Dwell Hell

It’s summer, the economy sucks, time to rethink the living room. Armed with issues of ReadyMade, Dwell, and maybe a few a tattered home design catalogs (mostly just for inspiration), it seems like everyone I know is busy on a project around the house or apartment. Our philosophy has been to look online, in catalogs, and in local showrooms–and then try to make it happen at Target. The apartment is pretty hopeless, really. If the walls looked like the ceiling, the floor looked like the walls, we would be in decent shape. These bloody wood-paneled walls are a bitch. But it’s fun to get an idea of what our place could like if design actually was within reach. Similarly, Sarah and I have this game when we walk around our neighborhood. It’s called, “What house would you want if you could have any house?” Our choices are pretty much the same. Comfortable bungalow. Or maybe craftsman style simplicty with a striking coat of paint. What is discouraging is that we know that when the time comes to buy a home, we’ll have only a few affordable options. I just don’t want to be in a development off the interstate that greets you with flags and signs that say, “Homes from the 120’s!” and are mandated to have one of the following words in their nature-inspired name: Glen, Brook, Plantation, Mill, or Run. I have not been able to find a satisfactory answer to this question: Why aren’t new subdivisions reflecting the diverse interests and tastes of prospective buyers? Why only beige houses that are a cartoonish mish-mash of traditional styles!? I took this question to a local builder recently. I had been working on a web site to promote a five-flat condo development he is doing in the Old West Austin/Clarksville area. He acknowledged that there is a demand for change and even pointed to a few New Urbanist successes (are there any NU failures?). But from a purely financial standpoint, it still makes sense for him to continue with the CSD (conventional suburban development) approach. “The reality is that the only people doing cool stuff either have a partial subsidy from a federal or local program, or have a special interest in urban design and architecture,” he said bluntly. I’m still not entirely convinced. The fact is, there is a market for something better. If there is a problem with New Urbanism projects, it’s that because they are enormously popular, market forces drive up prices and they are often out of reach to many of the people who want to live there. In fact, many arguments against New Urbanism and Smart Growth, usually from the cultural right, point to rising housing costs as a reason to continue with the status quo.

Speaking of the Right, a friend alerted me to an article called “It Takes a (Well-Planned Village)” in the latest issue of the National Review, a conservative magazine home to one of my favorite writers, Jonah Goldberg. This has to be the first time ever that New Urbanism has been appaluded in the conservative press. But what I thought was really interesting was that it helped me understand why we’re not seeing more mixed-use, urban infill, and good design. It is understood that in most communities, modernist, post WWII zoning codes essentially prevent anything other than what we’ve seen over the past fifty years. But what I didn’t know was how difficult it is for a banker to make a loan for a mixed-use project. The loan “can’t be sold into a secondary mortgage market– where the loans are bundled and repackaged as securities–since that market is itself single-use-oriented. Lending for mixed use means that the bank’s money can’t be rolled over, it’s tied up for the life of the loan.” This is true even with the knowledge that the loan would perform well.

As a side note, I tried to Keep Austin Weird and buy my copy of Nat’l Review at Book People. I went to the Politics and Current Issues section and couldn’t find it. All the usual mags were there–The Nation, Dissent, Atlantic Monthly, Mother Jones, etc. I even found some socialist periodicals and a few anarchist publications. But Austin’s naughty conservatives will have to go to Barnes and Noble to get other viewpoints. Book People might want to look for another motto, as “A Community Bound by Books” doesn’t make much sense.

July 16th, 2003