Hmm i am in teh same situation. I live on long island. becoming slowly the home of the rich and famous. house prices and taxes are through the roof. People who rent out appartments are trying to pass off monthly rent that is higher then mortgage and tax payments on a house.

The problem is i only make 53k a year and thats not enough to live on here in ny .

Co ops are bad news because if the co op goes under you lose your money and they are harder to sell .

So as of right now in my market buying a house is still the cheapest way right now.

great article lloyd. i like how you used the idiotic quote from the bloomberg commentator and then presented so many options of what cohabitation could be. the thinking of people like the bloomberg commentator is what people need to get past in the present day. why wouldnt you want to get to know your neighbor? is walking really that bad? we have become so dependent on our car that we will drive a block to the store. please keep articles like this coming.

As people leave the burbs either by choice or by force (foreclosure) what is going to happen with the excess capacity, all those empty homes? Is our country heading towards a third world situation where outlaws take over the outlying area and have easy access to protected area, as it is we have abandoned homes were illegal drugs are produced - this is a problem we need to start thinking of solutions for - what dose everyone else think?

Soviet-Style concrete blocks? clearly the writer at Bloomberg hasn't been to a metropolitan area. ever. there are plenty of fresh new hise-rises ready to be occupied by ex-suburbanites

City, suburb, exurb. Feh. Very city-centric. How about small cities, towns, small towns, villages? Or heck, suburbs not on the model you all seem to fixate on. I'm in the burbs, but less than a mile from the town center and my son's school, and only three miles from the grocery store. I can walk to a convenience store, the library, the town office, a drugstore, my doctor's office, a couple of restaurants, the town beach, our synagogue, and the commuter rail. I have an ever-expanding garden, chickens in my back yard, and am a member of our local CSA. The rising price of gas doesn't make my neighborhood untenable, it just means I walk or bike more.

They are city-centric because, despite the pastoral vision of life that people like to associate with environmentalism, urban living is far and away the most sustainable model. Without even trying. And I'd contend that in addition to its environmental credibility, the social space is far more vibrant, as well - but that's another debate.

I'm glad that you're able to walk/bike more in order to do what you need to do, but the majority of suburbs are utterly unlivable without a car. And they discourage alternatives through their design.

Clearly we have different needs and temperaments, but I certainly can't foresee moving back to the suburbs from downtown any time soon. And likely, given the sea-change in making urban spaces more accommodating, not ever.

Doug wrote "As people leave the burbs either by choice or by force (foreclosure) what is going to happen with the excess capacity, all those empty homes? Is our country heading towards a third world situation where outlaws take over the outlying area..."

If (or where and when) your scenario comes to pass, I predict that those suburban areas will face the same fate as certain urban areas have in the past. They will be condemned as "blighted" and razed.

However, I can also see a situation where outlying areas are given over to the criminal element... an "Escape from New York" meets "Deliverance" kind of thing.

There's a great book that people reference a lot, but have usually never actually read, called The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs. It is one of a very few books about cities that proposes solutions that are not based on idealism, but on actual observations of how city neighborhoods work the best. I've read quite a few of these "city vs. suburbs" debate articles, and find it perplexing that no one has mentioned this book. How can we talk about making improvements to our cities if we've forgotten how to make city neighborhoods that function well? I encourage everyone to read this book all the way through. The author said a lot more than "Let's put in windows facing the street" (which is what people always seem to remember from this book). And she was definitely not talking about "Soviet style concrete block high rises". If you read this book and then walk through some of the downtown neighborhoods or parks that were built to save the downtown of whatever city, you start to understand what you're seeing a bit more. I am not mentioning this as an argument for or against any of the options presented here. The one coop neighborhood I've actually seen, I actually liked a lot. But it was in a rural area outside a small town, not in a city.

Great article, Lloyd -- for some insane reason I thought you were against things like Nubanusit.

If urban living is the most sustainable way of life, why did so few people do it before the industrial revolution?

There are other possibilities than just living in the city, living in the suburbs, and living out in the country. There are these strange constructions called towns and villages. Quite a few people live in those and never feel the least need to go to the city at all.

Before the industrial revolution, people did not need to live in a city because families themselves were much more self-sustainable. Most of their food was self produced or otherwise traded with neighbors. For people in the suburbs and rural areas today, they are dependent on goods to be shipped to them, or drive some distance to obtain them. There are always exceptions to this scenario, but for the most part, cities are much more sustainable.

As gas prices rise, people will move away from areas that require a lot of driving until either a) they get gas-free or low-gas use transportation or b) housing prices and property taxes drop to the point where people can afford to live there. No, we will not city regions of the country taken over by outlaws.

Alisa,

You ask: "If urban living is the most sustainable way of life, why did so few people do it before the industrial revolution?"

The answer is very basic. Before the industrial revolution, people essentially didn't have much other choice when it came to making a living. You can't take possibilities that aren't available, sustainable or not.

Co-housing sounds beautiful. one problem though, it's friggin' expensive. We have four or so Co-housing groups here in Portland, and the minimum is twice what I paid for my private home. Should they come up with a way, for those of us that aren't wealthy to participate, I'd really welcome the opportunity.

Perhaps starting a low-income co-housing experience would be a good idea.

This is a great post. I live in a small town on the east coast of Florida. My husband and I rent a 500 sq. ft. apartment on the river. I drive my scooter to work and to the grocery. For other errands, we bike. I think for much of the country, it's not a matter of living in the city or in the suburbs. As other posters mentioned, there are these things called "towns." These are the smaller cities full of local businesses and devoid of big boxes. Don't worry, you can survive - really. :-)

Mike, you have it exactly backwards. When you live in a city exactly everything must be shipped in to you, including the conditioned air in your apartment, your electricity, your water, and your food.

My home in the country gets its air from the windows and doors that give me nice cross-ventillation (cooled by the woods we live in), I can make all my own electricity because I own my own sun exposure (including enough to move 2 cars), we get our water from a well 50 feet away (not from a reservior 20 miles away, which then is chlorinated to death), and we could grow enough food to feed several families (but choose to use the CSA that is 10 minutes away). Plus most of our winter heat comes from the trees around us, and we don't need to use as much A/C in the summer because of those same trees.

Cities are not self-sustaining by their very nature, which is why most people didn't live in them until the last 100 years... out of 50,000+ years of human evolution.

I always joke around with the 'after the revolution comes' phrase.
Stuff just can't go on thee way it is. That guy who sold the black painted pig barrel jewelry when oil went over $100 will have to come up with another creation for when it reaches $200.

Pre industrial revolution times had less population density, or at least total population. In Brooklyn, I can just imagine trying to grow some vegetables and seeing it all gone from some thief one morning.

It will get bad (meaning unmanageable one day) I think. When the revolution comes.
Happy Friday !!
vsk

We live in Chicago and co-own a 2-flat. It goes against everything that Americans value, ie. personal land ownership. In fact when we bought this place, everyone was very critical of our decision. I have to tell you, it can be difficult at times to share stuff including a mortgage, but it is the most affordable option.

We can definitely live sustainably in the city. We can grow food in our yard and on the roof as well as open the windows for air and our water comes from the lake. We do respect and depend on our farmers but also understand that we all can't be farmers. We walk, bike, take public trans, and drive very minimally. Our flat is small by suburban standards 950sf for a family of 4 but it works and in turn uses much less energy to operate. Because we split the building, our half of the mortgage is under 200K plus we have rental income.

Cities are amazing places to live. I do wish we had a closer knit direct community but that happens when you mix people up. We hope that the city continues to flourish. Until you have given up your dependency on your car you don't know how much more enjoyable life can be! Sharing is one of the most sustainable ways to live, taking the value off of stiff.

People have lived in cities and villages for hundreds of years.

The problem with many many American small towns is that they are spread out for miles along a highway, with no definable center. 10 structures could be spread out for a mile. Small towns and villages would work great if we could bring back the town square with most of your conveniences centered around that.

Maybe our suburbs will transform into such villages. I love the city, but if small towns were more like the european villages, connected to the city by rail, bike and ped friendly, I would live there.

This is a really great article! I'm glad to see people recognizing that this question can't be resolved by opposing extremes.

This is a very inspiring article indeed. Not only if offers great ideas and alternatives, but look at the thread of equally interesting comments and ideas it generated.

Obviously, Americans are ready and willing to discuss and come up with creative approaches for sustainable and affordable housing. I'd love to see more articles on the subject.

Thanks for sharing the word about alternative models. I've been co-creating and living in urban sustainable communities for more than a decade, and I can't imagine going back to the isolation of disconnected private homes, or giving up the many efficiencies or benefits

Two minor quibbles with the piece:

1. Despite what your AP stylebook may tell you, there's no dash in cohousing. It's in the dictionary (American Heritage).

2. I've been to a meeting of the Brooklyn group you quote, and it's not a co-op - it's cohousing. The distinction is important because, as one commenter notes, in a coop everybody owns a piece of everything, and has to manage the property and the investment collectively, sharing more risk. Cohousing mostly uses a condominium model, with members owning their individual units and a share of the common spaces, with additional legal protections (varied by state) that make banks more willing to provide conventional, competitive, standard "conforming" mortgages, an important distinction at a time when they are coming under increased scrutiny for nonstandard options. Government agencies also approve it more rapidly, as "just another condo" as opposed to a perceived-as-risky hippy enclave that will certainly go bust and they'll be stuck with having to bulldoze these yurts or whatever.

In regard to Denn's comment above on affordability, it is indeed a big challenge for the movement. Using a new-build model does mean that you are paying market rate for land and building, and even with the economies of scale of building a community, the added cost of common space and quality green building tends to use up any savings you get. Fortunately, nearly every cohousing neighborhood has found innovative approaches to inclusion and affordability, from first-time homebuyer assistance to silent-second mortgages to limited-equity caps on appreciation to revolving loan funds to sweat equity -- even Habitat for Humanity partnerships. One of the newer PDX neighborhoods, Columbia EcoVillage, is rehabbing an existing structure to make it greener while maintaining affordability. My wife and business partner Betsy Morris did an article on affordability strategies for Cohousing magazine last year.

Raines Cohen, Cohousing Coach
Planning for Sustainable Communities
at Berkeley (CA) Cohousing

P.S. to Lloyd/TreeHugger Editors: An "Arizona Real Estate" blog appears to have copied this article; although it does link back, it's unclear if it is reprinted with permission.