The New Meth, The Atlantic, Sam Quinones, October 18, 2021

The opioid and fentanyl epidemics get most of the coverage regarding America’s drug crisis, but Quinones tracks the rise of synthetic methamphetamine, which appears to be more addictive, and more destructive to mental health, than the naturally derived meth that washed over the country in the early 2000s.

This piece is a masterful example of longform journalism, and very much worth your time. This one line really hits hard: “America has made itself more vulnerable to scourges, even as those scourges grow more potent.”

The Sunny Outlook in the Sun Belt — and Why It Matters, Governing, Michael Hendrix, October 5, 2021

Again and again, it’s New York, San Francisco and Seattle that rank at the bottom of our poll on nearly every metric. Beyond the Sun Belt, cost of living and housing affordability are major challenges.

Sunbelt cities are known for being sprawling, car-oriented landscapes; a lot of folks from the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, with their corridor of urban cities from Boston to Washington, D.C., might not even consider Sunbelt metros to be “real” cities. But they’re some of the fastest-growing places in the country. Hendrix argues that if they remain open to growth, they have a future of opportunity.

But he also warns:

The Sun Belt is not immune to the woes of coastal cities; after all, southern California was once a low-cost, high-opportunity place like north Texas is today. “Not-in-My-Backyard” sentiments are pushing new barriers to building more homes in places like Atlanta and Charlotte, joining NIMBY hot spots like Austin. Public schools are too often still in poor shape. And crime is not solely a coastal affliction.

Suburban Follies: The Rear Alleyway, Old Urbanist, Charlie Gardner, June 4, 2011

This is a fun critique of a weird design choice that appears to be an attempt at copying some of the style of New Urbanism, without understanding the actual principles behind New Urbanist developments.

This paragraph is something else:

This design idea appears to have caught on in recent years.  While visiting a friend in a very similar development in Birmingham, I was told that the local homeowners association actually prohibited parking on fronting streets altogether!  This officially reduces fronting streets themselves to expensive ornamentation, as symbolic access roads to the functional access roads in the rear.

The folks at Strong Towns can tell you just how expensive those streets probably are, and how much of a future liability they represent.

Opinion: Increasing density through ‘Thrive’ could hamper the pursuit of homeownership, Bethesda Magazine, Darin Bartram, October 16, 2021

I very much disagree with this one, but it’s a good enough example of the kinds of arguments you’ll find to oppose new housing. For example:

Skeptics of this plan [Thrive Montgomery 2050] are rightly concerned that it could lead to increased density in the downcounty area but achieve none of the benefits.

I would think increasing the supply of housing units, so more people can live near jobs in Montgomery County and Washington, D.C., is the benefit. But what Bartram is arguing is that upzoning will make single-family houses less affordable, and therefore make homeownership more difficult. Frankly, he’s probably right, but this area, like Arlington, Virginia, has grown so dramatically that maybe owning a detached house here is less important than making sure people can simply live reasonably close to jobs.

This paragraph sounds like it might be making a legitimate argument:

About two-thirds of Americans are homeowners — whether it is a stand-alone home, townhome, or condominium — and their home is often their single-largest investment. The effect of increasing density of housing on the single-family lot, without requiring an accompanying subdivision of lot ownership, ensures that additional units will be rentals, and this will very likely erode the affordability of homes.

Clearly, the process of allowing densification in broad areas that have been zoned single-family for decades is a little bit unknown, and understandably is often an unwelcome uncertainty for existing homeowners there. California’s recent statewide but modest upzoning law might give us an idea of how this will play out. But the population and the economy are growing, and people have to live somewhere.

Related Reading:

New and Old #15

New and Old #16

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