My Morning Walks

I am in the habit of taking walks first thing in the morning. In Salt Lake, I might walk up to Miller Park along Red Butte Creek and back through the shady streets of the Yalecrest neighborhood. Or I might walk down 900 South as far as Liberty Park, or even further, all the way down to the light rail station at Central Ninth and then take the bus back up the hill to home.

In Surco, my walks are even more enjoyable, what with the tree-lined boulevards, the occasional coffee houses, the lovely small parks, the many interesting shops and a fascinating variety of buildings, some very beautiful and some very ugly. Walking around Surco is every bit as enjoyable as walking around San Francisco.

Both Surco and Salt Lake have seen significant population growth since my husband Daniel left Peru as a teenager back in 1989. The municipality of Surco has grown from 200,000 to 420,000 inhabitants. The city of Salt Lake has grown from 159,952 to 212,570 inhabitants. Since both cities were essentially built out in 1989, both cities have had to increase density to accommodate all of the new people. Each city has done so in different ways, as is very obvious from my walks.

In Sucro

As of 1990

In 1990, most of Surco was filled with individual buildings (mostly townhouses) built on very small lots – typically about 30 feet wide and 100 feet deep. Mixed use was (and remains) common. Given the largely pedestrian nature of the city, small grocery stores, bakeries, pharmacies, barber shops, beauty parlors, restaurants and many other businesses are within easy walking distance of homes.

Adding on to Existing Houses

One way to increase density is to make existing homes larger. Since lots are so small in Surco, houses already cover most of the lot, so making the house larger means adding a story or two. Many houses have added a third or even a fourth floor. The municipality allows houses up to 4 stories. The homeowner can share the extra space with extended family or rent it out.

Replacing Houses with Apartments

Another way to increase density is to tear down the existing house and replace it with a multi-story apartment building. In Surco, given the small lot sizes and multiplicity of owners, the apartment buildings are generally small, fitting into just one or two of the original lots. They are also obviously designed to attract the same kinds of middle and upper-middle class people that live in the neighboring houses. This preserves the social makeup of the neighborhood, making the increased density less disruptive.

Salt Lake City

As of 1990

As of 1990, most residential areas of the city were single family homes situated in the middle of lots of at least a tenth of an acre, with side, front and back yards. Apartment buildings were scattered in a few areas of the city. Most residential neighborhoods had only houses – nothing but other houses within walking distance. You had to hop in a car to buy food or medicine, to get your hair cut, to go to a restaurant. Thirty-five years later, this is all still true.

Adding on to Existing Houses

In my morning walks, I pass many houses with additions. Given the larger lot sizes, people can make additions to the sides and back of their houses or add a second floor if one doesn’t already exist. But since these additions are mostly made to provide more space for existing inhabitants, they don’t increase the density of the neighborhood.

Recently, the city has made it easier to construct “granny flats” in the back yard. These can be occupied by Grandma (hence the name) or an adult child just getting started in life. Granny flats do increase the density of the neighborhood. People generally don’t object to having more grandmothers and adult children in the neighborhood, as long as they don’t have cars that they park on the street! Time will tell if granny flats make a significant contribution to housing more people in Salt Lake.

Replacing Vacant Lots with Apartments

It is illegal to build townhouses, duplexes or apartment houses in Yalecrest, but when I walk along 900 South, I see some new apartments built on empty or underused lots in the Ninth and Ninth neighborhood and I see lots of new apartments and townhouses in the Central Ninth district by the light rail stop.

This pattern of development is typical throughout Salt Lake City. Little new housing in existing residential areas, but lots of large apartment houses built on vacant lots and under-utilized land around the 33 light rail stations. This has been enough to house over fifty thousand new residents.

Can Surco and Salt Lake Learn From Each Other?

Of course, but there are many intangible cultural differences to take into account. As for Surco-style home additions in Salt Lake, someone has already tried it. It did not go well.

The Garage Mahal

About 25 years ago someone bought a house in our “pituco” (snooty) neighborhood of Yalecrest and remodeled it to take up almost the entire width of the lot, placing a 3-car garage one the front and a couple of stories on top. This would be unremarkable in Surco.

But in Salt Lake, neighbors were outraged! Pearls were clutched! Zoning laws were changed! People lobbied to add Yalecrest to the list of National Historic Places! All to prevent another Garage Mahal.

Objectively, this remodel has several desirable features: Easy access from the car to the house. Not much driveway to shovel in the winter. Lots of interior space. And it certainly advertises how we actually live. Many Yalecrest families in fact do have 3 cars (we have two cars and an SUV).

But this ignores some very powerful cultural issues. People in Yalecrest value the look and feel of the neighborhood, harking back as it does to an idealized vision of 1928 , when families parked their new Model-A Ford in the garage behind the house, fathers took the streetcar downtown to work so that their wives could use the car to go shopping, and in the summer evenings families sat out on the front porch drinking lemonade and gossiping with passing neighbors while waiting for the house to cool off enough to sleep.

Choosing Neighborhoods or Choosing Neighbors

I recently read Yoni Appelbaum’s thought provoking article How Progressives Froze the American Dream in The Atlantic. The article describes how throughout most of our history, Americans have changed residences frequently. We moved to better accommodations within our cities. We moved to larger towns and cities, nearby or far away; to places that offered move economic opportunity. And these new places welcomed new people and made room for them.

This is no longer true. Over the last 50 years, this has changed. Most people can no longer afford to move to the places like Silicon Valley that offer the most economic opportunity. Many people are now stuck in places where housing is cheap, but opportunities are scarce.

Why have areas of economic opportunity become so unwelcoming? He blames Jane Jacobs, somewhat unfairly, I think. Her iconic book The Death and Life of Great American Cities with its compelling descriptions of the workings of city neighborhoods and the destruction caused by the urban renewal projects of the 1950’s made people think in terms of preservation of existing neighborhoods. Urban renewal was replaced by gentrification. People used to be able to choose their neighborhoods. Now the neighborhoods choose their residents.

He recommends three policies to make cities more welcoming of new people. The first recommendation is to have consistent development rules throughout a city. Yalecrest would no longer have more restrictive zoning & development rules than more modest working-class neighborhoods like Rose Park. The third recommendation is, obviously, to encourage building more housing. Both Surco and Salt Lake have followed this advice, Surco more successfully than Salt Lake.

Tolerance

The second recommendation is the most thought provoking because it is more cultural than legal. He recommends tolerance.

Yalecrest is a very intolerant place:

• No people too poor to own a car or too old to drive.
• No mixed use.
• No apartment buildings.
• No duplexes, except for those built before 1950.
• No music after 9:00 PM, even on weekends.
• No buildings that don’t look like they were built in 1927.
• No homes that don’t look like neighboring homes.
• All this adds up to NO NEW PEOPLE!

Surco is much more tolerant. People are mostly free to do what they want with their property. People don’t seem to mind living next door to a small grocery store, a small 4-story hotel, a veterinary clinic, a furniture repair shop. Latin Americans seem to be more tolerant of noise and disorder than their gringo cousins. They don’t mind if the building next door has more or fewer stories or is finished in a different style, or even if it isn’t completely finished. People are content to tend to their own little garden and make their own house look elegant. They do not insist that everyone else in the neighborhood do likewise.

Yet Surco has remained a pleasant, convenient, affordable and desirable place to live. Food for thought!