Wendover’s Case Against America’s Cookie-Cutter Cities Has a Numbers Problem
Wendover Productions has identified a real problem: American development increasingly rewards buildings and businesses that can be reproduced cheaply, quickly and repeatedly. But its video, Why Everywhere in the US is Starting to Look the Same, makes a more ambitious argument than its evidence can sustain.
Three of its central statistics are either overstated or improperly compared. Its claim about five-over-one apartments dominating new construction is an inference presented as an established finding. And its discussion of market-rate housing overlooks research showing that these developments can actually reduce rents for people living nearby.
These are not cosmetic errors. They affect the explanation of why American cities look alike, how concentrated the development industry really is, and whether the buildings being criticized are making housing affordability worse or better.
The 75% zoning statistic quietly becomes a national statistic
The video states that approximately three-quarters of all residential land in the United States is zoned for single-family homes.
That is not what the underlying research established.
The widely cited 75% figure comes from a June 2019 New York Times investigation by Emily Badger and Quoctrung Bui, conducted with UrbanFootprint. Its actual finding was that single-family-only zoning covered 75% of residential land in many American cities. It was not a measurement of three-quarters of all residential land nationwide.
UrbanFootprint+2
The distinction matters. A collection of city-level zoning maps cannot automatically become a national land-area estimate. Different cities have different boundaries, densities, zoning systems and proportions of residential land.
The original research supports a serious conclusion: single-family zoning dominates large portions of many American cities and suburbs. It does not establish the precise national proportion Wendover presents.
The video takes a geographically qualified statistic and removes the qualification. Its argument about restrictive zoning remains plausible, but its numerical foundation is broader than the underlying evidence.
The one-third developer statistic does not survive comparison
The video says the 25 largest developers constructed 94,000 of 293,000 large-building housing units in 2019, giving them approximately one-third of the market.
The underlying numbers measure different things.
The National Multifamily Housing Council's 2020 ranking explicitly measures units started in 2019. Adding the 25 developers' published figures produces 94,589 starts. The national total for that year was 389,000 starts in buildings containing five or more units. On a comparable basis, the leading 25 accounted for approximately 24.3%, not 33%.
multifamilyexecutive.com+1
The video's 293,000 denominator closely matches the Census-derived figure for apartments completed in buildings containing 20 or more units. That is a different building-size category, and, more importantly, a different construction stage. It compares projects started by developers with units completed nationally.
St. Louis Fed+1
A difference of nine percentage points is not trivial when concentration is the foundation of the argument.
There is another problem. A single year's construction share cannot establish a decade-long consolidation trend. Nor does a developer's share of construction starts establish who owns or manages the resulting apartments.
There is better evidence for the corporate ownership argument. ProPublica's 2022 investigation found that private-equity-backed firms' share of apartments held by the 35 largest multifamily owners increased from approximately one-third in 2011 to one-half a decade later. Those firms held roughly one million apartments, according to its analysis.
ProPublica+1
That is an ownership measure over time. It is considerably more relevant to the corporate-landlord argument than the developer-start statistic Wendover uses.
The concentration problem deserves investigation. The video simply does not demonstrate it as precisely as it claims.
The five-over-one dominance claim has never been established
Wendover acknowledges that the 2020 Census data do not directly identify five-over-one buildings. It nevertheless concludes that these structures and similar developments make up the vast majority of new multifamily construction.
The actual Census figures are less conclusive.
In 2019, the Census Bureau recorded 352,000 new multifamily units. Of those, 203,000 were in buildings with four or more floors, while 251,000 were in wood-framed buildings. These are separate measurements, not a count of five-over-one structures.
Census.gov
A four-story wooden apartment building is not necessarily a five-over-one. A five-story wood-frame building without a concrete podium is not necessarily one either. The defining construction arrangement matters.
The original Bloomberg investigation Wendover cites makes this distinction explicit. Justin Fox describes buildings ranging from three to seven stories, with different numbers of floors and different podium arrangements. The common feature is largely their underlying wood-frame construction, not an identical architectural design.
pheha.org
Wendover takes broad construction characteristics and turns them into a claim about the majority of new buildings without showing the calculation. Its own source does not establish that conclusion.
The historical explanation also needs more precision. The flame-retardant-treated wood provision emerged under the Western Uniform Building Code in the early 1990s. The 2000 International Building Code subsequently consolidated the regional model codes and allowed the construction method to spread eastward. These were two separate developments, compressed into a simpler national building-code story.
pheha.org
There is a further technical distinction. Current International Building Code guidance describes five-story multifamily wood-frame construction under Type III-A or III-B, while Type V-A allows four wood-framed stories. The Type I-A podium must be separated by a three-hour fire-resistance-rated assembly. The video's shorthand description of a Type V wooden building sitting on a Type I concrete base is therefore not a reliable general description of the five-over-one construction system.
Wood Products Council
The architectural trend is real. Its claimed numerical dominance is not demonstrated.
The affordability argument ignores measurable benefits of new construction
Wendover points to three Denver developments where the cheapest apartments meet or exceed the city's average rent. It concludes that five-over-ones rarely function as affordable housing.
That comparison establishes something narrower: these new apartments are not necessarily cheaper than the existing rental market. It does not establish their overall effect on housing affordability.
The video briefly acknowledges that new construction can free up older apartments when wealthier renters move into new buildings. It then dismisses this benefit as coming at a less-than-ideal cost without investigating its magnitude.
That omission matters.
A study by Brian Asquith, Evan Mast and Davin Reed, published through the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia in February 2020 and subsequently in the Review of Economics and Statistics, examined new market-rate apartment buildings in low-income areas.
The researchers found that new buildings reduced nearby rents by approximately 5–7% relative to comparison locations. They also found increased movement into those neighborhoods from lower-income areas.
philadelphiafed.org+1
The study examined buildings with at least 50 units completed in 2015 and 2016. It used nearby rental listings and comparison areas around developments completed later. Its findings should not be treated as proof that every five-over-one improves affordability, or that all market-rate construction produces the same result.
But they establish something Wendover leaves largely unexamined: expensive new apartments can improve affordability outside the buildings themselves.
There is an important distinction between constructing income-restricted housing and increasing the supply of ordinary rental housing. The first directly serves eligible households. The second can relieve pressure through a chain of moves across the rental market.
Wendover discusses the first as though it were the only meaningful test of the second.
That is an incomplete economic analysis, particularly in a video whose central argument is that restricted housing supply makes development more expensive.
The Greystar example is real, but it does not establish a five-over-one problem
Wendover uses complaints about Greystar to illustrate the dangers of corporate landlords. The underlying reporting is genuine, but the building and financial details deserve closer attention.
The San Francisco property was the 13-story Olume, not a five-over-one development. ProPublica reported that Greystar took over the building in 2017 through its acquisition of the property's owner, Monogram Residential Trust. Tenants subsequently described rising rents, reduced security, rubbish accumulating in common areas and maintenance failures.
ProPublica
The video also compresses some of the tenant accounts. The $2,800 initial rent belonged to Daniel Cooper's 535-square-foot unit, which had a sliding door between its living room and bedroom. A separate tenant, Arielle McHenry, described her one-bedroom rent increasing to approximately $3,000, with another increase approaching $4,000. The boiler complaint involved one tenant who said she had to shower at a friend's apartment across the street; another resident heated bathwater on a stove.
ProPublica+1
More importantly, ProPublica obtained financial data showing that the Olume's annual profits increased 24% between 2018 and 2019, reaching $2,330,407. The increase came through both reduced expenses and higher revenue.
ProPublica
That is substantially more informative than a collection of tenant complaints alone.
It establishes a documented conflict between property profitability and residents' experience. But it is evidence about private-equity ownership and property management, not evidence that five-over-one construction itself produces poor landlord behavior.
Wendover places these separate issues close together without adequately distinguishing them.
A convincing montage is not a national measurement
The video moves between interstate commercial strips, five-over-one developments and international financial districts. The visual comparisons are effective, but they are not a systematic measurement of urban homogenization.
Consider the financial district comparison. Wendover selects ten multinational businesses connected to finance and finds that most appear in four major financial districts: London's Canary Wharf, Frankfurt's Bankenviertel, Santiago's Sanhattan and Sydney's central business district.
That demonstrates the international reach of financial corporations. It does not establish that the cities themselves are becoming interchangeable.
The same problem applies to interstate exits. Comparing five commercial corridors demonstrates that similar businesses and development patterns recur in similar locations. It does not establish how representative those corridors are of each city's wider built environment.
The video never supplies a consistent measure of architectural similarity, a representative sample of cities or a historical comparison establishing how much more homogeneous these places have become.
Its franchise statistics have a similar limitation: four state examples illustrate differences in franchise penetration, but do not establish that poverty independently explains those differences.
A persuasive collection of examples is not a substitute for measuring the phenomenon being described.
The disclosed sponsorship is not evidence of a conflict
The video identifies Storyblocks as its sponsor and says it had used the company's stock footage for years before the sponsorship began.
Storyblocks supplies creative assets, including footage, images, music and editing templates. Nothing in the available evidence establishes a financial relationship between Storyblocks and the housing developers, hotel franchises or property owners discussed in the video.
There is no defensible basis for alleging that the sponsorship influenced its editorial position.
YouTube
Closing verdict: A strong thesis deserves better evidence
Wendover identifies genuine economic forces behind America's increasingly standardized built environment. Restrictive zoning, construction economics, national franchises, institutional investment and global corporate networks all deserve serious investigation.
But its central quantitative arguments are weaker than its presentation suggests.
The 75% zoning statistic describes many cities, not the entire country. The one-third developer statistic compares incompatible construction measures. The supposed dominance of five-over-ones is inferred rather than counted. And the affordability argument overlooks measurable evidence that new market-rate construction can reduce surrounding rents.
Meanwhile, the strongest evidence for corporate landlord consolidation comes from research into actual property ownership, not the developer statistics used in the video.
I don't dispute that America is becoming more visually repetitive. I dispute the confidence with which this video tells us how extensive the phenomenon is, what caused it and who ultimately pays for it.
The country may indeed be building the same places everywhere. But an argument about national development deserves national evidence, not a collection of attractive examples and statistics stretched beyond their original meaning.
References
1. Wendover Productions — Why Everywhere in the US is Starting to Look the Same. YouTube, February 23, 2022. The original argument, examples, statistics and sponsorship disclosure.
2. Emily Badger and Quoctrung Bui — Cities Start to Question an American Ideal: A House With a Yard on Every Lot. The New York Times, June 18, 2019. The original city-level zoning investigation behind the 75% statistic.
3. UrbanFootprint — The New York Times Features UrbanFootprint Zoning Data and Analysis. June 18, 2019. Confirms the geographical scope and methodology of the zoning analysis.
4. Mary Salmonsen — 2020 NMHC Top 25 Developers. Multifamily Executive, May 8, 2020. Establishes that the ranking measures 2019 construction starts and supplies the figures used to calculate the developers' combined total.
5. National Association of Home Builders — Housing Starts, U.S. and Regions. Reports 389,000 national starts in buildings containing five or more units in 2019, providing a comparable denominator.
6. Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis — New Privately Owned Housing Completions: Buildings With 20 or More Units. Census Bureau and HUD data. Establishes the different completion measure underlying the approximately 293,000-unit comparison.
7. U.S. Census Bureau — Characteristics of New Housing Offers a Peek Into the Nation's New Homes This Decade. December 21, 2020. Provides the 2019 multifamily floor-count and construction-material figures without identifying five-over-one buildings directly.
8. Justin Fox — Why America's New Apartment Buildings All Look the Same. Bloomberg Businessweek, February 13, 2019. Explains the original Western building-code developments, the 2000 IBC transition and the architectural variations within podium construction.
9. WoodWorks — Code Path and Requirements for Mid-Rise Podium Projects. Technical guidance referencing the 2024 IBC. Explains construction classifications, podium separation and permissible wood-frame stories.
10. Brian J. Asquith, Evan Mast and Davin Reed — Supply Shock Versus Demand Shock: The Local Effects of New Housing in Low-Income Areas. Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, February 2020. Provides empirical evidence of lower nearby rents following new market-rate apartment construction.
11. Heather Vogell — When Private Equity Becomes Your Landlord. ProPublica, February 7, 2022. Documents private-equity ownership concentration, the Greystar acquisition of the Olume and the property's subsequent financial performance.