Why Housing?: The Meaning Of Cities

This is the first post in a series about how I ended up working on the housing issue. It is more reflective and qualitative than quantitative. I’ve over the years about the many mistakes being made in housing policy along with ideas on how to make better policy. This series is a look back at my experience and how we got where we are today. It ends with some ideas about how to change how we think about housing

I don’t have a copy of Kevin Lynch’s iconic book Image of the City because every time I get a copy or two, I end up giving them away. I have mentioned Lynch in posts before because I can’t tell the story about how I ended up working in the field of housing without mentioning him and that book. Lynch’s description of cities struck me in my twenties as not only accurate but inspirational. I’ve given the book so often because I don’t think you can understand cities or me without it. My engagement with housing issues began with the meaning of cities.

Twelve years ago I tried to write evocatively about my own childhood home, Albuquerque. My childhood home was a three-bedroom two bath wood and plaster house built on a slab in the developing desert. The years leading up to its construction in the early 70’s saw tremendous growth not up but sprawling out from the Rio Grande River. I noted then that “maybe it’s because I grew up in a world equally divided at the horizon between sky and sand that I feel a deep attraction to verticality. Height is important.”

Growing up in such a spread out and horizontal environment “taught me to appreciate the cool shade of a tall building, the importance of a patch of grass with some benches, and the camaraderie and friendship that can come from a bus ride.” The shade tree of density wasn’t just about building form but proximity to other people. I never lived above or below other people; neighbors on the block were dozens or hundreds of horizontal feet away. For me the ideal was not a single-family home but the treehouse of an apartment amidst a sea of people.

And while Albuquerque is one of North America’s oldest cities, founded in 1706, where I grew up felt void of history. I can remember the first time I crossed the George Washington Bridge from New Jersey in New York on my way to Yonkers, what impressed me was the accretion of built form, of what appeared to be age after age of human experience built one on top of another. I’ve come to appreciate the history of Albuquerque as I’ve aged, but when I was young, fleeing from my own history there, I saw the verticality and density of the city as an ideal refuge and a hopeful opportunity.

Whether we see cities as failures as many do today, or as the coalescence of many aspirations as I did then, cities have profound meaning to cultural experience. They also can define the discussion about housing, setting advocates of more dense housing forms and types against those that think a yard is an essential ingredient of a health childhood. This tension would define the beginnings of my work in the field of housing and still characterizes it today. Either way, apocalyptic hellscape or shining ideal, cities and what people think and feel about them frame in a deep way how we deal with housing policy and economics.