Contemporary norms vs historic norms

Three cultural changes mid-century planners imposed on America

In this newsletter I intentionally write short posts for high context readers. I skim over or link to ideas that have been explained many times before, and focus on making connections between these ideas (or introducing new ideas) for readers who are already “bought in.” As I see it, the 100-level material is abundant, widespread, and successfully cultivating advocates, but 200-level material is scarce.

In the last two posts I talked about how urbanists use the words “urban” and “suburban.” In the first post I illustrated how even urbanists don’t precisely agree on what these words mean, and how we risk misunderstanding or talking past each other. In the second post I offered some more precise terms for the characteristics I think are the most salient in distinguishing places (street connectivity, street safety, and mix of land uses).

At the end of the last post I skimmed past an important higher level connection between “urban/suburban” and “pre-war/post-war” terminology.

…it’s tempting to say that the post-war combinations are “suburban” and the pre-war combinations are “urban,” but as we discussed last time that would be missing the point. Describing the functional characteristics of place that we care about instead can avoid the baggage and misunderstandings, and will help us have better discussions.

After reflection, I think this one warrants a bit more unpacking.

It’s not an incidental detail that the positive characteristics of places strongly correlate with “pre-war” development and the negative characteristics strongly correlate with “post-war” development: The way we build human habitat changed dramatically in the 20th century; the post-war building boom represented the definitive entrenchment of the new culture and the death of the old.

Thus when urbanists use the label “suburban” we’re more often referring to the post-war pattern of development, not to smaller towns outside a larger city, or residential communities where people commute to a central city.

The Congress for the New Urbanism refers to the post-war pattern of development as Conventional Suburban Development (CSD), usually contrasted with Traditional Neighborhood Development(TND) or “Sustainable Urban Development”. Strong Towns calls it The Suburban Experiment. Many detractors call it “Suburban Sprawl.”

But in light of our discussion of “urban” vs “suburban,” I’m coming around to the view that including “suburban” in the label is distracting (if not misleading), because (1) the suburbs predate post-war development shift by about a century, and (2) the streetcar suburbs are arguably both the zenith and best preserved example of the pre-war development model.

Trying to avoid using the word “suburban”, perhaps we could simply say that we’re contrasting Contemporary Development with Traditional or Historic Development.

Using the terminology I outlined last time we can describe these more precisely:

• The Historic Norm was well-connected + mixed-use + safe for kids

• The Contemporary Norm is disconnected + single-use + unsafe

This gives us a good description of the physical change that happened, but it elides the cultural change that came with it.

This year I’ve proposed that cities should Plan Roads, Design Streets, Regulate Interfaces, Embrace Change, and Accept Opposition. The first three principles pertain to the physical design and form of the community, the last two are cultural. Let’s connect the cultural dots.

How American place-making norms changed

Within the realm of city building, three 20th century norm-changes radically reshaped the way we live, leading directly to the problems we’re grappling with today. I use the word “norms,” because these changes are deeper than any particular law, policy, or program. These are cultural assumptions, the why behind the policy and design choices we make, which ultimately constrain what we build.

Because these have been written about extensively, I’m going to describe them briefly with links to deeper reading.

From a flexible mix of buildings and uses to rigid separation

In the past, land use in cities tended to be highly mixed. This meant any given street might have a mix of houses, townhomes, and apartments, as well as corner stores and small businesses. Early planners championed zoning to physically separate activities they deemed incompatible, including intentionally using zoning to exclude more affordable housing types (and the people who would live in them) from most neighborhoods. Today we’ve atomized the city — central planners dictate strict zones for every type of activity, and even every type of building.

Deep Dives: Arbitrary Lines, The Death and Life of Great American Cities

From dynamic and adaptive to static and stifled

In the past, neighborhoods evolved and “matured” much more than they do today. Across North America, neighborhoods would start with simple, cheap buildings, and then incrementally evolve in place. If a place prospered, small wooden boxes would give way to small brick buildings, then larger and grander buildings as the community continued to grow. Today we aim to design and build places to a finished state, and then bind them in restrictions to resist change. Growth and change are mostly limited to the Greenfield edge, and in some cases the historic city center (which, in many cities, is less restricted as an artifact of the historic norm).

Deep Dives: Suburban Nation, the ULI and J.C. Nichols

From human-first to car-first

The most visible change in our norms started during the 20’s, went on quietly during the Great Depression and World War 2 (when the US as a whole wasn’t building much), then exploded into the public consciousness with the post-war housing boom. Historic cities were oriented around humans, built on the assumption that most people would go most places on foot. After all, what other choice did they have? But modernist planners were confident that in the future everyone would travel everywhere by car, and baked that design requirement into all manner of city, state and federal policy and programs. Among the least known but most impactful, the FHA incorporated car-oriented design as a mortgage lending requirement.

Deep Dives: Fighting Traffic, Confessions of a Recovering Engineer

Norms for a better future

When I look at these three contemporary norms, I see ideas that are out of step with the values of the broad American public. Americans want affordable housing in their community, including more affordable housing types. We’re a dynamic country that values entrepreneurship, technological progress, and the American Dream of upward mobility. We value walkability so much that we’re willing to pay a premium to get it.

The specific policies and approaches we adopt are downstream of our values. To undo the damage caused by the mid-century planners, we should promote norms that fit our values better.

• Integrated: We should favor complimentary mixed use and a variety of building types for more affordable, inclusive communities.

• Adaptive: We should embrace change, prioritizing adaptability and resilience.

• Human-first: We should accommodate mobility technology, but design for humans — especially children.

The mid-century planners correctly identified real problems with industrial-era cities and tried to solve them, but their top-down approach lacked a fundamental understanding of what makes places work for people. They mistook complexity for chaos, evolution for decay, and human scale for inefficiency. The contemporary norms of separation, stasis, and car-dependence aren't laws of nature—they're choices we made, and choices we can unmake. Doing so would better align our building practices with the values we already hold.