I was recently out on a trip to visit family in Washington, and one of the things I noticed out here was the abundance of “new homes this way” signs littering highways and major streets. In short: Countless housing developments.

One of these developments is a little neighborhood Snohomish County called ‘Brookwood’, and once I took a tour I knew that I wasn’t going to be a huge fan.

Before you even enter Brookwood you’re met with these huge, bold, D.R. Horton signs telling you to buy houses. Unfortunately, I hear that all the homes in the neighborhood were accounted for even before they were constructed.

Brookwood is really just the standard American Dream neighborhood. Rows upon rows of single-family housing far from any amenities.

All the mailboxes for the houses are located in this communal mail…center? I’m not really sure what to call these things. It’s not very offensive to me since, unlike traditional mailboxes, these can be locked and give these people an excuse to go outside at least once a week.

Something that does bother me is the colour. Why black? In the summer, I imagine those things become ovens. I don’t imagine that many pieces of mail are particularly heat sensitive, but when it’s just as easy to not have that 1% chance, why not do it?

And now we enter into the core of the neighborhood. It’s not very big, but this is essentially what the entire place looks like. A sea of samey houses with an offensively wide street. (I guesstimate this thing to be about two and a half lanes wide. Why?)

Here we can see a map of the entire neighborhood, which has a parking lot… I suppose my claim earlier that every house had been sold was false. As you can clearly see, there’s one house left unsold.

It should also be noted that “Open space and Water Management” was really a playground. While I did not get a picture of it, it should be noted that the entrance to it was between two houses, in an unusually dark alley. The fact that the communal space was located behind a few houses in the corner of the neighborhood, rather than within the center block should tell you a lot about the design philosophy behind this entire project: The neighborhood was not designed as a community that you live in and amongst. It’s designed in such a way that you’re discouraged from interacting with your neighbors, and when you do go outside, it’s to enter your car and drive to your destination.

The intention of a place like this is pretty clearly to isolate people and divide their location by wealth. Evidence of this can be seen in the pricing set by the construction company:

Here we see the range of initial sale prices for these homes. And, of course, you may be asking: “What’s wrong here? They look like pretty nice, newly constructed houses. Of course they’re going to be expensive.” And you’d be right. I agree, they are nice houses that demand a higher amount of money. But here’s the issue: Western Washington is going through a housing crisis. There aren’t enough houses, and the ones being built are only for rich people.

Now, this city does have a downtown, and I visited it while I was there. Here’s what I found:

Here we see the main view of proper downtown. It consists mostly of an event center across the street from a small strip mall with a grocery store, restaurant, and a few other amenities. But if we turn around…

Look at all that empty land. Let’s look at a satellite view as well to get a proper feel for what the area looks like.

Let’s get our footing: That large white building with the panhandle is the strip mall, and the first picture of downtown was taken looking downwards.

So here’s the thing: Look at all that empty land. One of the biggest downtown lots is currently occupied only by a drive-through coffee hut. If a housing development is going to be built in this town, it should really be centrally located, and higher density. (Development options such as townhomes or two-floor apartment buildings would allow for good density levels without ruining the small-town feel of the area) And in fact, there are already dense housing options in this very picture! I believe that four multi-unit developments made it into frame.

But I can already hear the inevitable “I moved here specifically because it was low density and out of the way! Apartments would ruin that.” And you know what? I respect that. Unfortunately, the alternative that’s currently being implemented is the construction of places like Brookwood. Where you neither get the bustling activity of a higher density development, nor the intertwined communal sense of a smaller town. They’re making isolated blocks of housing so that they can have massive financial returns on houses that, in all readily, probably only cost a bit over $150k to actually construct.

So let me propose a solution to make everyone happy: Get rid of single-family exclusive zoning in the bigger cities. The reason that they’re even building so much terrible housing all the way out here, 45 minutes from Seattle, is because it’s illegal to build the types of housing that would make Seattle City proper able to absorb the massive influx of high-profile employees moving in. As it stands, Seattle is basically at capacity which leads to other cities having to act as the overflow, thus causing them to be where the new rich people have to move to, thus raising housing prices and running people out of their own towns.

Some argue that this would just create a temporary effect of massive condo towers being next door to single-family homes. Which, I agree is a somewhat ludicrous situation. That’s why, soon enough, I’ll try to make a partner post to this one about a kind of philosophy that can be used in a zoning law to allow for better housing solutions to be constructed without massive disruption to a neighborhood. So stay tuned for that.