Suburban areas came with the railroads in the 1840s. Mount Vernon for the working class and places like Lywellyn Park(?), West Orange, New Jersey for the affluent.
The rich were in large part taxed out of the cities. Woodward Avenue in Detroit was once lined with mansions; now there are five left. The Vanderbilts sold off their 57th Street pile in 1929 (the 1929 property taxes of I believe $129,000 consumed the household income). The last Vanderbilt mansion in Midtown came down in 1947.
The affluent will build on clay soils that require multi-acre lots to pass a perc test.
Much of suburban Virginia has such soils.
I suspect it’s because most people don’t want crime and feral Black households nearby. It’s sad that I even have to say it.
I remember a news report from the 1980s in which a Black civic activist in St. Louis, Missouri, named Bertha Kranke (sp?) got a variance from the public housing authority to form a regulatory board in her building to kick out unruly residents. After the committee got to work, conditions improved dramatically.
Unfortunately, most public housing projects don’t have a Bertha Kranke.
Zoning came about because New Yorkers were tired of seeing their prime resident areas taken over by industry & commerce.
Midtown Manhattan was once filed with brownstones. The south of 42nd Street area was lost after the 1893 depression.
The people north of 42nd Street feared the same thing would happen to their area.
In 1929 the area that is Rockefeller Center came off long-term leases and was converted by the Rockefellers.
By about 1910, rich New Yorkers no longer felt residential real estate was safe to make in Manhattan. They chose to build in Westchester and Nassau County.
Harlem was developed for high-end housing, but the rich were not going to buy in. A clever black real estate man called A. Peyton Randolph leased entire buildings and guaranteed high returns to building owners and filled them with ‘respectable’ blacks.
There is also the problem of ad valorem taxation.
Towns filled with large houses want to keep smaller housing units out, to ensure fairer school funding among various towns.
Large Houseville might have an average housing unit size of 2,000 square feet and a mil rate of .013.
Small Houseville might have an average housing unit size of 1,000 square feet and a mil rate of .020.
Large Houseville homeowners might be paying 30% more than Small Houseville homeowners on average.
If many smaller housing units get built, existing Large Houseville homeowners might pay 70% and eventually even 200% more than Small Houseville homeowners on average.
Not every household that lives in a large house has a good income. In fact a very large percentage don’t. Joe Biden’s inflation has hit many old folks hard.
I should add that in the US suburbs and widespread ‘free’ public schooling came about at about the same time, the 1840s.
There were suburbs (Islington, Cheswick, etc.) in London way before then.
I think Texas should send a few busloads of “migrants” to each of those nimbyvilles.
“Affordability is a major deterrent to the many teachers in Greenwich who would like to live in town”
People have commuted into NYC from its suburbs in very large numbers since about 1920s, when the top-end suburbs were largely built. If a CEO can commute, so can a teacher.
What people think are close-in suburbs were in fact built out in what was the sticks.
Chevy Chase, Maryland comes to mind.
Workers commuted into DC using the trolley.
Developers around 1900 would buy a comparatively cheap piece of land and run trolley tracks to it.
Might succeed if the complex is surrounded by a 15 foot barbwire fence with gate guards and towers.