Just want to clear up a point our two about my last Globe and Mail column on the “spatial fix.” I’m not talking about the shift from suburb to city, but a great ongoing intensification of the use of space, and time, throughout entire mega-regions.
Over at the paper, my always astute colleague John Bentley Mays takes Chris Leinberger and I to task:
As a committed downtower with no inclination to flee to suburbia, I find the prognostications of Mr. Leinberger and Mr. Florida attractive. I would be delighted if all the talented, ambitious people in the greater Toronto area moved into my downtown neighbourhood. But I seriously question whether any such vast demographic switch is now taking place. It seems quite likely, in fact, that the prophets of suburban demise are merely repeating the old anti-suburban prejudices that have been making the rounds since sprawl was new.
Once upon a time, to be sure, Toronto’s suburbia was white, Anglo-Saxon commuter-land. The Don Valley Expressway and the communities of Don Mills and York Mills are architectural monuments to an era when most of these white-collar working people slept in suburban bungalows and worked in the financial district towers. Because of the massive influx of immigrants from outside Canada over the past few decades, however, our suburbs are now sharply different in character from what they once were. They are now composed of hundreds of thousands of hard-working Chinese (in Markham), Jews (in Thornhill), Italians (in Woodbridge) and South Asians in many parts of the city. Many of these people have found work, or created it, in their suburban communities, thus making long commutes unnecessary. In the process, they have built — and are building — new urban employment and residential hubs that no longer resemble the older models of Toronto suburbia invoked by Mr. Florida.
If pundits are going to discuss the future of North American suburbs — and this is surely an excellent time to do so — then they should have in mind a clear picture of the very dynamic phenomenon they are talking about. If the upmarket suburbs of Sacramento are lapsing into desolation, the exurban communities around Toronto appear to be doing everything but.
Wait a minute, John. I know exactly of this kind of suburbia. It’s what my Cities Centre colleagues wrote about in the “three Torontos” report, and just about the same kind of thing that’s happening around Washington, D.C.
The main point of my spatial fix column apparently got lost in the age-old framing of town versus country, city versus suburb. I do not think we are seeing a decline of the suburbs. What is happening is a move back toward the core by certain affluent groups for whom time, costs, and location matter. This is what Alan Enerhalt calls the “demographic inversion.” And as I note, this is most pronounced in large growing mega-regions like Bos-Wash or the one around Toronto.
This demographic inversion is but a part – an important part, but just a part – of a much bigger spatial shift, I call the great intensification. This is the bigger context. We are going through a great intensification in the use of space, and I should add, time. At one point in time, suburbanization represented an intensification of the use of metropolitan space, extending development from the city core and its surrounding neighborhoods well out into the then new suburbs which initially were place of residence and eventually turned into great expanses of commerce and work – what Joel Garreau dubbed “edge cities.” This trend continues in mega-regions, as suburbs and exurbs stretch outward connecting what were once distintive metropolitan areas. The suburbs gain more people, immigrants particularly. And now the farms between metro areas are disappearing. As the space throughout the entire mega-region becomes more intensively used.
My point is that this is not occurring everywhere equally. The great intensification is occurring with its greatest force and scale in large, globally oriented mega-regions. There are many other places in the US and around the world where both city and suburbs are losing jobs and people.
The great intensification means increasing density and land-use – intensifying the use of space – on a much greater scale. Cities’ cores are being used more intensively, suburbs are being used more intensively, and metro areas are morphing into one another – creating this new kind of geographic unit – the mega-region.
August 5th, 2008 at 9:40 am
There seem to be four basic types of emerging urban environments in the US:
- Creative core city
- Suffering inner ring suburbs
- Creative cosmoburbs
- Sprawlville suburbs
I’ve observed that while we’re seeing the central city thrive in many places, as families are drawn in by this, they are importing a lot of suburban values with them. I wonder if at some point this will ultimately hurt those places? There’s no doubt, for example, that many of the Chicago “stollervilles” (e.g. West Lakeview) are extremely suburban in feel: cookie cutter homes, upscale white families with kids, etc. This isn’t the edgy, creative city of old by any means. Fantastic ethnic businesses like River Kwai II (the best Thai restaurant in the city for many years) and Cafe Demir (the city’s best Turkish) have left the area, replaced by a frozen custard stand that is always mobbed with kids with a strip mall Walgreens across the street.
Conversely, many of the top suburbs have really improved. It isn’t always driven by increased ethnic diversity, though it can be. I’m thinking places like Naperville and Evanston, Illinois; and Carmel, Indiana – all of which are densifying their own cores and seeking to attract top talent to live there. The gap between the top suburbs and many newly renewed city neighborhoods isn’t as great as you might think.
It seems to be the generic sprawlburbs that are getting hurt the most. Some inner rings are facing challenges from an influx of the poor, others are being transformed by immigration. For the latter I think of something like West 38th St. in Indianapolis, which is purely suburban in form. As rents fell in the wake of commercial decline there, a lot of ethnic businesses have filled the void, attracted by cheap rents. These places aren’t to be written off, that’s for sure.
August 5th, 2008 at 8:06 pm
Today’s NY Times has a long piece on the decline of the Republican Party, which includes some discussion of suburbs that seems relevant.
“Democrats are also benefiting from demographic changes, including the rise in the number of younger voters and the urbanization of suburbs, which has resulted in a different political flavor there, voting and campaign experts said.”
and
“The changing face of many American suburbs has also had in impact both in voter registration and voting patterns. In many major metropolitan areas, suburbs that were once largely white and Republican have become more mixed, as people living in cities have been priced out into surrounding areas, and exurban regions have absorbed those residents who once favored the close-in suburbs of cities.
“What we speculate is that density attracts Democrats,” said Robert Lang, director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech who has researched voting patterns. “It is not that people move to those areas and change positions. It tends now to be a self-selection of singles, childless couples,” who tend to vote Democrat more than their married with children counterparts.”
This political shift of course has many causes, but if we assume that today’s Democrats reflect a more urban and creative worldview, it would seem that the demographics are favoring the spread of creative class. The question is when those singles start having kids, will they turn more Republican? My guess is not as long as the R’s cling to 19th century policies unfriendly to the creative class.
On another front, I don’t know Toronto’s suburbs but do know California’s Central Valley, which includes the Sacramento area. Housing prices were driven unrealistically high by San Francisco Bay Area commuters, resulting in overbuilding in California’s barely regulated sprawl. When the market turned, prices collapsed. We sold my mother’s house in Modesto in 2005 for what I thought was twice its value and it’s fallen to about half that (according to Zillow), probably now underpriced in the reaction. The Valley may be a special case, I don’t know if areas surrounding other creative class cities were similarly overbuilt.