visions of a liberalism that builds, but that means we have to devastate some local areas of wilderness to extract the minerals and build the factories needed for the energy transition.

I've been pondering abundance without really knowing there was any kind of movement of the like, especially with the Trump Admin in place, and wondering how we can operate more regionally in the U.S. In my mind, in 2050, I don’t necessarily imagine an abundant America collectively all at once. I think it will take off regionally, and closer to home, have pondered an Abundant New England/Northeast. This book only accelerated that thinking, and of course, I'm pushing it to the extremes here.

This would necessitate a large-scale national movement which can bypass the localist conservatism that is allowed to dominate in smaller political subdivisions. If I had to pick a region that would most likely transition to abundance well, it would be Texas and the sunbelt imo. A lot of the supply-side outcomes that the authors talk about in the introduction already seem to be nascent in those areas (e.g. solar/wind manufacturing/deployment, EV manufacturing, mining, freer housing development) to a much greater degree than the blue coastal areas.

In this future, we've mastered land use. Research has freed us from the need for massive "suffering-based" agriculture. Vertical factories near cities grow meat, produce, grains allowing us to feed growing populations without devouring more land. While I'm wholly uninformed in this area, it only makes sense if our biotech industry expands our skills in agricultural technology, that we figure out how to do it right in cities, and Boston becomes a hub for agricultural tech.

I can see a world where real animal meat is a cottage industry like how fine traditionally made european cheeses are only a small portion of our total cheese consumption. Synthetic cultured meat seems to offer a lot of efficiencies that whole animal production never can. I am a little more skeptical that high tech vertical farming will be able to do the same thing for low value, land intensive crops like grains. I think many farms as they currently exist will retain some significant comparative advantages.

Looking forward to reading the rest of the book.

 

[Stlin]

So firstly apologies for the delay - I failed to adjust for finding the time to sit down and type out my thoughts.

1) As I see it, one of the biggest challenges with the author's vision of abundance in the future is that in the cultural zeitgeist success and the American Dream is still seen predominantly as a white picket fence with a big yard in the suburbs. There is a timeline where abundance minded policy is geared towards making this specific lifestyle more abundant, which is a timeline in which we see incredible warming and are dependent on an autonomous vehicle revolution to address the road safety crisis. How do we uplift the townhouse of condo in a walkable community to pride of place in the American psyche? Particular in other parts of the country?

Here I don't think the introduction really brings enough to the table, so this is mostly musing on my part. Part of the problem there is the concept of social reproduction - people generally tend to seek to reproduce the lifestyle of adults that they experienced as children. Without going into the sociology of it all, people who grew up in a leafy burb take their childhood lifestyles to be what they aspire to - a suburban house in the suburbs, and that's less of a want for people who grew up in urban environments - biases linger, just as people who did grow up in walkable or urban communities see the value of that lifestyle, and are willing to compromise on the square footage in exchange for shared spaces. But this is one of those things where I can see marketing making the difference - the baby boom generation was sold the suburbs as part of the ideal nuclear family. Suburbia was advertised by car companies, media, department stores and the government alike as this wonderful innovation - and smaller scale living should get it's moment as well. Frankly, I think the social scene is the biggest draw of a walkable city. I myself am right on the cusp of being the youngest Millennials or the oldest of Gen Z. The "epidemic of loneliness" is a thing, and the availability of social structures and shared resources in a city with the decline of the nuclear family? I think there's already movement where the draw of a suburb for raising a family begins to wane. Plus, personally I think we should rethink the concept of homeownership as having "made it," more so that what physical form that ownership takes. Leaving aside how property is the biggest creator of wealth in American history, making renting more socially acceptable and not a stigma for unsuccessful world enable people to live whatever lifestyle is appropriate to their moment.

2) Backlash to "DEI" "Wokeness" or whatever other buzzword is in vogue on the right is a very real backlash to the emphasis on equity that culminated in the policies of the Biden administration (Justice40 for example), but we also see deep opposition in our own communities to the idea that new housing will mean "outsiders" or "transient renters" moving in via the MBTA communities act. Never mind the political implications of housing prices returning to mid-century levels. Can abundance be achieved without provoking a massive middle class backlash?

Again not enough meat in the introduction, but I'm unsure that it's actually politically untenable. The authors alude to the belief that socioeconomics is a zero sum game- and that's kinda true of current redistributive policies. But a reshaping of the system should imply a rising tide lifts all boats situation. But this is part of why I think folks need to read Progress and Poverty - the middle class home value problem is fundamentally one where the house and the land are combined... in reality, they're related but separate. I think with land policy reform, you can preserve the existing wealth of the middle class while opening opportunities for everyone else.

I think that society has developed means to counter the NIMBY, however. Developers oversize projects to have something to trim, state agencies less handicapped by public process. I think professional civil servants, who are in office longer than politicians, are super important to the process, as they need to be able to take the immediately unpopular decisions without political risk. It's why the Fed is nominally independent of the president, and why MassDOT has an independent board. Political insulation with a technocratic approach can allow a agency to progress without too much political interference as a result of NIMBYs. This is why I was uncertain of Mayor Wu's initiative of bringing the BPDA in-house - no more insulation, but that was likely the point - that insulation slows progress down. It's an interesting experiment, and I'd like to see where it goes. The extreme example of this at the moment is DOGE, and ... That's taking the opposite approach instead of progress. But what are the real consequences if you ignore the few naysayers and proceed anyways? Not much. Most MassDOT projects already proceed over the objections of abutters - no one signs up to live next to bridge projects after all and once the project is done, so does the squeaky neighbor who enjoys the new bridge. No one likes change and the new. Perfect is the enemy of good and all that - eniment domain is a powerful tool unused because of the potential for backlash. Honestly, my opinion is that if you go too far, as long as the process is transparent you'll hear it loudly enough to know when to pull back. Through the 60s, we built a lot of highways into Boston. But public backlash in the 70s lead to the Sargent Moratorium. Today, despite the urban scars, they're useful infrastructure. MBTA dysfunction persisted until the people had enough and revolted and demanded Eng, and the current general backlash to DOGE. I'm probably mischaracterizing the authors thoughts on this, but work from the supply side of the equation. Build it and the market will tell you if it wants it, and that applies to transit as much as it did for Labs - public process liked labs, without considering the demand side.

Again I see it as a marketing problem - rezoning in City of Boston is going well because the city is communicating it's intent. MBTA communities largely went well, with a few loud opponents in the form of Milton, which notably was a relatively rare amongst towns, but while no lawmaker likes bad press, It'll all fall out of the news cycle eventually. It would have been simpler in earlier times without social media and the relative ease by which propaganda of any form could be disseminated and believed in the past- at the moment most folks are skeptics, for good or bad, of the government saying something is good for you, And that's a problem that needs to be solved.

3) The authors paint a picture of the future they want to see. What does your urbanist dream in 2050 look like, how is it similar or differs from the one the authors put on display?

I think I have similar opinions to the author so far - I've always thought that the lack of state capacity to actually execute projects is problematic. I'm glad that the author is proposing a framework, but so far I do think the author is neglecting the significant increase in complexity facing projects in the 21st century compared to those of the 20th. Expectations are higher... So I think part of what needs to be considered is that we can't be too precious with our governmental units. I've said it a lot in recent months, but I think we need to consider the viability of individual town governments to provide the services their residents expect, and how regionalization, with larger groups, enable regional governments to undertake locally unpopular decisions for the betterment of the whole, and less balkanization. Less than a century ago, the Commonwealth was willing to disincorporate and outright flood several towns to create the Quabbin. We need the ability to make those big, locally unpopular decisions again.

I can see a world where real animal meat is a cottage industry like how fine traditionally made european cheeses are only a small portion of our total cheese consumption. Synthetic cultured meat seems to offer a lot of efficiencies that whole animal production never can. I am a little more skeptical that high tech vertical farming will be able to do the same thing for low value, land intensive crops like grains. I think many farms as they currently exist will retain some significant comparative advantages.

I do think the trend towards increasing productivity per area land for things like grains will continue. Unfortunately, that area is where I think biotech is going to have a major impact on agricultural production, where GMOs and designer crops increasingly represent the global food supply. Leaving out the economic issues of IP, GMO seeds and Big Ag, I think we'll increasingly see local greenhouses, hothouses and other structures for high value crops as we already do for salad greens. And given the social questioning of GMOs? That doesn't bode all too well for cultured meats. While I think they have a future, the question is whether it'll scale to become economically self sustaining. At the moment, I'm still struggling with the numbers I've seen to see how it can compete with the industrial animal process.

 

[sean99090900]

I myself am right on the cusp of being the youngest Millennials or the oldest of Gen Z.

Fellow zoomer

I think professional civil servants, who are in office longer than politicians, are super important to the process, as they need to be able to take the immediately unpopular decisions without political risk.

This is a big part of state capacity liberalism that they talk about in the introduction, that a large bureaucracy not only is a little politically insulated but also obviates the necessity for lawsuits in every dispute or variance adjustment.

I do think the trend towards increasing productivity per area land for things like grains will continue. Unfortunately, that area is where I think biotech is going to have a major impact on agricultural production, where GMOs and designer crops increasingly represent the global food supply. Leaving out the economic issues of IP, GMO seeds and Big Ag, I think we'll increasingly see local greenhouses, hothouses and other structures for high value crops as we already do for salad greens. And given the social questioning of GMOs? That doesn't bode all too well for cultured meats. While I think they have a future, the question is whether it'll scale to become economically self sustaining. At the moment, I'm still struggling with the numbers I've seen to see how it can compete with the industrial animal process.

It's definitely a matter of wait and see, I just hope the government doesn't interfere too much with progress in food production technology the way that conservatism shapes food culture in europe.

 

[KCasiglio]

Thank you everyone for the conversation thus far! I've been hoping to reply more but to both give my own questions a thorough response and engage with other people's is a bit of a time commitment. I'll have discussion questions for chapter 1 posted Friday night or Saturday morning!

In the meantime...

How do we uplift the townhouse of condo in a walkable community to pride of place in the American psyche? Particular in other parts of the country?

I think this work has to happen on two fronts:

1. Material reality: We need to build beautiful, functional, well-located walkable communities that people actually want to live in—not just tolerate. To the authors' point on "we need to be able to say elect us and we'll govern the country like we govern blue states" - we need to be able to say, "live in this type of neighborhood and you'll be able to live a richer, more free life" in a way that is only really true in a few places right now. I often rail against auto-oriented density for this reason, I think you're getting the worst of both worlds and it's far and away what most people see and mentally associate density with.
2. Cultural storytelling: From HGTV to Instagram to local political rhetoric, we need more stories, visuals, and language that celebrate compact, connected living. The Northeast has some natural models, but exporting this ideal means grounding it in regional identities—think shaded Texas courtyards, Oregon timber lofts, Midwestern brick rowhouses with generous front stoops.

Can abundance be achieved without provoking a massive middle class backlash?

Any shift in who gets to belong, thrive, or own the future will provoke resistance, even among people who think of themselves as progressive. Everyone's familiar with the "BLM with Weston Whopper" yard sign refrain. I think the honest answer is no—not if we're doing it right. If we're not provoking discomfort, we're probably not shifting power or reallocating resources. Sitting with it for a while I think the better question might have been: How do we build coalitions, narratives, and policies resilient enough to weather backlash?

One possibility is reframing equity not as a sacrifice, but as a form of security. Abundant housing as a bulwark against precarity for everyone, not just the marginalized. I was deep in the Globe comment section yesterday when Milton passed their override. The biggest pushback was consistently "what about the seniors on fixed incomes". Now, to be fair, I personally believe this is karma coming home to roost for people who have spent decades blocking more housing, but the useful lesson here is that abundance is security against exactly this. It's how we dig out of decades of failed policy that has led to exactly these problems. Towns do themselves a short term play by tying these budget crunches to the school budget, it gets people to vote for the override, but in the long run its a disservice because all of the narrative then revolves around school spending that isn't actually the root issue.

There's a lot of overlap here I think with StrongTowns messaging, but basically abundance, especially as it relates to housing, provides security for seniors in a way that trying to lock your town in amber doesn't.

What's missing thus far, and I hope they end up addressing this, is that essential question of what to do about the vast segment of the population whose wealth and retirement is tied up in inflated property values. I don't have an answer for this, but it's a fact that brining the cost of housing back to what it was in 1980 (inflation adjusted ofc) would be an unprecedented financial crisis for tens if not over a hundred million people in the US. There is no winning against a middle class backlash without having a response to that or settling for at best a very modest drop from status quo pricing (which is not abundance as I interpret it).

What does your urbanist dream in 2050 look like, how is it similar or differs from the one the authors put on display?

There's a lot of overlap, of course. I knew that going into the book. Missing in a way that I think has to be is the cultural aspect. Maybe laying a better foundation solves some of that on its own, but I don't think abundance is achieved without getting at some things like crisis of attention span and increasing susceptibility to misinformation that permeates the culture.

In my utopian vision, yes we have abundant affordable housing. Public transit is robust in coverage, reliability, and frequency. I'm a believer in driverless cars in less dense areas and particularly for highway travel. Something like outside 128, town centers, and gateway city downtowns kind of thing. The authors didn't mention drones much but I think there's massive growth opportunity there to replace a LOT of delivery. I think drone dropoff pads will be the new mailboxes by 2050.

Specifically to Boston, I think areas of the Shawmut peninsula, particularly such as the North End or Back Bay (save like Boylston and Commonwealth) could be shut down for non-resident personal vehicles entirely.

Respondes to others incoming! AB restricts to 10,000 characters in a post!

 

[KCasiglio]

I will say I almost stopped a few paragraphs in with the very, very early mention of AI saving the world..)

I'm not very familiar with Derek Thompson but have been following Ezra Klein's work since ~2014 so I can very comfortably speak to his view, which is that he's both a huge believer in that AGI is right around the corner, and that whether that is for good or ill is an open question. I'm not personally anywhere near as convinced on the former, but I'll grant it's hard to imagine a 2050 without some sort of ubiquitous AI far superior to modern ChatGPT (which, frankly, I'll grant is incredibly powerful when used right).

I think we need to fundamentally change the general public's perception of worth, and that requires going outside the bounds of just housing. We need people to be comfortable in their job, whether they're a cancer researcher or janitor, the size of their family, their education status, etc., and from that, encourage people that they're not worth something based off one criteria of "do you have a big house, big yard, and white picket fence? Do you have an advanced master's degree?" but rather "are you doing things that are worthy to people in society, and did you do so without people suffering?" This will require a pretty big shift in the economic system and policies over generations for it to take a true hold in my opinion, so in the meantime, I think our only option is to show that the government can deliver on a vision of a walkable community with vibrant public spaces, schools, jobs, social connections, works...

Is it possible? I can point to The American Dream itself. It was standardized and suburbanized on purpose through mortgage policy, suburban expansion, postwar economic design, and decades of media reinforcement, and if it was made once, it can be remade. As the authors allude to: someone has to break the spell first. And once it's broken in one place, it can spread.

Heavy agree in that I think the American Dream as it exists now was largely manufactured (I have an outline for a book called "Social Engineering" that is entirely on this exact topic). I also think there's increasing societal awareness of the loneliness epidemic and isolating impact of the way in which we've built society, in a way that's been taken to 11 by the internet and social media (for example, a forum based book club doesn't lead to the same deeper relationships an in person one might). I think a heavy cultural leaning into the need for more community, the way you see the right getting so close to and yet so far away from vis a vis their leaning into nostalgia politics.

Align self-interests in a way that shows they are better off, not as neutral or sacrifice, i.e. have the government effectively deliver better schools, safer neighborhoods, new local businesses, better infrastructure, alongside allowing more homes to be built.

Finally, want to push you on this particularly as it relates to what I said above...is it possible to get someone to buy in if it means their house will be worth less than they paid for it? Or even to not appreciate over the course of their mortgage?

I'm interested in seeing how the (classically liberal?) authors go about answering these types of population/preference engineering questions lol

Oh I would not paint them as "classically liberal" - again I'm not familiar as much with Thompson but Klein has long been lumped in with the broader neolilberal world. I've followed him a very long time and always appreciated how he engages with arguments and the world writ large but he's very much a product of early 2000s democratic politics that I think is just starting to come around to "maybe we don't need to accept the way things are are the way they have to be" - and my biggest critique of the book thus far is it seems like two guys extolling on their awakening of things many people have said for a very long time that they (at least Ezra) previously dismissed.

I very much support the authors' visions of a liberalism that builds, but that means we have to devastate some local areas of wilderness to extract the minerals and build the factories needed for the energy transition.

To paraphrase the ethic of those that work in outdoor recreation, you impact some areas intensely specifically to preserve the rest. A trail, a campsite, a mine, a city...it all follows that logic.

If I had to pick a region that would most likely transition to abundance well, it would be Texas and the sunbelt imo. A lot of the supply-side outcomes that the authors talk about in the introduction already seem to be nascent in those areas (e.g. solar/wind manufacturing/deployment, EV manufacturing, mining, freer housing development) to a much greater degree than the blue coastal areas.

Yeah. The authors get at this even in the introduction. Red states are building way more renewable energy than blue states. Seeing the recent housing boom and rent drop in Colorado, and Minnesota's reforms at least make me hopeful. Notably they're not coastal states. California and New England are very stuck in a mindset of unanimity over the collective good, when the former is far too limiting.

Fellow zoomer

*mid life crisis intensifies*

 

[sean99090900]

and my biggest critique of the book thus far is it seems like two guys extolling on their awakening of things many people have said for a very long time that they (at least Ezra) previously dismissed.

I think this has been really interesting to watch happen in real time. I feel like housing market dysfunction in particular has been driving left of center types to recognize the importance of market allocation (and increasingly in other areas as well).

Funnily enough I was just reading a blog post from the extended Ezra-verse about begrudgingly admitting the importance of the free market ideology niche in the political landscape.

I owe the libertarians an apology

It turns out there are worse monsters than the market.

open.substack.com

 

[KCasiglio]

I'll have discussion questions for chapter 1 posted Friday night or Saturday morning!

By which I mean Saturday afternoon.

Chapter 1 - "Grow" gives a sweeping overview of the 20th century, basically outlining it as a period of remarkable growth followed by an incredible anti-growth backlash to the problems caused by that growth. As urbanists we're largely familiar with the backlash to mid-century urban renewal but they take this concept much, much wider. This chapter is more about setting the table I think than identifying solutions, but it seems based on the closing of the chapter that we're about to get into the weeds on that. With all this in mind, here are some discussion prompts:

1) The authors highlight how the primary driver of homelessness is the cost of housing, not individual moral failings or personal choices. How do the myths we tell about homelessness, such as drug use, laziness, or mental illness, serve to absolve society of responsibility? What might it take to shift public perception toward acknowledging systemic causes like housing scarcity?

2) There's a central tension between treating housing as a wealth-building asset and aiming to make it affordable and widely available. They acknowledge it in this chapter but don't really get at what I've frequently said is the critical question that needs to be answered in housing. Can we achieve housing abundance without eroding the wealth and security of current homeowners, or is some loss inevitable?

3) Laws like NEPA and CEQA were created to protect the environment as a response to the problems of 20th century growth, but now often delay or block the kind of dense, transit-oriented development needed to combat the great environmental challenge of our times: climate change. How should environmental regulation evolve to address the climate crisis while still safeguarding ecosystems and communities? What principles should guide a modernized approach?

Once again, no pressure to respond to all or any of these! Looking forward to hearing peoples' thoughts on the chapter!

 

[stefal]

By which I mean Saturday afternoon.

Chapter 1 - "Grow" gives a sweeping overview of the 20th century, basically outlining it as a period of remarkable growth followed by an incredible anti-growth backlash to the problems caused by that growth. As urbanists we're largely familiar with the backlash to mid-century urban renewal but they take this concept much, much wider. This chapter is more about setting the table I think than identifying solutions, but it seems based on the closing of the chapter that we're about to get into the weeds on that. With all this in mind, here are some discussion prompts:

1) The authors highlight how the primary driver of homelessness is the cost of housing, not individual moral failings or personal choices. How do the myths we tell about homelessness, such as drug use, laziness, or mental illness, serve to absolve society of responsibility? What might it take to shift public perception toward acknowledging systemic causes like housing scarcity?

I struggle on an answer for this that isn't along the lines of "just do it" regarding providing housing for the homeless to force an "ah, so it was about housing..." I realize this was my answer before for another question, so maybe I'm just growing impatient with the general status of things around here.

Part of what we’re up against is NIMBYism not centered around just housing values, but also around fear of “the other.” People today don’t want to live near people they perceive as dangerous or unworthy (see my note above regarding redefining worth as well). This is, selfishly as a designer, where I think design can play a huge role. I keep coming back to Peter Barber’s work in the UK. Two of his projects (Holmes Road Studios, Mount Pleasant) offer housing for unhoused people and low-income residents, but they’re also genuinely beautiful. They create community instead of containment. I was at his lecture at the GSD a few weeks back, and he noted how people walk into his public meetings ready to rage against the “homeless shelter” they think is coming, and instead they leave charmed by a vision of social housing that adds to the neighborhood, instead of threatening it. We need more of that: human-scaled, dignified architecture that shifts hearts without needing a policy memo.

2) There's a central tension between treating housing as a wealth-building asset and aiming to make it affordable and widely available. They acknowledge it in this chapter but don't really get at what I've frequently said is the critical question that needs to be answered in housing. Can we achieve housing abundance without eroding the wealth and security of current homeowners, or is some loss inevitable?

I don't know what the math looks like on this, but, I think the narrative should/could be, "you will gain your wealth and security elsewhere." We’ve built a society where your house has to make you rich, because nothing else will (simplifying things here). If we want to break that dependency, we need to make everything else abundant: energy, healthcare, opportunity, etc.

• Lower energy costs, saving you $X/month or year, translating to $Y in savings over 10 years
• Transportation costs in walkable cities with quality transit are demonstrably lower, potentially saving thousands of dollars per year
• Food and goods in an abundant economy are more stable and less prone to inflation
• Healthcare (maybe even childcare... one can hope) in an abundant economy likely looks quite different from our system today, and you could see some significant savings
• More jobs close to home due to up-zoning
• Increased small businesses from lower rents, walkable neighborhoods, etc.
• Mental and physical health/quality of life improvements = "high worth" and don't have a $ associated with them, but I'm sure if you asked a few retirees if given the option to not have made as much on their home versus having more of the previous bullet points, a good chunk would say yes... maybe not all today, but some.

So in short, my answer to Can we achieve housing abundance without eroding the wealth and security of current homeowners, or is some loss inevitable? is that yes, some loss is inevitable, but it will certainly be made up elsewhere and change based on how you may value health and opportunity and see your worth in "the system."

3) Laws like NEPA and CEQA were created to protect the environment as a response to the problems of 20th century growth, but now often delay or block the kind of dense, transit-oriented development needed to combat the great environmental challenge of our times: climate change. How should environmental regulation evolve to address the climate crisis while still safeguarding ecosystems and communities? What principles should guide a modernized approach?

I think the book did a pretty good job outlining just how much they've expanded and "backfired" these policies to go against progressive ideas or projects that, as you point out, turns these well-intentioned policies against the issues these policies are, in part, intended to protect for. I don't have a specific answer, but I definitely think a simplifying of who manages permitting (less groups), what permits require, and more freedom for cities and states to take on bigger projects if there's some sort of societal worth associated with it, far outshining the potential pitfalls the environmental permitting processes will highlight and require responses to. Permitting should perhaps not look at one project by itself, but through a system-based lens, to assess if the shadows cast on those few trees are actually net negative to the ecological system these laws are meant to protect.

---

Some of my own thoughts on this chapter:
I think the elephant not in the room this chapter was land costs, which in many metro areas, are already priced out of abundance. How can we realistically build an abundant housing economy when the land itself has already been financialized beyond reach? What kinds of land use and land value policies are necessary to undercut this fundamental barrier to abundance?