The American Dream Desperately Needs the Urban Mindset
A friend recently visited me in San Francisco. We were walking around the Palace of Fine Arts, admiring the iconic mansions surrounding the lake. “Just imagine living in that house,” I said, pointing to a particular stunner. It must have been worth 4 million easy.
“I don’t think I could live there,” my friend said with a shrug. “It only has a one-car garage.”
This response floored me. I couldn’t imagine shrugging away the fantasy of living in this truly glorious mansion for the sake of garage space. With this attitude, you’re shutting yourself off from living in many of the world’s greatest cities. You’re saying No to the authentic culture of high-population centers and Yes to the homogenized, simulated culture of the suburbs. All for the sake of car dependence.
Like my friend, most Americans prefer the car-dependent suburban lifestyle. A 2021 poll found that 60% of Americans desire to live in larger homes and at greater distances from others. Only 39% prefer a more urban lifestyle with schools, shops, and restaurants within walking distance. This number is down eight points since 2019.
Put in terms of the American dream, Americans don’t want to live in an iconic mansion across the street from the Palace of Fine Arts and within walking distance to epic views of the Golden Gate Bridge. The American dream is to have a three-car garage in a suburb that looks exactly the same as any other.
It’s been widely observed that basically everyone loves dense, walkable spaces—as evidenced by the fact that these are the types of spaced that people flock to by the millions for vacation. Paris is there to be enjoyed as a stroll from a café to a theater. From the Seine River to a park. From the Louvre to a bakery. Same idea with London and New York. Same with Disneyland and the connected casinos of Las Vegas.
So why don’t more people want to live in the places they love to visit? There are plenty of understandable reasons that are given: dense cities are expensive, there’s lots of property crime, there’s air pollution and noise pollution… But a major factor, I’m sure, is the addiction to the car-centric lifestyle.
The American dream is a three-car garage.
It’s an unfortunate dream. On a cultural level, building a nation of suburbs is like building a ghost nation. A nation with no iconic infrastructure. No iconic buildings, streets, parks, art museums, mass transit systems, etc. A nation of parking lots, Starbucks, and McDonald’s.
On a practical level, suburbs are unsustainable, bad for the environment, and bad for human productivity.
I’d like to think that the future is a competition between museum cities remaining relevant in the face of the growth of new, smart cities. Both types of urban centers competing to be the most walkable, most sustainable, most lively.
Instead, I’m afraid the future of America will be a story of bland suburbs competing for funding to maintain their expansive sewer systems, repave their endless roads, and provide water for suburban lawns. I’m afraid we’ll never build another Manhattan. Another New Orleans French Quarter. Not in the America we dream about. Not if so many of us continue to dream of the godforsaken three-car garage.