Chris Leinberger in the March issue of The Atlantic (h/t: Ian Swain):
This future is not likely to wear well on suburban housing. Many of the
inner-city neighborhoods that began their decline in the 1960s consisted of
sturdily built, turn-of-the-century row houses, tough enough to withstand being
broken up into apartments, and requiring relatively little upkeep. By
comparison, modern suburban houses, even high-end McMansions, are cheaply built.
Hollow doors and wallboard are less durable than solid-oak doors and
lath-and-plaster walls. The plywood floors that lurk under wood veneers or
carpeting tend to break up and warp as the glue that holds the wood together
dries out; asphalt-shingle roofs typically need replacing after 10 years. Many
recently built houses take what structural integrity they have from
drywall—their thin wooden frames are too flimsy to hold the houses up.As the residents of inner-city neighborhoods did before them, suburban
homeowners will surely try to prevent the division of neighborhood houses into
rental units, which would herald the arrival of the poor. And many will likely
succeed, for a time. But eventually, the owners of these fringe houses will have
to sell to someone, and they’re not likely to find many buyers; offers from
would-be landlords will start to look better, and neighborhood restrictions will
relax. Stopping a fundamental market shift by legislation or regulation is
generally impossible.Of course, not all suburbs will suffer this fate. Those that are affluent and
relatively close to central cities—especially those along rail lines—are likely
to remain in high demand. Some, especially those that offer a thriving, walkable
urban core, may find that even the large-lot, residential-only neighborhoods
around that core increase in value. Single-family homes next to the downtowns of
Redmond, Washington; Evanston, Illinois; and Birmingham, Michigan, for example,
are likely to hold their values just fine.On the other hand, many inner suburbs that are on the wrong side of town, and
poorly served by public transport, are already suffering what looks like
inexorable decline. Low-income people, displaced from gentrifying inner cities,
have moved in, and longtime residents, seeking more space and nicer
neighborhoods, have moved out.But much of the future decline is likely to occur on the fringes, in towns
far away from the central city, not served by rail transit, and lacking any real
core. In other words, some of the worst problems are likely to be seen in some
of the country’s more recently developed areas—and not only those inhabited by
subprime-mortgage borrowers. Many of these areas will become magnets for
poverty, crime, and social dysfunction.
Urban designer David Lewis long ago said the greatest urban revitalization of all time will be our rickety post-war suburbs, with their in-human transportation systems, lack of parks and green space, and miles upon miles of cheap strip malls. By contrast, our cities have great parks, great architecture, and central locations on their side. My own sense is this stretch-out sprawled to the max spatial structure – which served fordist expansion oh so well – is a dead-weight cost on innovation, productivity and wealth generation in the creative economy.
What say you?
February 21st, 2008 at 10:55 am
I say start your (hybrid) bulldozer engines and get ready to start razing many of these God-forsaken suburban neighborhoods that never should have been built in the first place. Maybe we can recycle some of the debris.
February 21st, 2008 at 1:10 pm
An interesting article. I suspect that many of these neighbourhoods will be saveable in a long-term sense (half-a-century) if the zoning regulations that were created to protect them, initially, were rescinded to save them. It doesn’t matter how flimsily (or solidly) old buildings are, the shell can still be saved and converted to other uses. And, as Jane Jacobs identified, old buildings are important for new ideas.
But, the question it raises for me, is that is if these macro-design flaws (amenities are distant, neighbourhood lacks variety, it is difficult to be energy-efficient) are confronted, will that be enough to “save” the suburban neighbourhoods. For example if planners and police were to take on those points specifically, would it be enough to stop the down-hill slump facing the “inner” suburbs of Metro Toronto?
Regards,
Richard.
February 21st, 2008 at 3:00 pm
Toronto may be in a better position than most cities. I had a conversation a while back with one of the authors of the book Concrete Toronto. His architecture firm is doing work for the city as part of the revitalization efforts of Lawrence Heights and other inner suburbs. He says the special thing about Toronto is that its old suburbs are fairly dense already because of all the 60s- and 70s-era concrete towers. With fresh thinking, there are opportunities to build in the empty spaces and improve the streetscape. Supposedly the new LRT lines will make neighbourhoods more walkable too.
I’ll admit it’s a stretch, but it has me thinking there’s a chance to do a 21st-century version of the 1980s revitalization of inner cities like NY and London. So many of the pre-war neighbourhoods are already turning expensive and boring like something out of Friends. I could see the next generation of artists rediscovering the concrete burbs and turning them into something new. They’re already the place to go to find up-and-coming immigrants with big ideas – they don’t live in Cabbagetown. . .
The kind of cookie-cutter suburbs mentioned in the article are a greater challenge though.
February 21st, 2008 at 4:09 pm
Agreed Ian: revitalizing east-Scarborough or North Etobicoke could be less of an issue–if the thesis of the article is right–because there is the apartments; but they’ll also have access to the downtown tax base to provide capital to finance the improvements. Whereas outer Brampton, or Milton where the tax base, in such a scenario, would consist largely of houses no one wants, and business parks no one wants to work in all miles from each other, with nothing interesting connecting them.
But, surely we must provide more to these areas than simply running transit out to them: I think the challenge is to make them all interesting, not make them have easier access to downtown where it’s already interesting. It’s a challenge for how do you let every little neighbourhood have the capacity for art galleries, restaurants, bookstores and the like–and not have them be the typical mall chains. And then have the opportunity to go five minutes to the next neighbourhood, and have access to a different set of interesting things.
Anyway, it occurred to me I shouldn’t sign just my first name on a different Richard’s blog. Keep writing it by the way, I enjoy the daily read.
Richard B.
February 21st, 2008 at 5:22 pm
There is no question that much of the new exurban housing stock is less sturdy than its inner-city predecessors – my wife’s company builds these monstrosities in the outer counties surrounding Washington, D.C. and $1 million today won’t necessarily protect you from leaky windows, particle board flooring, and frozen pipes. But the core profile of her purchasers continues to be youngish families and I would argue that a return of this demographic to even the inner suburbs remains largely contingent upon the quality of the local public schools. This is even more the case in inner-city Washington where elementary and secondary school choices are limited, secular private schools are out of the reach of most families, and even the Archdiocese of Washington has had to close most of its elementary and middle-schools in the city because of declining enrollments.
Demographics and the life-style preferences of Millenials certainly appear to working in favor of Lineberger’s argument over the long-term, but with credible public education options almost non-existent in many urban cores and the spill-over effect of gentrification forcing poorer families to the inner suburbs, families with school-age children will continue to look further out for safe places for their children to live and learn.
February 22nd, 2008 at 6:58 pm
This assessment of current housing quality is greatly exaggerated. The writer’s alarm and hype causes him to obscure from the truth. To say that these house are held up by drywall is a lie that any engineer or, better yet, any carpenter can attest to. Has he ever seen a house be constructed? To say that shingled roofs need to be replaced every ten years is another fabrication. I live in an house built in 1948 and its plywood floors have been sound for these past sixty years.
My younger brother and his family bought a new house in the ‘burbs to avoid purchasing one of the old houses closer to the city’s core because of his belief that the older homes would involve onerous maintenance for an unskilled person like himself. The house he purchased is a typically cheap affair; however, it’s not doomed. Furthermore, can we not say the same thing about such sectors as electronics, automotive, household appliance and others? What say the Report on Business about this planned obsolescence and its dire implication for the future? I don’t think these long-term ramifications factor into their rationales.
How much of the concern expressed by Leinberger is a lament that not everyone can understand ‘quality’ – nor afford it? Is concern over the atomized, faceless communities that short-sighted developers continue to profitably produce, rather a cover for class distinctions? Who is doing what, and why, are always the questions to ask. Those who profit by our system are in denial about one of its current results: increasing financial disparity, and thus disrespect, between economic strata. What’s left is a growing suspicion of poverty and despair, and a fear of violence.
What say the Globe and Mail? What say the “creative class”?
February 22nd, 2008 at 8:08 pm
Hmm. Shoddily built housing can be a problem, but it always was. There is a lot of survivor bias in the description of the row-houses that were converted to apartments.
Furthermore, a lot depends on local building codes. Here in Las Vegas the McMansions are not particularly flimsy. My own (built in 2001) has a 6″ concrete foundation, and concrete-tile roof. It’s reasonably energy efficient, due to a north-by-northwest exposure and a six-foot air-gap in the attic.
It’s a *little* sturdier than the typical house built here, but not by much (for example, four inch foundations are standard).
Conversely, it would be extremely difficult to convert my house to multiple rental units, as much of the plumbing goes through the foundation, rather than the walls. The larger average room size also makes them much less amenable to conversion than their square-footage would suggest.
Plumbing, by the way, is the main area that building companies here get into trouble for cutting corners. The Las Vegas environment is pretty harsh on plumbing, so shoddy work or cut-rate materials tend to fail within several years at most, not decades, meaning the original builders are still around to sue into oblivion. And the winds we have will generally make even shorter work of shoddy roofs.
So, instead of the suburban rental conversions that Chris Leinberger is predicting, what I am seeing instead is extended families and multiple nuclear families sharing the larger McMansions, with infants sharing their parents’ rooms, kids glommed together into bedrooms more-or-less by age and/or sex, and sometimes grandparents too. Here in Las Vegas this pattern is particularly common among Mexican immigrants and Pacific Islanders who’ve relocated here from Hawaii, but I expect economic forces to spread the pattern relentlessly.
February 22nd, 2008 at 9:01 pm
I once knew someone who lived in the second-oldest house in her northern-NJ suburb, built in about 1840, enlarged at least twice. Originally it sat on a farm, the rest of town grew around it. As a result, her house sat smack in the middle of a block, with a long narrow driveway and about 10 next-door neighbors in smaller homes on small lots. With a hedge at the roadside, this house was invisible from the major road whose address it bore.
This could be a pattern for redevelopment of McMansionvilles: the big house survives, while its big yard gets sold off for denser housing units. Give a large enough price for the land (and disincentives for sprawl onto greenfields), a few zoning changes, shared driveways/parking, it could happen. The densification could start as a mother-in-law apartment or art studio, and grow from there. That is, if the big house in the middle is worth saving. Otherwise, it could just get razed and entirely replaced by smaller homes. Time will tell.
February 26th, 2008 at 3:59 pm
Here in Las Vegas most McMansionvilles typically already have very small yards (partly to maximise revenue for the developer, partly because water restrictions are making it impossible to maintain large lawns anyway). The ranch houses built on larger plots in the 70’s and 80’s are occasionally bought up and redeveloped into McMansions.
May 24th, 2008 at 7:06 pm
Its unfortunate, but until we are forced to take a long look at the environmental impact the money grabbing developers are having on our “now greening society” this will continue.
With suburban development utilizing 30′ x 80′ “premium lots” for 2500-3000 sq ft homes (if we are allowed to use the word home as a descriptor) we will continue to witness our neighbourhoods as well as our environment continue the downward spiral.