This is Virginia, this is Fredericksburg,
and this is Plank Road. It’s the kind of road that forms where interstates
output their trucks and cars—peppered with gas stations, fast food chains, mid-market
hotels, big box stores, and ample parking for all. If you’ve traveled the US, you certainly
know the type. The convenience of quick interstate access,
the space for car-centric design, and the co-location with other establishments has
drawn retail and restaurants away from city centers and into the hinterlands so, increasingly,
for all but the most urban or most rural Americans, these interstate exit areas have become a
constant in daily life. In fact, places like Fredericksburg’s Plank
Road have become so ubiquitous, so persistent in the US that it’d be remarkably easy to
miss that this is not actually Plank Road in Fredericksburg, Virginia—that was a lie. In fact, not only are none of these clips
from Virginia, they’re not even from the same location—this is Portland, Maine; this
is Cookeville, Tennessee; Marietta, Georgia; El Paso, Texas; and Los Angeles, California. These interstate exit streets have a style—one
that’s consistent across the 50 states. It’s so intuitive to today’s Americans
that when we see the Golden Arches approaching, we know we just need to take the coming exit
and follow the road straight until arrival—nothing complicated like burdensome turns. Upon arrival to the subject McDonald’s,
we know where to look for the bathroom—it’s typically towards the back, next to the side
entry-door. The same can be said for roadside hotels,
for gas stations, and for big box stores—we might not realize it, but before even stepping
in, thanks to nationwide standardization, we have an intuitive understanding of where
the bathroom or register is.  The US is a fantastically inconsistent country. The degree of difference between the landscapes
of Utah and Maine or Florida and Alaska is one typically reserved for continents—not
countries. The people of New York City and North Dakota
live enormously different lives—a given day in Minot looks nothing like that in Manhattan. A defining characteristic of this country
is its heterogeneity, and yet, the places in which its people live, the cities and towns
they’ve constructed, are eerily similar. Anchorage could be in Alabama, and Columbus
could be in California—simply put, outside of the oldest areas, the way in which urban
America is being built is exceptionally homogeneous. Consider these. If one type of building has come to define
the increasing sameness of urban and suburban America, it’s the five-over-one. While they’re never the exact same, they
do look similar. With punchy names like the Union or Uncommon,
and advertisements promoting a sense of community and trendy amenities, they feel similar too. Their five-over-one moniker stems from their
building code designation—structurally, they’re a wooden, type-five fire resistant
building sitting atop a type-one base floor of concrete. Dotting the edges of downtowns and dominating
new developments, these mid-rises teeming with young professionals are big, pushing
up to the very edge of sidewalks; they’re blocky, an unrelenting assemblage of 90-degree
angles; and they’re popping up everywhere, from Maine to Montana. In the past, apartments were small—looking
not so different from a large house—or they were massive—steel and concrete structures
that scraped the sky. Nowadays, when you conjure up an apartment
building in your head, it looks like this. And just how these boxy, boring, but important
structures came to define the current apartment building boom comes from a surprisingly specific
few lines of building code.    In the US, building codes are each municipality's
choice. The rules and standards by which a city is
built can vary from town to town in relation to what exactly a town wants. And yet, building codes in the US rarely differ. A town of 500 just doesn’t have the time
or resources to write their own comprehensive thousand-page building code, so they typically
just adopt this one: the International Building Code. Originally written within living memory of
the Great Chicago Fire, these codes, on account of fire prevention, limited wood buildings
to three stories. While floor limits eased to five over the
decades, codes into the 1990s required walls built out of noncombustible material—hampering
the cost advantage of wood framed apartment buildings. But then the code added an exception: that
exterior and interior walls built with flame retardant treated wood could be considered
noncombustible. As the story goes, an LA architect, Tim Smith,
caught the change, identified its potential as a cheap alternative to steel and concrete,
and built the first ever five-over-one.   Building codes made these structures possible. They didn’t, however, make them profitable—that
was the work of American zoning practices. The rise of boxy, balloon-framed housing cubes
is the result of just how much urban and suburban land is zoned for single-family homes—around
three-fourths of all residential land in the US. In the Western states, with generally younger
and more sprawling urban areas, these numbers trend higher. Take Fort Collins, for example. Fort Collins is a college town of over 100,000
north of Denver. It’s a place with a perpetual need for housing
to keep up with an increasing student body and a growing city population yet, despite
the flat plains of seemingly developable land that surround it, it really has no room for
dense housing projects. All this is zoned for low density single family
homes and duplexes. This too. This is downtown where apartment buildings
are fair game but Fort Collins is relatively old so much of downtown is already accounted
for. This area next to downtown is old too, so
it’s zoned to protect the historic neighborhood and is largely off limits. All this is commercially zoned so apartments
are allowed here but it’s on a state highway so any housing project will have to compete
with businesses for the prime real estate. With so much of town accounted for, this is
the result. Five-over-ones cluster in the tiny area around
campus zoned for high-density housing while the rest randomly pop up on the edge of downtown
or just off the highway. This pattern is not unique to Fort Collins:
while housing is desperately needed nationwide, so much land has been ceded to detached family
homes, cul de sacs, and white picket fences, that high density housing is left to fight
over the scraps—maximizing the amount of units they squeeze onto pricy plots and competing
with retail and office developers over highway exits, and the fringes of downtowns and industrial
areas.  
 Of course, what makes these five-over-ones
look like they’re all built by the same people is the fact that they’re all built
by the same people. Of the 293,000 large-building housing-units
developed in 2019, 94,000, a third, were constructed by the country’s 25 largest developers. Over the past decade, the US multi-family
housing market has fallen into a vicious cycle of consolidation leading to consolidation
leading to consolidation. To start, the limited availability of multi-family
zoned land drives up its price, meaning a smaller tranche of developers can afford it. Not only that, but an even smaller tranche
of developers can afford to develop that land into a project large and dense enough to attain
profitability given the higher purchase price. Simultaneously, however, these large developers
enjoy economies of scale with these large buildings—they’re able to build equivalent
apartments for less thanks to more shared walls, elevators, mechanicals, management,
and more. And of course, thanks to American building
codes, deeper pockets, and an inherent need to build bigger on more expensive lots, they’re
able to do what smaller developers cannot and further reduce per-unit cost by maxing
out the lot-lines with a five-over-one. On a per-unit basis, five-over-ones are cheaper
to build—wood is far less expensive than alternative materials. It’s easier to work with too, driving down
labor costs, and minimizing the use of unionized tradespeople. Therefore, these buildings outcompete smaller
buildings in the market, the developers grow wealthier, and with that wealth they’re
able to expand across state lines. And of course, the process becomes even cheaper
when they recycle plans, shuffle specialized staff across the country, and apply the same
proven strategy to different markets. From the pool deck, Greystar Real Estate’s
Ayla building doesn’t look so different from their Canvas on Blake development, despite
the two time zones separating them, but in today’s housing market, this is hardly surprising. Now, on the surface, these five-over-ones
appear to address a major need in the American housing market—walkable, reasonably priced,
multi-family rental units in and around urban cores. However, the consolidation behind these buildings
has accelerated the propagation of another can of worms—the corporate landlord. Now, these five-over-one developments are
almost always constructed as rental buildings, yet rarely act as affordable housing—in
Denver, for example, the rent for the cheapest units at the Broadstone on 9th, Canvas on
Blake, or 20th Street Station buildings either meets or exceeds the city average. Rather, these apartments succeed because they
outcompete their closest mid-market competitors—you typically just can’t get a new, modern,
walkable apartment in smaller boutique or massive older developments for a similar price. Therefore, five-over-ones and these massive
developers have cornered an underserved segment of the housing market, and that means they
can get away with a lot. Countless examples have emerged of the difficulty
of having a corporation as a landlord—San Francisco renters, in a building where a one-bedroom
went for $2,800 a month, recounted how Greystar increased rents and fees, while cutting staffing
and services to the point that trash piled up in hallways and neighbors had to borrow
one-another’s showers when building boilers went out of service. Now, looking at 2020 census data, the US is
building more multifamily housing than it has at any point this century. And, while the data don’t directly tell
us how many of these are five-over-ones, when looking at building material, style, and size
characteristics, it becomes clear that five-over-ones, and buildings like them, make up the vast
majority of these new-builds. Of course, in the face of dramatic housing
shortages, this should be a good thing, but the reality is that five-over-ones are not
built to house those most acutely feeling the effects of these shortages. While there is an argument to be made that
their construction frees up units for those who might otherwise have been displaced, that
clearly comes at a less-than-ideal cost. Across America, plenty more places and circumstances
have converged to create the ideal environments for homogeneity. Within those ubiquitous interstate exit roadways,
there is a common landscape of Hampton, Holiday, and La Quinta Inns. Rarely are these areas punctuated by independent
hotels—it’s almost always the same selection of nationwide brands. And when walking into, say, this Sleep Inn
in Chiloquin, Oregon, you’d be forgiven for thinking it looks familiar. That’s because the exact same hotel exists,
down to the inch, 1,500 miles or 2,500 kilometers away in Webb City, Missouri. Of course, this is all part of the business
model—in fact, it’s the genius of the business model. You see, Sleep Inn is a brand owned by Choice
Hotels International—one of the largest hotel chains in the world, running some 7,000
properties globally. However, the company doesn’t own these hotels—only
the brands. That’s because they’re a franchisor—just
like McDonald’s or Burger King. An independent franchisee comes to Choice
when they want to start a hotel, and the company provides a menu of brands to choose from,
each targeting a slightly different segment of consumers. Then, the franchisee must decide what floor
plan they want, whether to include a pool, and which of the four color schemes to use. They then sign a contract with one of the
Choice Hotels approved contractors for construction, write some checks, and that’s about it. This franchise model cuts huge chunks, and
therefore costs, out of the process—designing the building, adapting the design in response
to permitting issues, vetting contractors, figuring out how to manage a hotel. It allows anyone to become a hotelier, which
is exactly what Choice Hotels wants because, as long as it's anyone but them, the financial
constraint and risk is gone. On the consumer side, whether it’s a road-tripper
pulling into the parking lot after dark, a pilot stopping for their ten hours of mandated
rest, or a consultant hitting their sixth city in a month, uniqueness often has little
value—in fact, it might be a negative for the weary traveler compared to a standardized,
familiar offering. The market speaks for itself, and so does
the market research. Independent hotels are no longer truly able
to compete in this mid-market sector—they now focus on the higher-end of the spectrum
where the hotel is more of a destination than a waypoint. So, in the hotel sector, the standardization
stems from the cost savings borne out of homogeneity, and the consumer apathy towards its detriments. These conditions have created this: Comfort
Suites, Hampton Inn, Burger King, Best Western, Shoney’s, Quality Inn, Dunkin’ Donuts,
America’s Best Value Inn, and Marathon Gas are all franchises—every single business
seen here is built on the principles of standardization, and this is hardly a cherry-picked example. Across America, 57% of limited-service restaurants
operate as part of a franchise, and this proportion tends to rise in step with a state’s poverty
rate: while it’s only 31% and 38% in New York and Massachusetts, respectively, it’s
as much as 71% and 78% in West Virginia and Mississippi. But the economic and social forces supporting
sameness are not restricted to the working and middle class. They’re not even restricted to the US. These are four major business districts in
Sydney, Santiago, London, and Frankfurt. Without first-hand knowledge of the intricacies
of their skylines, it’d be tough to differentiate which is where, and there’s a good reason
for this: for all intents and purposes, these are the same places. These are ten major multinational businesses
either directly in or tangentially related to the finance sector. Out of a whole city of options, nine are located
in London’s compact Canary Wharf neighborhood. Meanwhile, in Frankfurt’s Bankenviertel
neighborhood: eight of the same companies. Across the Atlantic, 7,500 miles or 12,000
kilometers away in Santiago’s Sanhattan neighborhood: nine of the same companies—all
located within a few blocks of each other. Then, finally, across an equally-sized stretch
of the Pacific, there’s Sydney’s central business district, home to all ten of these
multinational companies. These areas in urban cores are often home
to the most evocative buildings in a city’s skyline, but these buildings are typically
used by people whose preferences are standardized on a global scale. On a micro level that’s because people often
move between these business districts as they move within their companies; and, of course,
on a macro level because it’s the exact same companies signing the leases for these
buildings globally. They want the same thing, whether it’s in
Sydney, Santiago, London, or Frankfurt. This all starts to point towards a cause broader
than building codes, franchising, or the international flows within multinational companies. The world encourages sameness. No matter who we are or where we go, we sometimes
just want to be able to get quick, decent, cheap, warm food. When we just finished a double-shift or woke
up early for a 6:00 am flight, we don’t want to have to comb through a menu we’ve
never seen to eat something that we might like or might hate. We want what fast-food provides—we want
to be able to get the same burger in a few minutes no matter where on earth we find ourselves. Fast-food provides consistent mediocrity—we
might not always want this, but when we’re eating just for the sake of eating, that can
be a feature. The wants and needs of humans were no different
a century or two ago. McDonald’s would have been just as successful
in the 1800s if it existed. What has changed, however, is the world. Devoid of jet airplanes and internet access,
it would have been impossible to run a chain of cheap restaurants spanning the globe. Not only that, but you can’t grow tomatoes
in Norway—it’s too cold. Therefore, lacking the long-distance cold-chain
supply lines of today, there was no way to get the tomato necessary to make the same
burger in Norway as in California. Local conditions dictated what was possible
locally. That’s no longer the case. What happened next is globalization. The walls came down. With cargo ships, airplanes, and internet
cables linking each country to the next, getting that tomato anywhere, and then instructing
the local staff on how to cut it is hardly a challenge anymore. The forces encouraging difference disappeared. What’s left is economies of scale, is consumer
preference for consistency, is the effectiveness of branding, is the creeping consolidation
of capital—what’s left, in a world devoid of walls, is the pervasive power of sameness. Now, it’s this exact power that has yielded
plenty of the advances of the modern age: it’s for these exact reasons why the standard
of living of the average person has never been higher. If we still had to build houses in the timber-scarce
American southwest out of adobe bricks, it’d hardly be the fastest-growing region in the
country. Nowadays, timber prices barely differ whether
you’re at a Lowe’s bordering the forest in Oregon or a Lowe’s in the middle of the
desert in Arizona. In an environment devoid of difference, it’s
just as effective to build those five over ones in Arizona or Oregon. So, is this a problem? If there’s an objectively best option for
addressing the country's crippling need for more multi-family housing, should it be avoided? If a national chain of hotels is able to offer
consistent, decent rooms at a lower cost than competitors, is that a bad thing? If there’s simply a style of skyscraper
that those who use the skyscrapers want most, are they at fault? Well, consistency should be recognized for
what it is: a convenience with a cost. The difficulty is that the convenience and
the cost are experienced by different parties. When that roadside hotel in Chiloquin, Oregon
uses the exact same floor plan as its equivalent in Webb City, Missouri, the majority of the
benefit is experienced by the owners, who are able to set up an equally profitable business
for less. Meanwhile, the majority of the cost is experienced
by those living in Chiloquin, who experience the built-up environment of an area as unique
as Oregon’s endless wilderness adapted into the epitome of Anytown, USA. The creeping sameness of the modern world
is not a big problem. Rather, it’s a series of small problems
that are experienced again and again and again by everyone. But just because a problem is small, and just
because a problem relates to far bigger ones, it’s still a problem. Solutions respond to their environment, and
humans are part of the urban environment. If priorities change, the environment changes,
and so will the solutions. As of yet, few seem exceptionally concerned—no
surprise in the country that’s now been building cookie-cutter suburban developments
for decades. But we don’t have to be content with reality
just because it’s happening—so, consider what a common development style does to cities;
consider whether we want the same dining options in every town, big or small; consider the
sameness. This is the first ever video I posted on this
channel, and as you can see here, it has stock footage. That stock footage, and a huge chunk of the
footage we’ve used since then, came from the provider I’ve used ever since, and who’s
actually today’s sponsor, Storyblocks. Most stock footage providers charge per clip,
sometimes in the hundreds of dollars, which really just doesn’t work with the economics
of digital video. Storyblocks, however, offers an unlimited
download subscription for less than what these other providers charge for one clip, and with
that you get access to their huge catalog of footage for your videos, your posts, your
presentation—anything you do online. Not only that, but Storyblocks also offers
stock images, music, audio, After Effects and Premiere templates, and more. The reason we’ve been using Storyblocks
for years, long before they sponsored us, is because they are the one-stop-shop for
digital creation: I don’t think I know a single full-time creator that doesn’t have
a subscription to them. So, if you make anything online, it’s worth
checking them out—subscribing could be one of the best investments you ever make in your
content. Click the button on-screen or head to storyblocks.com/wendover
to sign up, and you’ll be supporting Wendover while you’re at it.Â
7 minutes in... Consolidation after consolidation after consolidation.. Hmmm its almost as if wealth concentrating is bad.. What other words could describe this?
Climate Town covered this in a similar video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfsCniN7Nsc
If you liked this video, you'll love r/fuckcars
starting?
I did a cross-country US road trip from October to December and was quite surprised at how and why so many places/cities looked borderline identical despite huge geographic differences.
I hadn't thought of the most of the reasons for it, especially the franchising angle.
Most days it was actually quite nice to just check into a generic chain hotel/motel as a simple place to sleep, but the hotels I remember are the ones that were unique.
I feel like this video was a lot of complaining without ever actually getting at anything. "Americans don't like it when style lacks originality." So, what? Loads of people lack housing--and you want to focus on aesthetics? "Economies of scale and building codes are driving forces behind the marketplace!" Yes, they are. That's been true for a long time. What do you propose we change?
Also, would someone please tell this guy speaking like William Shatner really doesn't make content intelligent, and that "therefore" is a word with a meaning. You can't just use it to transition between paragraphs.
DID I SAW $1.29/GALLON GAS?!?
So the creator just discovered architectural trends? What a nothing video.
Took Roman fort design nation wide
Of Course he would start by calling out Northern Virginia AKA the most boring hellscape I'll never get out of.
I said this years ago in another account on /r/conspiracy. Outside this forum, this idea was seen as absurd, but it's getting more and more real. Ownership is dying.