Creative Class

Keith Schneider says stronger city-suburb alliances are needed in the era of the great intensification (pointer via Planetizen).

If the half century after World War II was the great age of the suburb, the first half of the 21st century is unfolding as the era of a stronger, more cohesive American citistate of combined center city and much more urban suburbs. Today’s economy, politics, and culture mirror that shift. The nation’s survival - our sustainability - will depend on it.

Here’s why. The spread-out civilization that America invented in the 20th century was largely the result of a handful of major market trends — cheap energy, cheap land, rising incomes, formidable government wealth. Our drive-through economy, and the culture of convenience and plenty (and anonymity) that it fostered, was possible because families could afford the homes and cars, and government built the highways and subsidized the housing that tied it all together. The big losers were cities, which hemorrhaged jobs, and marooned millions.

That description, though, now applies to hundreds of American suburbs, especially those without public transit, located far from city centers. In many of these, housing values have dropped 40 percent or more in the last 18 months. Yet nearer to the city center, in the seasoned older suburbs where transit and parks and sidewalks and neighbors are in closer proximity, America’s successful 21^st century suburban form is taking shape. And we’ll be needing these more efficiently conceived, metro-connected suburbs in a nation that will add 140 million people by mid-century …

These trends represent an absolutely sane response to critical new 21st century realities — high energy prices, high land costs, static family incomes, scarce resources, government deficits, flagging competitiveness, global climate change, and strong U.S. population growth. But even as downtown, neighborhoods and smart suburbs start to coalesce, they need to move - quickly and courageously - to assure they’ll become success points of a new American Dream.

More than $200 billion in private and public capital needs to be invested over the next decade to build rapid transit for our metro regions, plus regional high-speed rail lines to connect them. Maximizing energy efficiency in community design, and in buildings and homes, is essential to cope with the energy crisis and address global warming. And we need new zoning to locate people and businesses and shopping and schools alongside each other, something that’s now actually illegal in many American communities (and critical if we’re to promote biking and walking and combat our alarming obesity epidemic) …

Now, as we become a nation experiencing a new future- driving less, riding transit more often, living closer together - a new vision is taking root. It’s that our major cities, many wrecks 30 years ago, are positioned to be the livable, desirable centers of the metro regions that embody our top wealth, talent and hopes. Our ambition should be nothing less than pushing them to number among the most livable, energy-efficient and prosperous places on the planet.

The great intensification requires new infrastructure. My hunch is the regions to move first to develop this kind of broad, connective fiber will gain considerable competitive advantage not just in energy use but in terms of time costs and the development of new technologies and industries. Remember the rise of the highway system and suburban infrastructure was always more than transportation and real estate development - it simultaneously provides an enormous spur to the emerging industries of the day from autos to all sorts of consumer durables, generating new forms of mass consumption, and helping to fuel an incredible industrial job machine. They called it fordism, after all. Getting the infrastructure of the mega-region right will not only improve our connectivity and save energy, it will fuel the development of new markets, new technology, and new jobs.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 6th, 2008 at 12:11 pm and is filed under Cities, Creative Class Consumption, Globalization, Tolerance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.