Lincoln's Unfortunate Housing Trends

June, 2021

Lincoln — The City of Lincoln has just adopted a commendable Climate Action Plan to try to deal with climate change. But simultaneously it is permitting the worst kind of urban sprawl: car-centric, unsustainable, unneighborly housing.

There is an arms-race in Lincoln among homebuilders as to who can offer more garages and lay more concrete over frontages.  No more is a two-car garage adequate; now houses have three, four, and even five garages in front. The houses themselves have to peek out from behind to show that, indeed, there is a house at the address, presumably with people living in it.  

A view from the back side does not give much clue about residents, as the houses have tall, opaque fences around back yards. 

I took some photos.  Note the view of a new Lincoln development from above, showing the expanses of concrete that will contribute to downstream flooding.  That is what the Climate Action Plan supposedly wants to avoid. Note the dark, heat absorbing roofs, driving up peak summer electrical usage, which the Climate Action Plan hopes to reduce.  

Wide expanses of impervious surfaces

Views from the front show small monoculture lawns, maintained by environmental toxins as hawked on television. 

These are homesites where there are likely more garages per lot than earthworms.  

Lincoln is not an environmentally friendly city, judging by its trends in housing construction.  The same could be said for its esthetics; many urban sprawl developments have the look of self-storage businesses.  

"Peek-a-boo" house style

"Fortress Garage" model

It didn't have to be this way. Lincoln dipped its toe into New Urbanism with the creation of Fallbrook, which was supposed to be a walkable community with higher population density and a smaller environmental footprint. Obviously, it didn't catch on. 

The photos above are from the development immediately west of Fallbrook, which would have been an ideal place to demonstrate that there is an alternative to climate-warming, flood-inducing urban sprawl. 

Compare another community that chose New Urbanism, this one in Maryland. Notice from the aerial view that there is much less concrete slab. Garages are tucked behind houses, entered via picturesque, tree-lined, carbon-storing alleys. Inhabitants walk to stores on sidewalks and pause to chat with neighbors on front porches.  Many roofs have solar panels.  

New Urbanism

This community, built around 2000, is also diverse, with low-income housing mixed in seamlessly with townhouses and with single family homes of various sizes.  Its county government also bans weed-and-feed and neonicotinoid products, so it is safer for children, pets, and wildlife.

Porches in front of houses

Mixed income housing: townhouse, low income, single family options 

Two-car garages in back, accessed by shady, tree-lined alleys 

Unfortunately, Lincoln is considering builder incentives to put urban sprawl housing on and adjacent to environmentally sensitive properties such as tallgrass prairies and habitat-rich riparian corridors.  Where bulldozers level the areas, centuries of carbon storage will be released.  For adjacent areas, it will mean streetlights illuminating the dark prairies at night, wide-roaming cats wiping out grassland bird species, and pesticide drift killing off prairie forbs.  

Not all is bad in Lincoln housing development.  Some areas, like the Telegraph district, are being turned into denser, walkable communities.  Smart growth.

But when it comes to urban sprawl, please stop it, Lincoln.  We're a better city than this.