Reflections on The Unfinished Metropolis
- Jen Walker
- 1 minute ago
- 6 min read
Why Growth Matters for Accessible, Equitable Communities
Our recent Active Wisconsin networking call featured a special guest, author Ben Schneider, and offered space to reflect on his book, The Unfinished Metropolis: Igniting the City-Building Revolution. I opened the conversation with appreciation for Ben’s framing of the “lost art of city-building,” a reminder that cities were not always as static as they can feel today. If the constraints we experience are the result of policy choices, the hopeful conclusion is that different choices can move us forward.
Our call explored topics that connected to the book, like parking policy, hopes for better rail and transit service in Wisconsin, and freeway removal efforts in Milwaukee and beyond. (If you missed it, you can watch the recording here.) We only scratched the surface, though, and many important concepts from the book didn’t make it into the conversation. So, I wanted to share additional insights that stood out to me, in the hopes that they also inspire others in the Active Wisconsin community.
Why We Can’t “Freeze” Communities in Time
The book’s premise of city-building sparked an almost immediate parallel in my mind from my own experience as a parent. When my kids were little, I sometimes wished I could freeze time. I wanted to hold onto their small, huggable selves, their endless curiosity, their most adorable sayings. Rose-colored glasses notwithstanding, now that they’re teenagers, it’s clearer than ever that growth isn’t optional. It’s necessary. Trying to stop it would not preserve what’s meaningful; it would ultimately be harmful.
The same is true for communities. Efforts to “freeze” neighborhoods in time, often through zoning and land use policies, can come from an authentic human desire to preserve meaningful experiences. That attachment makes sense, because our strongest memories are tied to where we live. But without room to evolve, communities can stagnate or become exclusionary, limiting who gets to live, move, and belong.
The analogy isn’t perfect. It doesn’t fully capture the powerful forces, especially racism and classism, that have shaped our built environment. But relatable frames can help us connect abstract policy issues to core values, which can change political calculus. I think that’s why Schneider’s proposed paradigm shift resonated with me so much.
Naming the Systems Behind Today’s Outcomes
I also appreciated The Unfinished Metropolis’ examination of the historical roots of today’s challenges. It illustrates how exclusionary motivations have consistently shaped housing and transportation systems, and how those legacies still influence outcomes today.
You can see this clearly in the story of public transit after the civil rights movement. Our collective narrative often ends with the success of bus desegregation. But, as Schneider notes, the story didn’t end there. After bus segregation was struck down, transit service in cities like Montgomery began to deteriorate. In 1955, their buses ran every 10–15 minutes (the frequency that we now know is a threshold to meet needs and sustain ridership). Today, many routes there (and across the country), operate just once an hour. The book unpacks the systemic policies, and technical decisions that eroded transit service in Montgomery, while also clearly naming the role that structural racism played in shaping the decline of transit funding and systems nationwide.
Reading this part of the story crystallized an important insight: What we consider “normal” in transit – what we expect and deem reasonable as a society – has been shaped by a set of values that undermine both equity and equality. Without understanding the history, transit systems that communities need in order to ensure access to opportunity can seem radical or unrealistic. Instead, it may be more accurate to see our current, underfunded systems as the real departure from what’s reasonable.
The Unfinished Metropolis also broadened my technical knowledge on another issue tied to equity: gentrification. Those of us working in active transportation are familiar with the debate about the relationship between bike lanes and neighborhood displacement. The book allowed me to look deeper. Schneider points out that many cities have upzoned lower-income neighborhoods to allow more housing, while wealthier areas have remained unchanged or even downzoned. As a result, new housing is often concentrated in already under-resourced communities.
This dynamic helps explain why bike infrastructure can become associated with gentrification. New housing often coincides with road reconstruction and streetscape improvements, including bike lanes. But when those investments are concentrated in a limited set of neighborhoods, those communities bear the pressure of rising costs and displacement.
The issue isn’t always the bike lanes themselves; it’s the imbalance of power that shapes inequitable patterns of development. In local conversations, that knowledge can help us ask better questions and bring in more stakeholders who should be at the table.
Why Housing Policy Is Essential to Transportation
As someone who has spent 15+ years working in the active transportation realm, this insight reinforces a growing reality in my work at 1000 Friends of Wisconsin – engaging in housing policy strengthens our hand in advocating for effective multimodal transportation systems and sustainable land use. That’s what drew me to read The Unfinished Metropolis in the first place.
The first chapter is titled, “The Cult of Single-Family Housing,” and it immediately grabbed my attention. Schneider makes a compelling case to re-examine it, describing it as “one of the most effective tools for enforcing racial and economic segregation” and a major barrier to building inclusive cities with the ability to grow and evolve. He argues the problem isn’t the homes themselves, but the ideology that elevates one housing type while restricting all others. Like car-centered transportation systems, this is ultimately a geometric problem tied to constraints in space and access. Seeing these policies as two sides of the same coin opens opportunities for alignment and partnership between active transportation advocates and those in the YIMBY (Yes In My Backyard) housing movement.
Relatedly, I found useful context to understand the persistent skepticism many Americans have toward apartments. That resistance isn’t solely about personal preference. It’s rooted in the legacy of tenements and early building codes, which often mixed legitimate safety concerns with exclusionary intent. Today’s debates over affordable housing are similarly shaped by the history of public housing, which has narrowed what feels possible. Yet the book highlights growing interest in emerging solutions, like social housing, co-ops, and single-room occupancies, starting to be explored in more places as part of a broader ecosystem that could better serve people at different stages of life.
One intriguing reform is the movement to legalize single-stair housing. In most countries, apartments can be safely designed with a single stairwell. However, in the U.S., building codes typically require two, driving long, corridor-style “five-over-one" buildings that feel more like large hotels than homes. While intended to ensure fire safety, Schneider examines evidence that challenges the need for two stairwells. Instead, these codes more often limit design flexibility and affect development decisions and ultimately what types of housing that can even be built.
Single-stair buildings would offer layouts and a sense of home closer to single-family housing for people living in apartments. And if we’re honest, this likely includes most of us or our family members at different points across our lifespans. For me, the 1940’s -era garden apartment where I spent my late 20’s and early 30’s was one of the best places I’ve lived. It was socially connected, diverse, naturally affordable, and multi-modal. It’s the place where we brought our first baby home from the hospital. I’d live there or somewhere similar again in a heartbeat. But today, it would be illegal to build in most communities. The book reinforced just how drastically and negatively zoning and building codes have constrained housing options in the U.S. If we expanded what's allowed, we might see more diverse, context-sensitive housing, and less backlash toward apartments.
Throughout, Schneider returns to an important point:
We need more housing of all kinds. Critiques of building styles, even five-over-ones, risks echoing past resistance to the housing types we now celebrate. As he notes, even New York’s brownstones were once derided. Today’s “missing middle” housing could follow a similar trajectory if we allow it.
For those of us working and advocating for better multi-modal transportation, the implications are clear. Density isn’t just an abstract goal; it is foundational to making walking, biking, and transit viable.
As colleague Montavius Jones puts it...
"Housing is one the most important ingredients in creating vibrant, connected, and safe communities, yet it's often left out of conversations about transportation and traffic safety.”
The Unfinished Metropolis connected those dots for me by linking values to policy, history to current conditions, and theory to real-world stories. For transportation advocates, it offers us a deeper understanding of the systems we work within, and an invitation to help shape them through new or renewed partnerships and policies. I’ve found myself returning to its concepts in my work, as well as in the ways that I want to show up in my own community as I imagine a better future.
