Suburban Nation - Andres Duany [44]
The marketing profession skillfully misleads the development industry because it has thoroughly managed to mislead itself. In considering what “building product” to recommend to developers, the market experts study and compare recent product only. These studies are concerned solely with what sells the most—by definition, the newly built and mass-marketed houses—rather than what sells for the most, the houses located in the healthy older neighborhoods. If they were to cast the net a bit further, beyond the successes of the past five years to the successes of the past hundred years, they would show that the neighborhoods built before World War II—the ones that developers evoke in their sales pitches—are the ones that dramatically outperform all of their recent product. These older neighborhoods do not register on the marketing radar screen, because the houses in them come up for sale only one at a time, and are often snatched up immediately, sometimes without advertising. As a result, these precedents are usually ignored, as are the lessons they teach us.
Too valuable to ignore: built in the 1920s, Mariemont is one of many successful new towns that have escaped the notice of market experts (Drawing by Felix Pereira, student, University of Miami)
In addition, experts often mislead themselves and their clients by conducting opinion polls that are poorly targeted, badly worded, or simply biased. For example, how can a homeowner who has just purchased a conventional suburban tract house—the most common survey participant—be expected to express a preference for something different? To do so would be to acknowledge committing a grievous error in a major investment. Similarly, certain terms, taken out of context, can be counted on to evoke certain responses. One erstwhile client of ours backed out of a traditional neighborhood project in Ames, Iowa, after conducting a survey that asked questions like, “Would you like to live on a cul-de-sac?” and “Do you like alleys?” The results were unsurprising. Home buyers will almost always choose a cul-de-sac over a through street when asked. But if you show them the two different systems—how the cul-de-sac’s very existence presupposes a high-volume collector road nearby—they tend to prefer the pedestrian-friendly network of through streets. Similarly, few people express any fondness for alleys when asked, but the question prompts a vastly different response when phrased more carefully: “Would you prefer a streetscape fronted by garage doors, or one in which porches face the street because garages are placed on a rear alley?” Even more accurate, and gaining acceptance among developers, are photo comparisons such as the Visual Preference Survey.bi But standard market surveys, when written carelessly—or with a desire to endorse the status quo, as we suspect was the case in Ames—can kill a well-meaning developer’s initiative quickly.
What happens when surveys really address the significant distinctions between conventional and traditional development? Conventional market advisers inform their developer clients that their purchasers are attracted to clubhouses, entry features, and security walls. But one comprehensive study found that a “private country club” was requested by only 18 percent of respondents, while 64 percent preferred a “small cluster of convenience stores nearby.” A “dramatic entrance” appealed to 8 percent of respondents, while 45 percent asked for a “small neighborhood library.” Only 12 percent requested “walls around the subdivision,” compared to 46 percent who wanted “little parks nearby.” In question after question, respondents expressed a greater desire for the conveniences of neighborhood life than for the amenities of middle-class suburbia.1
Another fundamental problem with market