Are American suburbs a model for the world – especially its emerging nations? USA Today says maybe so. I find it highly doubtful particularly given traffic congestion and rising oil prices. Some talk of peak oil. To my mind, it’s the suburban model that’s “peaked.”
UPDATE: NPR’s Morning Edition (H/T: Alison Kemper) reports that in some markets suburban real estate prices are in free fal, while urban, in-city or close-in markets are stable or even increasing.
Economists say home prices are nowhere near hitting bottom. But even in regions
that have taken a beating, some neighborhoods remain practically unscathed. And
a pattern is emerging as to which neighborhoods those are.
The ones with short commutes are faring better than places with long drives
into the city. Some analysts see a pause in what has long been inexorable —
urban sprawl …At a recent auction of foreclosed homes north of Washington, in the Maryland
suburbs, there weren’t many takers. All of the addresses are far from downtown,
and average commute times are among the highest in the nation. It’s a different story for properties that are closer to the city’s center —
in areas of Montgomery County that are on the edge of Washington … Inside the city, median home prices are actually up 3.5 percent from a year
ago …David Stiff, chief economist for the company that produces the Case-Shiller
Home Price Index, saw the trend in other cities, as well — including Los
Angeles, San Francisco, New York, San Diego, Miami and Boston. Stiff recently matched home resale values against commute times and found
that in most of these major metropolitan areas, the trend is the same. The
longer the commute, the steeper the drop in prices …“We don’t live in the Ozzie and Harriet era anymore,” Goldberg said.
“We live more in the Seinfeld, Sex in the City era, in which young
people find cities to be compelling.”
You can listen here. The key factor here is time, more than cost of gas or lifestyle preferences.
April 16th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
The 2004 documentary The End of Suburbia (http://www.endofsuburbia.com/) makes an excellent case for the exact opposite of USA Today’s assertion. It’s been a little while since I rented this doc, so I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re interviewed in it or something, and I just haven’t made the connection. Anyway, I just wanted to share for anyone who’s interested…
April 16th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
I think part of the problem of sprawl isn’t necessarily the typical form of suburbia itself (i.e., segregated land uses, car dependence, cul-de-sac residential streets), but its limits in terms of scalability over larger and larger areas. I think sunbelt-style sprawl may not be so horrific if you are in a smallish metro of about 500,000 to perhaps just under 1,000,000, and also if the growth is at a healthy, steady pace rather than breakneck speed. Traffic and quality of life could be manageable if you live in a McMansion on a cul-de-sac if you commute to your downtown or other major job/commercial hub is somewhere around 30 minutes. I think it’s when your metro is so large and diffuse that you start getting into super-commuting territory, like Atlanta or DC, when the sprawl becomes unmanageable and in this day of rising gas prices, expensive and stress-inducing.
Ideally public transportation would become a more frequently implemented solution, but that will take time. So, regardless of your form of residential community (anything from condo to cul-de-sac), I think sprawl can be manageable if most folks stick to a daily commute of around 30-45 minutes. What’s happening in areas like Southern California, the I-85 megaregion, etc. are commutes frequently topping 60-75 minutes, and I think that is going to really hurt these area in an age of $4/gallon gasoline.
So perhaps, assuming gas prices don’t keeping climbing and climbing indefinitely (a pause might let people “catch up” and buy more fuel-efficient vehicles), what’s peak isn’t sprawl per se, but “mega-sprawlopolises”? That is, it could be workable (though not ideal in the long term perhaps) in a city like Des Moines, but more of a crisis in Northern Virginia or
And honestly – as much as I sincerely think all those upwardly mobile families in the developing world deserve pursuing their dreams, the thought of hundreds of millions of newly middle class folks in Asia, Latin America, etc. desiring American-style suburbia frightens me in terms of not just environmental impacts, but the even higher strain on our global food prices, energy costs, etc. I’m not sure we can sustain billions of people who eat industrially-processed food and drive single-occupancy cars. Something has to give.
April 16th, 2008 at 6:07 pm
The problem is that those cul-de-sacs are notoriously difficult to serve with transit, because it typically involves a long walk on winding streets with no amenities (stores, restaurants, etc.) in sight. Good transit takes more than time — it takes better-designed neighbourhoods.
I agree the planet can’t support 6.6 billion people having a middle-class suburban lifestyle but “sorry, too late” won’t go over so well in the developing world. That said, they’d do well to look deep enough to see the problems and avoid some of the mistakes — not for our sake, but because smarter development will give them a competitive advantage.
April 17th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
Suburbs depends on cheap fuel. For weekly ranty coverage on this topic, check out James Howard Kunstler’s blog Clusterf__k Nation.
http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/
April 17th, 2008 at 10:19 pm
Suburbs do depend on cheap fuel, but if public transportation (light rail) is installed, a short drive, walk or bike ride to a train station could be very workable.
…but that requires an investment in light rail.
April 18th, 2008 at 1:10 am
Suburbia is a dying breed that never should have come to exist in the first instance. I sympathize with those who have been talked into believing otherwise and the property hits they will taken on resale; however, there’s absolutely no question that suburban neighborhoods will become the cultural graveyards of the ’70s and ’80s over the next few years. Can I get a witness from the congregation??!!
April 18th, 2008 at 9:11 am
Actually, many of the 1970s-era suburbs that were then solidly middle-class have now become just about as depressed as their inner-city counterparts (much of this is also due to gentrification in those formerly-depressed inner-city areas). Joel Koktin calls these areas “Midopolitan” suburbs. It’s a bit misleading to just call them “first suburbs” or “inner ring” suburbs, because some, like Bethesda, MD, are super-wealthy and creative-class havens. Others like Rockville, MD or Skokie, IL are more modest but still fairly prosperous and stable. The “graveyards” are areas like inner-beltway Prince George’s County, MD or Harvey, IL. What was once just “white flight” has become, in some metros, an otherwise multi-ethnic “middle class flight”. You see this in some southern cities like Atlanta, Raleigh, etc., where middle class residents of any race have fled to more exurban locations while areas like Norcross, GA, a 1970’s/1980’s-era suburb, is wedged between the prosperous Gwinnett County exurbs to its northeast and wealthier inner-perimeter Atlanta (Buckhead, Dunwoody, etc.). Even in smaller cities like Columbia, SC this is a pronounced phenomenon.
This is also why I don’t think the housing bubble will deflate prices significantly in stable, long-established upper-middle class inner-ring suburbs – they are closer commutes to job centers, especially creative class ones, and they are more likely to have public transport connections (e.g., the aforementioned Bethesda/Rockville, Dunwoody and Decatur near Atlanta, Skokie and Oak Park near Chicago, etc.). These areas have extremely high human capital and civic engagement components. The glut will be in poorly-planned hyper-speculative “urban” condos (especially if there is no synergistic relationship with solid job centers) and exurban tract houses (there may be hope for some well-thought-out, semi-mixed-use, master-planned developments, especially those with high-quality schools, but I think they may still take a bit of time to recover).
April 19th, 2008 at 6:25 am
New urbanism projects will continue to do well because they mimic the urban models, as will places like Bethesda that are situated near public transportation depos and representative of urban growth generally. But the classic suburban models and designs of the 70s and 80s are dead. Many of these neighborhoods are much more vulnerable than they appear because the boomers who live there will continue to take care of these houses and yards for the balance of their lives. And then the boomers will move-on and there will be no one in the market to buy these houses. We will see many of these neighborhoods go from “safe” to dangerous and dilapidated in small fractions of time. Most troubling, the builders used poor materials to construct these houses and they will not be easily converted into new uses or renovated (gentrified) in the way their urban counterparts have been. These houses offer little by way of architectural value or historical significance and will need to be demolished in many cases.
April 19th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
Hayden – Actually I think that homebuilding quality wasn’t that bad for the most part in the 1970s – perhaps because it was a period of economic stagnation, homes weren’t as commoditized as today’s exurban boxes. I’ve generally found ranches and split-levels from that era relatively solid (I owned a 1977 all-brick townhome in Northern Virginia, and that was my impression, at least, as well as observing homes in similar suburbs in other cities). Of course, that doesn’t mean that these areas won’t experience decline at some point, I’m just saying the built quality isn’t that bad, and it isn’t a variable in determining how a neighborhood may decline (there are many solid homes in very poor urban areas like inner-city Balitmore, Cleveland, etc.).
Around the early-to-mid 1980s, homebuidling quality started declining, I think, and perhaps that was a symptom of the expanding economy. While I don’t want the economy to decline per se, perhaps during this recession, there will at least be some re-thinking about long-term housing construction quality. I do think it may have been a factor of the relative solidity of some 1970s-era homes, although I think it doesn’t necessarily drive later stability or decline of a community (e.g., I don’t think all those 1970s-era homes in more modest parts of Potomac, MD are going to become a ghetto anytime soon – there are many factors that will clearly keep those areas afloat for a long time). They are pretty much classically suburban (although they have connective curvilinear streets rather than dead-ending cul-de-sac streets – and I don’t think that’s a factor necessarily either).
As per Joel Garreau of “Edge Cities” and the essay “Edgier Cities” implied, some gentrification may be able to occur in these places if, as in in-town urban areas, officials are willing to ignore strict land use/zoning laws. Let those artists refurbish an abandoned 1980s Sears or K-Mart, and interesting things may occur.
April 19th, 2008 at 8:43 pm
Everyone likes to say “back in the ’70s” because it sounds cool. Has anyone noticed that?
There are many examples of poor construction techniques, all over the United States, that have been used in housing construction in every culturally significant decade since the beginning of time. The issue is if the popularity of the suburban model will decline as fuel prices rise. I think it will. Furthermore, is poor construction quality a factor in the likelihood of a neighborhood falling into stagnation or decline? I think it is.
If you do not agree with me, I dare you to explore the very community you live in and prove me wrong with a non-altered digital photo essay.
April 20th, 2008 at 10:05 am
Whitney, I live in an area known as “the Fan” in Richmond, Virginia substantially constructed between 1900 and 1930. Very similar to the houses constructed in other cities prior to 1940 and found within the urban cores of most cities. These houses and buildings could not be more drastically different than the properties constructed after World War II.
I have a very good friend and architect who could write several books on the topic with thousands of photographic illustrations; I’ve heard the story many times. Post world-war ii we constructed utilitarian barracks style buildings and “company houses”. Then came the 50’s and the fascination with the car; and the influence of Detroit on building styles. The front garage replaced the rear carriage house and the alley disappeared. We setback our houses from the street to make way for “driveways”. We set the garage in the front so that cars could be displayed as status symbols. Saturdays could be spent mowing yards and washing cars for all the neighbors to see. Even the cul-de-sac, the sine qua non of the suburban era, was specifically designed to accommodate cars. We stretched out our neighborhoods and built them around drivable roads as opposed to walkable and logically put together gridded blocks. We put grocery stores and other commercial places miles away instead of weaving them into the neighborhoods. During the process, architectural design and building prowess lost favor since people weren’t walking down the blocks and admiring the streetscape and architectural details anymore anyway. Then along came vinyl siding and fast-food style building methods; and other rotten building materials. ….long story short, there’s a VERY PALPABLE difference between the properties constructed before and after 1940 and a vivid contrast between the properties we find in older urban centers and those in suburbia. Those suburban properties will not pass the test of time.
April 20th, 2008 at 6:34 pm
Hayden Fisher, chill out! You are smart and know your stuff. The point you make is simple: Suburban models are no longer sustainable, and were not well thought out when they were built. Furthermore, going forward, into tomorrow and the next decade and beyond, fostering new urbanism makes a tremendous amount of clean, green, sustainable sense. In conclusion, changing from an overall living mode that is suburban to one that more urban has the potential to make a positive impact in the life of many people, and as the change occurs, old suburban landscapes will fall into a state of decline in many cases.
Let me give you a writing tip, but remember, it is only worth what you pay for it – which is the time you spend reading it on this blog.
In the blog entry you posted this morning, you used seven four-syllable words (substantially, photographic, illustrations, fascination, accommodate, admiring and suburbia), one five-syllable word twice (architectural) and one six-syllable word (utilitarian). You also used an array of over-worded phrases. The most outstanding are; “substantially constructed,” “drastically different,” “photographic illustrations,” and “vivid contrast.” A good rule-of-thumb is that when people over-verbalize, or in this case, “over-syllabalize,” they are either messing with you or are trying to be too fancy.
Furthermore, you have a thrusting “implicating we syndrome,” that is displayed in phrases like; “we constructed utilitarian barracks style buildings….” “we setback our houses….” “we set the garage in front….” and “we stretched out our neighborhoods.” Well, as a human being and an individual, and for the record, I had nothing to do with the various phenomena that were involved in manifesting these travesties.
You seem more than a little fired-up, which means that you are on-to-something. But you also seem frustrated that you cannot get your point across as clearly as you see it yourself. So try using words that are simpler and that have fewer syllables, and loose the retroactive sense of responsibility you feel for suburban design techniques that you don’t agree with. That way, you can concentrate on the present moment and the future and you can focus on what you really want to say. And you will know when to use the power of persuasion more tactfully. Another thing to keep in mind: When you over-verbalize and “over-syllabalize,” people tend to associate you with the problem you are trying to describe. Hillary Clinton has this same problem. Did you see the recent Pennsylvania debate in which she said “massive retaliation” (retaliation being a five-syllable word) twice in about 30 seconds in a response to a question about the United States’ relationship with Israel? That’s a little scary…. and it tends to make others perceive your overall demeanor in a way that is not pleasant even though you are probably a very nice person.
View this example as one way of incorporating the aforementioned techniques into your writing. You say, “During the process, architectural design and building prowess lost favor since people weren’t walking down the blocks and admiring the streetscape and architectural details anymore anyway.” I say, “Instead of walking a short distance to work in the morning, or being a reliable patron of public transport, millions of people all over the United States grew accustomed to driving into urban centers from outlying suburbs. Commuting, traffic jams, and visions of becoming a rugged suburban patio-man overtook a more civil, less hedonistic, urban way of life. The mode of daily living changed. Before the popularity of suburbs, full-time urban residents passed by clusters of unique store fronts and homes on their way to work every morning. Urbanites participated in a buzzing cityscape, by stopping in neighborhood coffee shops to buy the usual cup-of-joe and a daily newspaper. They bonded with each other in loose, but comforting and reliable social contacts. Suburbs, which were poorly built in many cases, and the primal thrill experienced by scores of people who were able to live in a larger space with a lower price tag, took the guacamole out of many once thriving urban areas. Pedestrian traffic was transformed to wasteful automobile traffic. For some reason, people found that indulging in the latest chrome-laden gizmo from Detroit was more enjoyable than being part of a buzzing cityscape. As a result, many urban areas fell into a state of decline.”
Another non-Jane Jacobs way to put it is, “Redneck landowners sold out to people who built shanty houses. You ain’t got to be no mathematician to figure out that people like to live cheap.” Enjoy! I hope. I need to find something more constructive to do.
April 22nd, 2008 at 12:49 pm
I can’t be so pessimistic about the fate of these suburbs, for a number of reasons:
I have the impression that a lot of Civic America relies upon development fees to pay the bills. When a municipality gets built out, either their taxes go up or their services go down. Or, they need to foster redevelopment. And the way to make that profitable (given the cost of demolition, as well as new construction replacing buildings old enough to have paid off the mortgage) is to build more densely. So you attract some creative types who can’t afford downtown.
Americans with kids tend to want a yard (even if the kids would be just as happy in an apartment because they spend their non-school time on organized extracurricular activities, TV and the computer). If an older suburb can retain civic safety and quality schools, it may become a more-affordable place for families to live.
Jane Jacobs talked about the importance of old buildings in fostering start-ups. After all the old mills and neighborhood schools get rehabbed into condos, maybe the start-up action will move to old strip malls.
Personally I think most suburban houses built after World War II are ugly. I would not miss them. But they will be eligible for historic preservation pretty soon, and someone is going to speak up for them. Moreover, ‘green building’ is hot enough to earn a premium even in today’s real estate market. And the National Trust for Historic Preservation will tell you that it is greener to save an already-existing building than to build a new green one. And the Smart Growth community says that VMT (vehicle miles traveled) is lower for a closer-in suburb than for an identical one farther from the center, therefore the closer suburb is more green. You can market this both as ‘green building’ and as a way to save on the gas bill. Someone will be smart enough to make money off of this.
This leaves open the question of where the poor are going to live.
April 23rd, 2008 at 3:01 pm
Hopefully, if a community takes a progressive approach to future development, it will better enable the poor to increase living standards. We shouldn’t say you are poor so you should live in this certain place. Furthermore, policy shouldn’t build a place like the Chicago projects again.