The American Root Vegetable Dream
Why Everyone's Preferences About Where to Live are Completely Wrong
Millions of Americans claim that they like living in the suburbs.
I’m here today to tell you that most of these people are wrong. They don’t actually know what they want.
Imagine a fictional world where there are two types of vegetables: carrots and potatoes.
The government says: “Carrots are essential component of a good life. We believe every family in our nation should be able to afford carrots. Therefore we’re going to tax potatoes and we’re going to heavily subsidize carrots.”1
Not only that, in addition to the tax on potatoes, the government imposes strict rules on how farmers can grow them. They now have to go through a lengthy application process just to get them planted. This can take years, meaning lost revenue.
The government never really deals with people wanting to grow potatoes, so it gets more and more difficult just to get permission to grow them.
Well-meaning bureaucrats say to farmers: “I’ve received your application to grow potatoes. Well, they’re not orange2, so that’s weird. Are you sure you don’t just want to grow carrots instead? We can approve that application instantly. We’ll even pay for most of your cost to grow them!”
The result? Surprise surprise: Nobody grows potatoes and everybody grows carrots.
As a result, now when you go to your local grocery store, carrots cost $.15 per bag. Potatoes are $20 per bag.3
Because just to grow a few potatoes requires a herculean effort and years of frustration dealing with a system that really doesn’t want any more potatoes grown. The only people who grow potatoes do so on moral and aesthetic grounds more than anything else. They’re willing to endure years of painful compliance and regulatory battles just because they believe people have a goddamn right to eat something other than carrots.
Because they’re so difficult to produce eating potatoes becomes something only accessible to the 1%.
Fast forward a few years. All the cooking shows are just different ways to cook with carrots. Gordon Ramsay starts selling his own line of specially designed carrot-cutting knives. The cooking section of every book store is full of titles like “The Joy of Cooking With Carrots” and “Miracle Carrots: Naturally gluten, dairy, and soy free!”
The number one rated show on television is “The Great British Carrot Cooking Show”4
A whole generation of children grows up with carrots as a comfort food. When they become old enough to have kids of their own, they can’t conceive of raising them on anything but carrots. “All I ate growing up was carrots, and I turned out fine!”, they proclaim.
At SXSW the headline panel is “Carrots: The Foundation of the American Dream”
Oblivious to the regulations and incentives at work, the discussion revolves around carrots in American culture.
Panelist 1: It’s clear that Americans just love carrots. It must be something about the fact that carrots grow really well in most of the U.S. climate.
Panelist 2: I believe Americans prefer carrots because they’re so affordable. Just look at how expensive potatoes are!! What normal family is going to pay prices like that, even if they do contain essential nutrients?
Panelist 3: Perhaps long ago, eating carrots conferred a survival advantage to humans, so today we are drawn to eat as many of them as possible.
Each panelist has an interesting (incorrect) anthropological explanation for the reason that people eat so many carrots. The panelists may debate why people prefer carrots over potatoes, but the one thing they all agree on: people LOVE carrots. They hate potatoes. Nobody would dispute that!
Hopefully you see where I’m going with this belabored root vegetable metaphor: Carrots are the suburbs, potatoes are walkable neighborhoods.
“Show me the incentives and I’ll show you the outcome”
To an outsider who doesn’t see the underlying incentives operating, it might look at first glance that people just really like carrots.
I am here to tell you that the following two statements are equally idiotic:
“All the people in our our imaginary world eat carrots for every meal, so people must just prefer something about carrots over potatoes. ”
“Lots of Americans live in the suburbs and drive everywhere, so they must prefer that way of life over something more walkable“
They are similarly idiotic in that neither one tells you what people actually want. They sound very reasonable and common sensical, but both are very bad explanations for what is actually happening.
It’s like offering a starving dog a big bowl of dog food and proclaiming: “he loves this food, we must produce more of it and give it to all the dogs!”
Of course, I may have exaggerated things a bit to make my point: We already know that tens of millions of Americans want potatoes (walkable neighborhoods) and are willing to pay more to live in them.5 The problem isn’t cost: it’s that this option simply doesn’t exist.
My imaginary conversation between a potato farmer and a well-meaning bureaucrat above is exactly the kind of thing that happens when people try to build anything other than single-use sprawl:
“I’ve received your application to grow potatoes build a walkable neighborhood. Well, it has more than one land use in the same parcel, so that’s weird. Also you don’t have half of the land dedicated to parking: big red flag. Are you sure you don’t just want to grow carrots build some sprawl instead? We can approve that application instantly. We’ll even run utilities to your site in the name of “growth” despite the fact it makes absolutely no economic sense for us or the taxpayers to do that!”
What is most astonishing to me is that so many people still prefer the walkable environment, even in a system that is so strongly pushing in the other direction.
Do I like carrots? Sure, they’re fine, I guess. But I know one thing: I’ll like them a whole lot more if they’re basically free! I tolerate carrots, but I LOVE potatoes. But it’s hard for me to justify eating them for every meal when doing so would mean spending half my income on them.
If people had to pay the actual cost to live in a suburban environment, and an alternative was available, many millions of people would change where they live. Hell, millions of people already desperately want to live in something other than this subsidized suburban environment and are willing to pay more for it, but it just isn’t available!
So just remember: everyone is wrong about what they actually want, and I’m right. Now let’s go grow some potatoes.
Joel
Some might say that the government doesn’t actually tax dense, walkable development more heavily than sprawl. This is incorrect. The split rate property tax system in the U.S. typically taxes structures (anything built on land) at around 80% and land at around 20%. This has the perverse effect of taxing efficient use of land much more heavily, and subsidizing inefficient use of land (like holding it vacant or not improving a run-down building). The more efficiently an individual uses land under this system, the more they are penalized. This is one of many other subsidies for carrots (single-use sprawl)
Let’s assume these are good old-fashioned white potatoes, not those newfangled sweet potatoes.
“It’s a potato. What could it cost? $10?”
“Heel Holland Kookt Met Wortelen” for Dutch readers!
https://www.nar.realtor/newsroom/new-nar-survey-finds-americans-prefer-walkable-communities#:~:text=If%20deciding%20today%20where%20to,walk%20are%20very%2Fsomewhat%20important.
This vegetable analogy is not only logical but also quite comical, well done sir!
I, too, am partial to potatoes! While I can live with a "to each their own" mentality on housing, the problem is that zoning promotes car centricity and single family housing to an absurd degree. I'd love to see and be a part of more walkable neighborhoods - because you feel more connected, it's more convenient, and they are human-sized!