How Did the Suburbs Become the Zip-Code From Hell?

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/economy/how-did-suburbs-become-zip-code-hell



***SNIP

Struggle in Paradise

Poverty always lurked in the suburban shadows, but until recently it was not spoken of in polite company. Now the struggle is impossible to ignore.

Over the last couple of decades, the ‘burbs have ceased to be the haven of upper-middle class Americans. Immigrants have poured in, chasing construction jobs and domestic work. Families priced out of gentrified cities like San Francisco have flocked to the suburbs for cheaper housing. Once-prosperous residents who never thought they would know bankruptcy are caught in a strangling web of debt obligations. Unable to find once-plentiful manufacturing jobs, more and more suburban residents are relegated to crappy service work that strain budgets and obliterates living standards.

According to a new report by the Brookings Institution, there are now 16.5 million souls in suburban America eking out an existence below the poverty line, compared to only 13.5 million in cities. Poverty is becoming more concentrated, creating a new blot on the landscape, the suburban slum. The number of poor people living in the suburbs has skyrocketed by 65 percent in the past 14 years—growing twice as fast as urban areas.

The familiarity of the suburbs has turned unheimlich, to use Freud’s term for the uncanny, that queasy feeling you get when you notice that things are not in their proper place. Something that was supposed to be foreign — material want — has taken up residence. You can see it creeping slowly into the tangle of untended yards. Popping up in for-sale and foreclosure signs. Spreading in the scum that floats on neglected swimming pools. Weighing upon the slumped shoulders of the down-and-out who trudge along roads where once only sleek automobiles glided.

[pipoman]

1. it is the urban/suburban circle of life

As the suburbs have aged the inner-cities have undergone revitalization with upscale living. Every city I have been to is doing this. The poor have to relocate elsewhere, and the current less expensive housing is in the aging suburbs. As the suburbs age over the next 20 years so will the cities. At some point neighborhoods in the burbs will be so aged that it will be reasonable to buy them up, clear them out, and rebuild there using the savings of the preexisting infrastructure. It is modern evolution.

[Romulox]

2. Funny how this corresponds with a 1/3 reduction in American's net wealth.

Probably a coincidence!

[xchrom]

4. must be a mistake some how. nt

[Eleanors38]

3. Been watching this phenomenon for yrs., esp. in the Sunbelt

The "white flight" model of development, gated communities, 9-hole golf, jogging trails, and homes with gargantuan roofs, has undergone re-packaging, but increasingly the $600k house on a lot 20 miles from town is too risky for long-term investment, and too grindingly expensive for daily commutes on sub-standard roads and no public transport. The rents in Austin are desperately high, so thousands live in the 70s-era developments -- many per house -- and clog the road system for miles. The city is Surrounded by toll roads which are losing money for their foreign investor/owners; who can afford several dollars a day? I certainly don't use them, and won't. But I live in a sagging 2-1 with busted AC, leaky roof, Truman-era plumbing & elect, living on SS, a few blks from $3 mill. high-rise condos. My lot is worth only half a mil.