Trulia Hindsight

Taking a look at Bolinas, CA in Hindsight you’d be forgiven for thinking there was something wrong with our data. There’s a steady growth up until 1971 and then suddenly: nothing.

Thankfully, this article Controlling Growth by Controlling Water from the New York Times of October 2005 explains:

The same urge to remain pristine has led to one of the most extreme anti-growth policies in the nation. For more than 30 years, Bolinas has refused to authorize a single new water meter, needed for hooking up to the town water supply. There are now 580 meters - the same as in November 1971, when the moratorium began.

I wonder if Bolinas is unique, or if there are other communities that have limited growth in similarly inventive ways?

Sometimes the constraints on expansion give rise to the most interesting patterns. From Wikipedia’s article on Madison,

Madison was created in 1836 when former federal judge James Duane Doty purchased over a thousand acres (4 km²) of swamp and forest land on the isthmus between Lakes Mendota and Monona within the Four Lakes region with the intention of building a new city on the site.

You can see the beginnings of the developments from around 1850 quite clearly on Hindsight, both around the area between the lakes and then further out expanding West and Northeast. After inital expansion after founding the city, you can clearly see that development continued along lines defined by the isthmus. Fascinating stuff!

CHS: Capitol Hill Seattle (“Tales from the fancy pants part of Seattle’s Capitol Hill”) has a great theory about growth in Seattle around the turn of the last century:

“You can see that most homes in our neighborhood came into existence prior to 1930 with a big spike in 1906 — that’s the same year as the legendary San Francisco earthquake, of course, so it seems like Seattle may have benefited from the destruction to the south. It’s also interesting to note where most of the area development has occurred post-1950 — you only find the more-recent blue and purple dots down the hill off Madison for the most part with a few scattered here and there between this part of the hill and Broadway.”

Correlation or causation? Does anyone know more about the relationship between the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 and growth in construction rates in Seattle around the same time?

In our introductory post on the Trulia Blog, we highlighted Aspen, Colorado:

Just 700 people called Aspen, Colorado home in 1935, when international outdoorsmen came to the Roaring Fork Valley in search of the ideal location for a ski resort. In 1947, Aspen Mountain opened with the world’s longest ski lift. In 1950, Aspen became the first ski resort in America to host an international competition, precursor of today’s World Cup Races. With the opening of three more mountains—Buttermilk (1958), Aspen Highlands (1958), and Snowmass (1968), housing developments blossomed in Aspen and the surrounding valleys as the modest silver mining town transformed into a premiere international resort.

See the website of the Aspen Historical Society for more details.

Gloucester is a small fishing town on the bay of Cape Ann. It is America’s oldest Seaport, dating as far back as 1606. Gloucester is located 30 miles northeast of Boston. It was first a shipbuilding center then later became an important fishing port due to its proximity to the Georges Banks and other fishing banks off the northeast coast. Gloucester’s beauty has also attracted many artists and writers since the early 19th century. Today Gloucester has many attractions and activities from musuems, antique shops and galleries. You can sail on a schooner or go whale watching. The small town has a large concentration of colonial (pre-revolutionary) and federal (1780-1830) architecture.

The small town of Butte began as a mining town in the late 19th century. Its peak years occurred between the late 19th century to the 1920s, becoming the largest mining town in North America. It became known as the “Richest Hill on Earth”, mining gold, silver and copper. It became famous for its saloons and red-light district. It attracted a diverse community of immigrants from Ireland, Wales, England, Canada, Finland, Austria, Serbia, Italy, China, Syria, Croatia, Montenegro and from all over the US.

To date over 48 billion dollars of wealth has been unearthed from this hill. This extraordinary phenomenon emerged at the height of the industrial revolution when the mining hill became the most concentrated area of industrial machines on Earth. The colossal machines spawned the most influential labor market anywhere, the most ethnically diverse population in the country, the largest red light district in the American West, nine railroads, the largest network of underground workings per square mile in the world (over 10,000 miles of tunneling), more wealth per citizen than any other comparable place up to that time, and a titanic struggle for the hill’s riches by both entrepreneurs and laborers.

from Western Mining History

Detroit saw rapid growth in the first half of the twentieth century as the automotive capital of the world. Its rapid decline began in the 1960s. The city has lost almost half of its population since the 1950s. Detroit has become a symbol of urban decay. Abandoned buildings and overgrown vegatation on structures are pictures of the present state of Detroit. See The Fabulous Ruins of Detroit and this photo album on Flickr.

Miami is the seventh largest metropolitan area in the United States. Because of its city limits, Miami is the second-largest city in Florida (after Jacksonville), and the 45th largest city in the United States. Miami’s explosive population growth in recent years has been driven by internal migration from other parts of the country as well as by immigration.

Real Estate Boom
The first real estate boom started in 1896 with the arrival of the railroad. In the 1920s a real estate boom changed the area as new subdivisions and tourist resorts were built. In 1926, a major hurricane hit Miami and building was halted by the stock market crash and the Great Depression. On August 24, 1992 one of the country’s worst disasters caused more than $20 billion in damage when Hurrican Andrew hit Miami-Date County.