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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Triumph of Suburbia—Despite Downtown Hype, Americans Choose Sprawl
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/04/29/the-triumph-of-suburbia-despite-downtown-hype-americans-choose-sprawl.htmlA neighborhood of tract houses is viewed near Charles M. Schultz Airport on June 16, 2012, in Santa Rosa, California. (George Rose/Getty)
We've reached the limits of suburban development, HUD Secretary
Shaun Donovan declared in 2010. People are beginning to vote with their feet and come back to the central cities. Ed Glaesers Triumph of the City and Alan Ehrenhalts The Great Inversion widely praised accepted by the highest echelons of academia, press, business and government have advanced much the same claim, and just last week a report on jobs during the downturn garnered headlines like City Centers in U.S. Gain Share of Jobs as Suburbs Lose.
Theres just one problem with this narrative: None of it is true. A funny thing happened on the way to the long-trumpeted triumph of the city: the suburbs not only survived but have begun to regain their allure as Americans have continued aspiring to single-family homes.
Read the actual Brookings report that led to the Suburbs Lose headline: it shows that in 91 of Americas 100 biggest metro areas, the share of jobs located within three miles of downtown declined over the 2000s. Only Washington, D.C. saw significant growth.
vi5
(13,305 posts)I live in a suburban town, but with a nice main street that is very walkable, has nice restaurants, nice stores and lots of great activities within a walking distance and also much access to public transportation both bus and train. It's an old town but there's no logistical reason towns in suburbia can't be built in this way now. i'm sure it's just a matter of profit motive than anything else.
I read something a while back about walkable "urbanism" that posited creating what I envisioned as "villages" - areas of single-family homes with a hub of business/school/park/shopping within walking distance - 1 mile - and public transportation linking these areas to more centralized facilities of hospital/government/etc.
You see a lot of that in European cities - London, for instance, is essentially a series of villages connected together, though that happened as a function of natural growth and because it was unplanned, it has significant flaws and gaps in the coverage. I'm not very familiar with US east-coast cities, but it seems that many are the same (with the same problems London has).
loyalsister
(13,390 posts)It's the desertion of the central cities where the downtown mom and pops have existed for as long as 100 yrs.
MineralMan
(146,192 posts)The neighborhood where my home is located was about the last one built in the city. All the houses were built in the mid 1950s. After my neighborhood was built, the city was fully built-out, so there was no place to build more homes. The late 50s and 60s were a time of a huge amount of building. Since there was no more room in the cities, the inner ring of suburbs around the Twin Cities was built. So, most of the homes there date from the 1960s and early 1970s. After that time, there was no more room in those suburbs to build new homes, so a second ring of suburbs was created. The 1970s and 80s were when the homes in those suburbs were built, and those suburbs became fully buillt-out. The third ring of suburbs is still growing and new homes are still being built in them, as well as in communities even further out.
It's a common pattern around most large cities. The post-WWII building boom was the reason, and growing populations in and around those cities followed that. Lacking vacant land to build on, building moved outward. It's a simple thing, really.
You can see this easily on any real estate website that has mapping capabilities. Look at the listings and the build date for the homes in those listings. You'll see this trend just about everywhere. Near the center of any large city, you'll generally find the oldest houses. As you move outward, in concentric circle fashion, you can track the decades when neighborhoods were built. Keep going, and you can see the growth of the suburbs and the times when they were built. It's just how the cities and the suburbs around them happened. Easy peasy.
HereSince1628
(36,063 posts)But there was an alternatives...rather than growing outward metro areas could have grown upward.
The question is why didn't we?
I suspect that press of immigration in the late 1800s, the depressions of that era and the experience with the confinement of
tenement living created a legacy of a desire to get away from the squalor of impoverished working class lives.
Even as the middle class shrinks, the percentage of Americans who claim it's values (which include the detached single family dwelling) remains expansive.
joeglow3
(6,228 posts)Simple: most people didn't want to.
I love the benefits of our suburban neighborhood for our 3 kids. So much nicer than friends of ours who have a downtown Chicago condo with 1 kid. They are now looking to move out of the city.
FarCenter
(19,429 posts)In many metro areas, the core center city has so many problems that it is essentially impossible to gentrify and revive. Detroit is a good example. Therefore, some of the "edge cities" around the center city will be the beneficiaries of "back to the city" movements. They also are the areas where the inner ring interstates can be augmented with light rail and better transit as the population density increases.
There are some exceptions, such as Boston, New York, San Francisco, and possibly Chicago. But generally it is too expensive to rehabilitate infrastructure in the center cities, and city politics there are geared to consumption rather than investment.
MineralMan
(146,192 posts)at least on a small scale, is people or developers buying up foreclosed houses in urban neighborhoods, tearing them down, and building new houses. In a couple of neighborhoods, several houses adjacent to each other, and near a major arterial street, are being torn down at the same time and construction on large new homes is underway this spring. That type of gentrification is likely to spread, I think, anytime there are low-value old houses available in areas close in inside the city itself.
St. Paul, for example, has a smallish downtown, surrounded by residential neighborhoods, some of them dating back to the turn of the 19th century and the early 20th century. While some of the more luxurious of those neighborhoods are restored and home to costly homes, most are run down and not doing well. Near major arterial streets, the property under those old houses is valuable real estate, and that's driving this developing trend.
It will be interesting to see what happens, but very unfortunate for the people currently living in those neighborhoods.
FarCenter
(19,429 posts)Older homes in desirable neighborhoods are being torn down, but mostly being replaced one-for-one by new, larger homes. e.g. a 1950s 1400' ranch being replaced by a 2500' two story.
Near village centers and near transit hubs, old single famiy or subdivided rental homes are being replaced by multi-story condo and apartment buildings.
New greenfield subdivision developments are pretty much at a standstill, and the far suburban areas are not growing. No more New Yorkers moving out into bear country.
MineralMan
(146,192 posts)in the outer ring suburbs, but they're taking some big risks by doing so. Commuting is getting more expensive all the time, and some of those new developments may have trouble filling up.
We're also seeing the new condo development in the Twin Cities, primarily marketed to downtown workers with sizable incomes. They seem to be selling pretty well. The new homes being built in close-in neighborhoods will be interesting to watch. If they're successful, there will be more older homes sold as teardowns, I'm sure. That's a trend I don't much like. My own 50's neighborhood is on the edge of the city, and too far from the commercial center to be attractive for this kind of thing. Besides, it's a popular neighborhood for younger buyers with growing families, just like it was when it was first built. I think it will survive.
However, there's an old urban golf course just up the street from my home. It's a private course that had become less and less profitable. It was recently sold to, of all things, the sheetmetal workers' union, which is using the clubhouse and other facilities. The golf course is still in operation, but I suspect that their plan is to develop the golf course area, so I expect it to shut down and to see development begin within the next couple of years. That concerns me.
Note: I'm not in the real estate business, nor am I a real estate investor, except for my own home. One of my clients is a large real estate broker, for whom I write large amounts of content for its multiple websites. Last year, I completely rewrote their largest website, to the tune of over 200 pages. To do that, I've had to learn what's going on in real estate in the area.