Excellent article. Anytime a subject starts to take on political salience on any level, certain terms within just become meaningless Rorschach tests. Suburban and Urban have likely fallen into that category. I think to really draw a proper picture in folks heads, particularly conservatives who tend to be predisposed against anything 'urban', we need to speak fondly of the American 'Main Street' and 'traditional cities' like Paris, Rome, pre-war Chicago and NYC, etc., and talk about how 'technocratic' post-WWII land use and building regulations and practices (setbacks, single-use limits, parking lot reqs, huge streets, etc.) have made it illegal to build in the same style of the folks who built the greatest cities of Western Civilization (conservatives love this stuff).
This is likely the best way to apply the technique of 'Moral Reframing' to urbanism when talking to conservatives; it's the same arguments, but appealing to different values and using their language. You already have the true believers; why preach to the choir when you can secure Converts?
Though, keeping in mind that Substack's model greatly rewards writing for one's existing audience, the best approach is likely for non-conservatives and more urbanism-fluent audiences is likely to just get hyper-specific and use more pictures, while weaving in some occasional moral reframing.
"So, walkability is necessary but not sufficient, the surrounding context is critical."
Well, another way to think of it is that context is part of "walkability" for urban purposes. We don't mean just a safe foot path for exercise and nature appreciation, fine as those are; urban walkability requires functional destinations.
The "rural to urban transect" may be the easiest way to describe the differences between "rural", "suburban" and "urban" human landscapes, for large cities and traditional small towns as you cite - https://transect.org/index.html.
Do you think walkscore.com captures your definition of urban? They claim to base their walk score on whether daily errands require a car. Consistent with your examples, downtown Eugene and the Chicago Loop bother score high (91 and 100, respectively--"Walker's Paradise") and Rosemary Beach scores low (42--"Car-Dependent"). But in contrast, San Francisco's Outer Sunset (allegedly suburban) also scores fairly high (83) and Peabody KS (allegedly urban) scores low (47). Curious about why you think their scores do or do not capture what you're saying here.
I don't understand this definition "Urban means a living community (not controlled by a single party, ungated, allowed to grow and change), where it’s safe and comfortable for humans of all ages to live independently (able to reach daily activities on foot)."
Urban, suburban and rural all meet this part of the definition "living community (not controlled by a single party, ungated, allowed to grow and change), where it’s safe and comfortable for humans of all ages to live independently"
My issue is the "able to reach daily activities on foot". The most "walkable" cities have subways, so you are using a transportation system to get around by foot. The car is unfairly demonized. Does AVs like Waymos and Robotaxis count as transportation systems like subways, but with more flexibility?
I think your comment illustrates the broader point of the post, which is that the words "urban," "suburban," and "rural" mean so many different things to so many different people that when we use those terms in discussion about how cities work they actually make communication less effective. When I started writing this newsletter I explicitly decided I was only writing for "urbanists" and didn't try to use language for the broad public, but even then I've found that the pictures in my head and the pictures in other "urbanists" heads don't quite line up. I don't think that means one of us is right or wrong, just that these terms aren't helping.
In that spirit, my personal definition of "urban" is not really important. But to try and respond to the rest of your question:
(1) Yes, places of any size or location can meet the criteria I think are most important for "urban" life. To me urban life is about the serendipity of proximity. I don't know how to describe it better than that -- to me this is something that people who have experienced it recognize, but unfortunately most people in the US don't get that opportunity and can't really relate.
(2) To your second point -- I would not count subway-dependent places either. It is possible to have "skyscraper sprawl," where the environment is just as segregated and lacking daily needs, even though it's oriented around commuter trains instead of commuter highways. In practice that doesn't happen in the US (some bits of NYC and San Francisco are on the bubble). There are examples in China and in ex-Soviet countries, and my understanding is that some of the outskirts of Paris are like this. But skyscraper sprawl is rare, because at those densities neighborhood services and community institutions are like aggressive weeds in a well-watered field: *guaranteed* to emerge unless you have a command economy that stamps them out.
(3) You said cars are unfairly demonized, but note that I even said "depending on a bike" doesn't count for me. I think you can't get that serendipity of proximity unless there's enough mix of land use that you can fully live in a place for long stretches of time on foot. Not that you *must* but that you *can.* There's nothing inherently wrong with cars, but they take up a lot of space per passenger (which interferes with the space/time tradeoff that creates serendipity -- https://postsuburban.substack.com/p/the-geometry-problem), and they crash at rates high enough that it scares people away from unarmored modes. But I think Waymo should be great for urbanism, because Waymos don't need to park, and they're much safer than human-driven cars.
"Why should a suburban area with good access to public transportation and pathways to get into the towns and cities not thrive?” If this is a category error, then *streetcar suburb* must be an oxymoron. (I am doubtful about making suburbs transit-friendly, but that's another discussion).
Urbanists are committed to public transportation and cars as first-order problems. Walking should replace these as the first-order problem. This changes the logic.
For the most part, *urbanism* is a popular movement, one populated by professionals such as planners and practicing architects, with many others just engaged citizens with less relevant professional training. However, popular urbanism is not very engaged with urbanist scholarship, and this is a way that the movement could improve its knowledge.
The great challenge of defining *urban* is our inheritance of a box containing some clunky, mismatched tools. We inherited *city* from Latin *civitas* and *urban* and *urbanism*. *City* is a noun for the large type of settlement, lacking a corresponding adjectival form. *Urban* is an adjective describing settlements, but with no corresponding noun form synonymous with *settlement* or *city*. Given our clunky toolkit of words, the best conceptual fit marries the noun and the adjective: *urban is a quality of cities.* That implies urban is scale dependent. I want urbanism to be non-scale dependent, or at least, less scale dependent. This is my frustration with this part of the English vocabulary and why I think it needs reform.
I have written an essay on this. A published urban scholar reviewed it unfavorably, so I am still trying to hash it out before I publish it.
I think urbanism is scale-independent. I've not been to Peabody, but I did live in a town of similar size that I'd call functionally urban, in that all the ordinary destinations of daily life were reachable by walk and bicycle.
The "streetcar suburbs" built in the 1890s-1920s are very unlike the postwar automobile suburbs that came to exemplify the term. A surviving streetcar suburb, walkable in itself and still linked by transit, should be understood as urban.
Yes. Streetcar suburbs were different from the car-based suburbs of the 1920s, which were both different from post-War car-based suburbs. Suburbia is heterogenous. But streetcar suburbs are still suburbs, and here I challenge Warner’s concept of the “walking city.”
Great post, Andrew. I think this terminology problem is a bigger issue for growing the tent than many give credit to. Looking forward to your proposals.
Excellent article. Anytime a subject starts to take on political salience on any level, certain terms within just become meaningless Rorschach tests. Suburban and Urban have likely fallen into that category. I think to really draw a proper picture in folks heads, particularly conservatives who tend to be predisposed against anything 'urban', we need to speak fondly of the American 'Main Street' and 'traditional cities' like Paris, Rome, pre-war Chicago and NYC, etc., and talk about how 'technocratic' post-WWII land use and building regulations and practices (setbacks, single-use limits, parking lot reqs, huge streets, etc.) have made it illegal to build in the same style of the folks who built the greatest cities of Western Civilization (conservatives love this stuff).
This is likely the best way to apply the technique of 'Moral Reframing' to urbanism when talking to conservatives; it's the same arguments, but appealing to different values and using their language. You already have the true believers; why preach to the choir when you can secure Converts?
Though, keeping in mind that Substack's model greatly rewards writing for one's existing audience, the best approach is likely for non-conservatives and more urbanism-fluent audiences is likely to just get hyper-specific and use more pictures, while weaving in some occasional moral reframing.
"So, walkability is necessary but not sufficient, the surrounding context is critical."
Well, another way to think of it is that context is part of "walkability" for urban purposes. We don't mean just a safe foot path for exercise and nature appreciation, fine as those are; urban walkability requires functional destinations.
The "rural to urban transect" may be the easiest way to describe the differences between "rural", "suburban" and "urban" human landscapes, for large cities and traditional small towns as you cite - https://transect.org/index.html.
They also offer a collection of images of the range of human landscapes - https://sandphlea.zenfolio.com/
Do you think walkscore.com captures your definition of urban? They claim to base their walk score on whether daily errands require a car. Consistent with your examples, downtown Eugene and the Chicago Loop bother score high (91 and 100, respectively--"Walker's Paradise") and Rosemary Beach scores low (42--"Car-Dependent"). But in contrast, San Francisco's Outer Sunset (allegedly suburban) also scores fairly high (83) and Peabody KS (allegedly urban) scores low (47). Curious about why you think their scores do or do not capture what you're saying here.
Walkscore is an aggregate, so very small places like Peabody get penalized for not having *multiples* in range in the various categories.
I don't understand this definition "Urban means a living community (not controlled by a single party, ungated, allowed to grow and change), where it’s safe and comfortable for humans of all ages to live independently (able to reach daily activities on foot)."
Urban, suburban and rural all meet this part of the definition "living community (not controlled by a single party, ungated, allowed to grow and change), where it’s safe and comfortable for humans of all ages to live independently"
My issue is the "able to reach daily activities on foot". The most "walkable" cities have subways, so you are using a transportation system to get around by foot. The car is unfairly demonized. Does AVs like Waymos and Robotaxis count as transportation systems like subways, but with more flexibility?
My guess you wouldn't count them. Why not?
I think your comment illustrates the broader point of the post, which is that the words "urban," "suburban," and "rural" mean so many different things to so many different people that when we use those terms in discussion about how cities work they actually make communication less effective. When I started writing this newsletter I explicitly decided I was only writing for "urbanists" and didn't try to use language for the broad public, but even then I've found that the pictures in my head and the pictures in other "urbanists" heads don't quite line up. I don't think that means one of us is right or wrong, just that these terms aren't helping.
In that spirit, my personal definition of "urban" is not really important. But to try and respond to the rest of your question:
(1) Yes, places of any size or location can meet the criteria I think are most important for "urban" life. To me urban life is about the serendipity of proximity. I don't know how to describe it better than that -- to me this is something that people who have experienced it recognize, but unfortunately most people in the US don't get that opportunity and can't really relate.
(2) To your second point -- I would not count subway-dependent places either. It is possible to have "skyscraper sprawl," where the environment is just as segregated and lacking daily needs, even though it's oriented around commuter trains instead of commuter highways. In practice that doesn't happen in the US (some bits of NYC and San Francisco are on the bubble). There are examples in China and in ex-Soviet countries, and my understanding is that some of the outskirts of Paris are like this. But skyscraper sprawl is rare, because at those densities neighborhood services and community institutions are like aggressive weeds in a well-watered field: *guaranteed* to emerge unless you have a command economy that stamps them out.
(3) You said cars are unfairly demonized, but note that I even said "depending on a bike" doesn't count for me. I think you can't get that serendipity of proximity unless there's enough mix of land use that you can fully live in a place for long stretches of time on foot. Not that you *must* but that you *can.* There's nothing inherently wrong with cars, but they take up a lot of space per passenger (which interferes with the space/time tradeoff that creates serendipity -- https://postsuburban.substack.com/p/the-geometry-problem), and they crash at rates high enough that it scares people away from unarmored modes. But I think Waymo should be great for urbanism, because Waymos don't need to park, and they're much safer than human-driven cars.
"Why should a suburban area with good access to public transportation and pathways to get into the towns and cities not thrive?” If this is a category error, then *streetcar suburb* must be an oxymoron. (I am doubtful about making suburbs transit-friendly, but that's another discussion).
Urbanists are committed to public transportation and cars as first-order problems. Walking should replace these as the first-order problem. This changes the logic.
For the most part, *urbanism* is a popular movement, one populated by professionals such as planners and practicing architects, with many others just engaged citizens with less relevant professional training. However, popular urbanism is not very engaged with urbanist scholarship, and this is a way that the movement could improve its knowledge.
The great challenge of defining *urban* is our inheritance of a box containing some clunky, mismatched tools. We inherited *city* from Latin *civitas* and *urban* and *urbanism*. *City* is a noun for the large type of settlement, lacking a corresponding adjectival form. *Urban* is an adjective describing settlements, but with no corresponding noun form synonymous with *settlement* or *city*. Given our clunky toolkit of words, the best conceptual fit marries the noun and the adjective: *urban is a quality of cities.* That implies urban is scale dependent. I want urbanism to be non-scale dependent, or at least, less scale dependent. This is my frustration with this part of the English vocabulary and why I think it needs reform.
I have written an essay on this. A published urban scholar reviewed it unfavorably, so I am still trying to hash it out before I publish it.
I think urbanism is scale-independent. I've not been to Peabody, but I did live in a town of similar size that I'd call functionally urban, in that all the ordinary destinations of daily life were reachable by walk and bicycle.
The "streetcar suburbs" built in the 1890s-1920s are very unlike the postwar automobile suburbs that came to exemplify the term. A surviving streetcar suburb, walkable in itself and still linked by transit, should be understood as urban.
Yes. Streetcar suburbs were different from the car-based suburbs of the 1920s, which were both different from post-War car-based suburbs. Suburbia is heterogenous. But streetcar suburbs are still suburbs, and here I challenge Warner’s concept of the “walking city.”
https://bnjd.substack.com/p/hotels-of-1880-houston-introduction
Great post, Andrew. I think this terminology problem is a bigger issue for growing the tent than many give credit to. Looking forward to your proposals.