Adaam James Levin-Areddy and Vanessa M. Quirk, the hosts and producers of the Uncertain Things podcast, interview people from diverse backgrounds and a wide range of expertise to ask the question: “now what? What is happening and how did we get here?”. In this episode, they talk with urbanist, architect, and professor Vishaan Chakrabarti, founder of Practice for Architecture and Urbanism, to seek to understand how the cities got so expensive. Together they delve into the affordability crisis, the detrimental effect of progress, and what we need to do to have better cities.
To understand the affordability crisis, Vishaan Chakrabarti dives into the history of housing policies in the US, starting in the 1950s, the post-World War Two and the Cold War era. During this time, he describes the federal policy to intentionally diffuse the population and de-densify cities as a safety precaution, an incentive that took shape through the National Highway and Defense Act. This continued throughout the 1960s, as suburban areas were kept artificially cheaper and better equipped in terms of education facilities compared to cities. Race played a role in these policies, as communities of color were kept intentionally at a disadvantage.
The interview dissects different eras and changing perspectives to lay the foundation for figuring out the actions, policies, laws, but also cultural forces and market changes that led to this crisis. They touch upon issues like Reagan’s tax reform, which made it illegal for governments to build social housing, the attacks on 9/11, and the critical investments in public infrastructure meant to encourage people to return to the city.
When looking at the failure to build and provide affordable solutions within cities, Vishaan Chakrabarti identifies the source of the problem as being twofold. On one side, there is the inability of progressive policymakers to build, an issue that Vishaan attributes to their disbelief in the supply and demand dynamic. On the other hand, there is an anti-development backlash from the layperson, as people often don’t want to build in their own neighborhoods. This concept has taken the name of “nimby,” an acronym for “not in my backyard.”
Vishaan describes an attitude that weaponizes the legacy of Jane Jacobs. Her legacy is employed by many for its ideas of mixed-use, walkability, and density, but for its methods: the David and Goliath narrative that proves that one can muster local community groups in order to stop things from being built. While still being an advocate for community engagement, Vishaan observes that there is a problem of representation within many communities. He quotes statistics that show that community board meetings are often attended by a majority of privileged members, leading to distorted actions oriented toward the small self-interest of the few. This often translates to groups of wealthy white progressives who can afford to be rhetorically progressive while blocking social developments.
In the last part of the interview, the hosts talk with Vishaan about the depressing image of the cities from an aesthetic point of view. Vishaan points to the homogenization of the cities as one source of this unfortunate image, as new parts of the city are losing their local identity, or as he puts it, their narrative. A possible solution to this is the concept of “connective design”: asking whether a building could be placed anywhere else than in its exact location. If the answer is yes, the building fails the test. If the answer is no, then it proves that that piece of architecture is well connected to its environment and, thus, to the people.
