CHRISTOPHER B. LEINBERGER
November 25, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/26/opinion/the-death-of-the-fringe-suburb.html
DRIVE through any number of outer-ring suburbs in America, and you’ll see boarded-up and vacant strip malls, surrounded by vast seas of empty parking spaces. These forlorn monuments to the real estate crash are not going to come back to life, even when the economy recovers. And that’s because the demand for the housing that once supported commercial activity in many exurbs isn’t coming back, either.
By now, nearly five years after the housing crash, most Americans understand that a mortgage meltdown was the catalyst for the Great Recession, facilitated by underregulation of finance and reckless risk-taking. Less understood is the divergence between center cities and inner-ring suburbs on one hand, and the suburban fringe on the other.
It was predominantly the collapse of the car-dependent suburban fringe that caused the mortgage collapse.
In the late 1990s, high-end outer suburbs contained most of the expensive housing in the United States, as measured by price per square foot, according to data I analyzed from the Zillow real estate database. Today, the most expensive housing is in the high-density, pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods of the center city and inner suburbs. Some of the most expensive neighborhoods in their metropolitan areas are Capitol Hill in Seattle; Virginia Highland in Atlanta; German Village in Columbus, Ohio, and Logan Circle in Washington. Considered slums as recently as 30 years ago, they have been transformed by gentrification.
Simply put, there has been a profound structural shift — a reversal of what took place in the 1950s, when drivable suburbs boomed and flourished as center cities emptied and withered.
The shift is durable and lasting because of a major demographic event: the convergence of the two largest generations in American history, the baby boomers (born between 1946 and 1964) and the millennials (born between 1979 and 1996), which today represent half of the total population.
Many boomers are now empty nesters and approaching retirement. Generally this means that they will downsize their housing in the near future. Boomers want to live in a walkable urban downtown, a suburban town center or a small town, according to a recent survey by the National Association of Realtors.
The millennials are just now beginning to emerge from the nest — at least those who can afford to live on their own. This coming-of-age cohort also favors urban downtowns and suburban town centers — for lifestyle reasons and the convenience of not having to own cars.
Over all, only 12 percent of future homebuyers want the drivable suburban-fringe houses that are in such oversupply, according to the Realtors survey. This lack of demand all but guarantees continued price declines. Boomers selling their fringe housing will only add to the glut. Nothing the federal government can do will reverse this.
Many drivable-fringe house prices are now below replacement value, meaning the land under the house has no value and the sticks and bricks are worth less than they would cost to replace. This means there is no financial incentive to maintain the house; the next dollar invested will not be recouped upon resale. Many of these houses will be converted to rentals, which are rarely as well maintained as owner-occupied housing. Add the fact that the houses were built with cheap materials and methods to begin with, and you see why many fringe suburbs are turning into slums, with abandoned housing and rising crime.
The good news is that there is great pent-up demand for walkable, centrally located neighborhoods in cities like Portland, Denver, Philadelphia and Chattanooga, Tenn. The transformation of suburbia can be seen in places like Arlington County, Va., Bellevue, Wash., and Pasadena, Calif., where strip malls have been bulldozed and replaced by higher-density mixed-use developments with good transit connections.
Reinvesting in America’s built environment — which makes up a third of the country’s assets — and reviving the construction trades are vital for lifting our economic growth rate. (Disclosure: I am the president of Locus, a coalition of real estate developers and investors and a project of Smart Growth America, which supports walkable neighborhoods and transit-oriented development.)
Some critics will say that investment in the built environment risks repeating the mistake that caused the recession in the first place. That reasoning is as faulty as saying that technology should have been neglected after the dot-com bust, which precipitated the 2001 recession.
The cities and inner-ring suburbs that will be the foundation of the recovery require significant investment at a time of government retrenchment. Bus and light-rail systems, bike lanes and pedestrian improvements — what traffic engineers dismissively call “alternative transportation” — are vital. So is the repair of infrastructure like roads and bridges. Places as diverse as Los Angeles, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, Dallas, Charlotte, Denver and Washington have recently voted to pay for “alternative transportation,” mindful of the dividends to be reaped. As Congress works to reauthorize highway and transit legislation, it must give metropolitan areas greater flexibility for financing transportation, rather than mandating that the vast bulk of the money can be used only for roads.
For too long, we over-invested in the wrong places. Those retail centers and subdivisions will never be worth what they cost to build. We have to stop throwing good money after bad. It is time to instead build what the market wants: mixed-income, walkable cities and suburbs that will support the knowledge economy, promote environmental sustainability and create jobs.
Christopher B. Leinberger is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and professor of practice in urban and regional planning at the University of Michigan.
A version of this op-ed appeared in print on November 26, 2011, on page A19 of the New York edition with the headline: The Death of the Fringe Suburb.
Showing posts with label Suburbs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Suburbs. Show all posts
Friday, December 23, 2011
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Please Don't Bomb the Suburbs
From Amazon.com:
Please Don't Bomb the Suburbs: A Midterm Report on My Generation and the Future of Our Super Movement
William Upski Wimsatt
List Price: $14.95
Price: $9.66 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25.
You Save: $5.29 (35%)
Kindle Edition $9.18
"PLEASE DON'T BOMB THE SUBURBS is a book for middle-aging youth activists who are still passionate about fighting for a revolutionary new society, but recognize the importance of a visionary long-term, sustained movement in achieving change. Simply put, Billy Wimsatt has grown up. [...] And he wants us to grow up, too."
-- CounterPunch
"Wimsatt's level of sincerity and enthusiasm is refreshing and bracing, and the book stands as a reminder that anybody who wants to help improve the world can find plenty of ways to get busy, and also have a great time doing it."
-- Literary Kicks
[A] sober and funny assessment of where activism is and where it needs to go.
-- In These Times
Here's what the critics have to say about William Upski Wimsatt's previous work:
"Spiritual heir to Norman Mailer."
— The Atlantic
"Wimsatt's charisma stems from his courage."
— Cornel West
"Bomb the Suburbs and No More Prisons are cult classics deftly reflecting the hip-hop generation's maturation."
— Miami New Times
"A refreshing voice for Generation X."
— Library Journal
"Ahead of the curve."
— Spin
As a potty-mouthed graffiti writer from the South Side of Chicago, William Upski Wimsatt electrified the literary and hip-hop world with two of the most successful underground classic books in a generation, Bomb the Suburbs (1994) and No More Prisons (1999), which, combined, sold more than ninety thousand copies.
In Please Don't Bomb the Suburbs, Wimsatt weaves a first-person tour of America's cultural and political movements from 1985–2010. It's a story about love, growing up, a generation coming of age, and a vision for the movement young people will create in the new decade. With humor, storytelling, and historical insight, Wimsatt lays out a provocative vision for the next twenty-five years of personal and historical transformation. Never heard of Billy Wimsatt before? Your life just got better.
William Upski Wimsatt is the author of Bomb the Suburbs and No More Prisons. A maverick graffiti artist, journalist, and political and philanthropic organizer, Wimsatt has appeared in dozens of publications and is a popular speaker at colleges and conferences. He founded the League of Young Voters, worked for Barack Obama in Ohio, and co-organized the first-ever briefing of social justice artists with the White House. He was honored as a "visionary" by Utne Reader and included in The Source's "Power 30" list. He lives in Brooklyn.
Product Details
Paperback: 216 pages
Publisher: Akashic Books (September 14, 2010)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1936070596
ISBN-13: 978-1936070596
Paperback:
http://www.amazon.com/Please-Dont-Bomb-Suburbs-Generation/dp/1936070596/thekonformist
Kindle:
http://www.amazon.com/Please-Dont-Bomb-Suburbs-ebook/dp/B0043D2F7Q/thekonformist
Bomb the Suburbs
From Amazon.com:
Bomb the Suburbs: Graffiti, Race, Freight-Hopping and the Search for Hip-Hop's Moral Center
William Upski Wimsatt
List Price: $13.95
Price: $11.16 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25.
You Save: $2.79 (20%)
Kindle Edition $9.99
"His charisma stems from his courage." -- Cornel West
"The best book I read in prison." -- Tupac Shakur
"Wimsatt is known as one of the original `hip hop journalists.' ...he is engaging, experimental, and youthful. You will love his riffs of everything hypocritical and everything cool in today's world. He's one of those white guys who `get it' and connect to African American culture without being cloying or patronizing." -- Great Books for High School Kids: A Teacher's Guide to Books That Can Change Teens' Lives by Rick Ayers and Amy Crawford (Beacon, 2004)?
"[O]ne of the first and most eloquent articulations of the politics and worldview of what would later be termed the Hip Hop Generation." -- AlterNet
Should graffiti writers organize to tear up the cities, or should they really be bombing the ‘burbs? That’s the question posed by William Upski Wimsatt in his seminal foray into the world of hip-hop, rap, and street art, and the culture and politics that surround it. But to say that the book deals only with taggers and hip-hop is selling it short. Taking on a broad range of topics, including suburban sprawl, racial identity, and youth activism, Wimsatt (a graffiti artist himself) uses a kaleidoscopic approach that combines stories, cartoons, interviews, disses, parodies, and original research to challenge the suburban mindset wherever it’s found: suburbs and corporate headquarters, inner cities and housing projects, even in hip-hop itself. Funny, provocative, and painfully honest, Bomb the Suburbs encourages readers to expand their social boundaries and explore the vibrant, chaotic world that exists beyond their comfort zones.
Product Details
Paperback: 176 pages
Publisher: Soft Skull Press; 15th anniversary edition (January 28, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1933368551
ISBN-13: 978-1933368559
Paperback:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1933368551/thekonformist
Kindle:
http://www.amazon.com/Bomb-Suburbs-Graffiti-Freight-Hopping-ebook/dp/B002PY7L7Y/thekonformist
Five myths about the suburbs
William Upski Wimsatt
Friday, February 11, 2011
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/11/AR2011021102615_pf.html
In the early 1990s, I wrote a book called "Bomb the Suburbs" celebrating hip-hop culture and cities ("bomb" is slang for writing graffiti). The angry title captured the mood of many of my fellow Chicagoans: resentment at white flight and the asphyxiation of city and small-town life by chain stores and sidewalk-free dead zones.
But today, the suburbs aren't what they used to be. Since more than 50 percent of Americans live in them, suburbs have become more like cities, while cities have become more like suburbs, complete with gated communities and big-box stores. For better or worse, the suburbs reflect America, so let's dispense with a few misunderstandings about where most of us call home.
1. Suburbs are white, middle-class enclaves.
Not anymore. One-third of suburbanites across the country are racial or ethnic minorities, up from 19 percent in 1990. Students in suburban public schools are 20 percent Hispanic, 15 percent African American and 6 percent Asian American.
Nor are the suburbs necessarily wealthy. From 1999 to 2008, according to the Brookings Institution, suburban poverty grew a whopping 25 percent. In our 95 largest metro areas, poverty grew five times as fast in the suburbs as in adjoining cities. Today, one-third of the nation's poor live in suburbs.
For example, Chicago's southern suburbs include some of the poorest places in America - municipalities such as Robbins, Phoenix and Harvey - just like the city's South Side. But they're spread out, with limited public transit to shopping, schools and jobs.
2. Suburbs aren't cool.
In August, Travel and Leisure featured the nation's 26 "coolest suburbs" that "blow up the stereotype" of these communities as "boring, conformist places." The magazine focused on older suburbs with traditional town centers, such as Mt. Lebanon, Pa.; Birmingham, Mich.; Lakewood, Ohio; and other "culinary and cultural hot spots."
Just consider the Washington region. Did you ever imagine that spoken-word poetry would take root in Rosslyn, Vienna, Chevy Chase and Kensington? Did you ever think that the District's go-go music scene - largely exiled from the city by higher rents and a yuppie-friendly Alcoholic Beverage Regulation Administration - would take refuge in Prince George's County? Did you ever dream that Busboys and Poets could thrive near the characterless condos of Shirlington?
3. Suburbs are a product of the free market.
Suburbs are a big government handout if there ever was one. Taxpayers are on the hook for the new roads, water and sewer lines, schools, parks, and police and fire services that make it possible for "self-made" suburbanites to live on the outskirts of town.
And building suburbs is expensive. A 2008 study by Arthur C. Nelson, a professor of city and metropolitan planning at the University of Utah, estimated that it costs as much as $13,426 per resident when a new suburban development is built. In sprawl-plagued Atlanta, property tax rates rose 22 percent from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s as suburban development boomed. But during that same period in Portland, Ore., where the state protected rural land from suburban encroachment with restrictive zoning laws in 1973, property taxes dropped 29 percent.
Suburbia's municipal fragmentation also makes government inefficient. New Jersey is rife with corruption in part because of the expense and complexity of maintaining 566 separate municipalities, each with its own city government, school districts and police force. If Gov. Chris Christie wants to cut government waste, he should lean on adjacent municipalities with duplicative services to merge.
4. Suburbs are politically conservative.
In the 2010 midterms, a majority of America's suburbanites voted Republican. Until progressives create an equivalent to Premiere Radio Networks (which carries Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh), conservatives will have an advantage in communicating with suburban voters during long commutes. Ten million to 20 million people a week, for instance, tune in to Limbaugh for up to 15 hours on 600 local stations.
But don't think the suburbs will vote Republican forever. In 2006 and 2008, suburbanites split the vote. Virginia's 11th Congressional District, representing chunks of Fairfax and Prince William counties, is a typical swing district. In 2000, it went for George W. Bush 52 percent to 45 percent. In 2008, it went for Obama 57 percent to 42 percent and elected Democrat Gerry Connolly to Congress, then in 2010 reelected Connolly amid huge Democratic losses nationwide. As suburbs become more like cities - denser and more diverse - they are likely to trend progressive in the decades to come.
5. Suburbanites don't care about the environment.
According to the American Farmland Trust, the United States loses more than 1.4 million acres of farmland, forest and wetlands to suburban sprawl each year. Between 1982 and 2007, sprawl devoured an area the size of Illinois and New Jersey combined.
But suburbanites are becoming more ecologically aware. Some Cleveland suburbs are partnering with the city to buy solar panels. According to The Washington Post, the number of farmers markets is surging around the country - in Chicago, there are more of them in the suburbs than in the city. And suburbanites are using online carpools such as eRideShare.com to cut commuting costs. Suburban D.C. even has its own brand of ride-sharing called slugging. The practice began during the energy crisis in the 1970s to take advantage of HOV lanes, and as instability in the Middle East pushes oil prices near $100 per barrel, it's on the rise.
Many suburbs are also beating cities when it comes to recycling. Chicago, supposedly green, recycles less than 19 percent of its waste, compared with 40 percent in Arlington, Va. And a place like Community Forklift - a vast warehouse in Edmonston, Md., where used building materials are resold for a fraction of their original cost - couldn't afford to pay rent in the District.
For the eco-minded, there's even a silver lining to population growth: If the United States adds 110 million more people by 2050 as the census predicts, suburbs will have to grow denser, more walkable and more public-transit-friendly, increasing our sense of shared identity.
Everyone with a prejudice against the suburbs will have to get over it. Even me.
billywimsatt@gmail.com
William Upski Wimsatt is the author, most recently, of "Please Don't Bomb the Suburbs."
Friday, February 11, 2011
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/11/AR2011021102615_pf.html
In the early 1990s, I wrote a book called "Bomb the Suburbs" celebrating hip-hop culture and cities ("bomb" is slang for writing graffiti). The angry title captured the mood of many of my fellow Chicagoans: resentment at white flight and the asphyxiation of city and small-town life by chain stores and sidewalk-free dead zones.
But today, the suburbs aren't what they used to be. Since more than 50 percent of Americans live in them, suburbs have become more like cities, while cities have become more like suburbs, complete with gated communities and big-box stores. For better or worse, the suburbs reflect America, so let's dispense with a few misunderstandings about where most of us call home.
1. Suburbs are white, middle-class enclaves.
Not anymore. One-third of suburbanites across the country are racial or ethnic minorities, up from 19 percent in 1990. Students in suburban public schools are 20 percent Hispanic, 15 percent African American and 6 percent Asian American.
Nor are the suburbs necessarily wealthy. From 1999 to 2008, according to the Brookings Institution, suburban poverty grew a whopping 25 percent. In our 95 largest metro areas, poverty grew five times as fast in the suburbs as in adjoining cities. Today, one-third of the nation's poor live in suburbs.
For example, Chicago's southern suburbs include some of the poorest places in America - municipalities such as Robbins, Phoenix and Harvey - just like the city's South Side. But they're spread out, with limited public transit to shopping, schools and jobs.
2. Suburbs aren't cool.
In August, Travel and Leisure featured the nation's 26 "coolest suburbs" that "blow up the stereotype" of these communities as "boring, conformist places." The magazine focused on older suburbs with traditional town centers, such as Mt. Lebanon, Pa.; Birmingham, Mich.; Lakewood, Ohio; and other "culinary and cultural hot spots."
Just consider the Washington region. Did you ever imagine that spoken-word poetry would take root in Rosslyn, Vienna, Chevy Chase and Kensington? Did you ever think that the District's go-go music scene - largely exiled from the city by higher rents and a yuppie-friendly Alcoholic Beverage Regulation Administration - would take refuge in Prince George's County? Did you ever dream that Busboys and Poets could thrive near the characterless condos of Shirlington?
3. Suburbs are a product of the free market.
Suburbs are a big government handout if there ever was one. Taxpayers are on the hook for the new roads, water and sewer lines, schools, parks, and police and fire services that make it possible for "self-made" suburbanites to live on the outskirts of town.
And building suburbs is expensive. A 2008 study by Arthur C. Nelson, a professor of city and metropolitan planning at the University of Utah, estimated that it costs as much as $13,426 per resident when a new suburban development is built. In sprawl-plagued Atlanta, property tax rates rose 22 percent from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s as suburban development boomed. But during that same period in Portland, Ore., where the state protected rural land from suburban encroachment with restrictive zoning laws in 1973, property taxes dropped 29 percent.
Suburbia's municipal fragmentation also makes government inefficient. New Jersey is rife with corruption in part because of the expense and complexity of maintaining 566 separate municipalities, each with its own city government, school districts and police force. If Gov. Chris Christie wants to cut government waste, he should lean on adjacent municipalities with duplicative services to merge.
4. Suburbs are politically conservative.
In the 2010 midterms, a majority of America's suburbanites voted Republican. Until progressives create an equivalent to Premiere Radio Networks (which carries Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh), conservatives will have an advantage in communicating with suburban voters during long commutes. Ten million to 20 million people a week, for instance, tune in to Limbaugh for up to 15 hours on 600 local stations.
But don't think the suburbs will vote Republican forever. In 2006 and 2008, suburbanites split the vote. Virginia's 11th Congressional District, representing chunks of Fairfax and Prince William counties, is a typical swing district. In 2000, it went for George W. Bush 52 percent to 45 percent. In 2008, it went for Obama 57 percent to 42 percent and elected Democrat Gerry Connolly to Congress, then in 2010 reelected Connolly amid huge Democratic losses nationwide. As suburbs become more like cities - denser and more diverse - they are likely to trend progressive in the decades to come.
5. Suburbanites don't care about the environment.
According to the American Farmland Trust, the United States loses more than 1.4 million acres of farmland, forest and wetlands to suburban sprawl each year. Between 1982 and 2007, sprawl devoured an area the size of Illinois and New Jersey combined.
But suburbanites are becoming more ecologically aware. Some Cleveland suburbs are partnering with the city to buy solar panels. According to The Washington Post, the number of farmers markets is surging around the country - in Chicago, there are more of them in the suburbs than in the city. And suburbanites are using online carpools such as eRideShare.com to cut commuting costs. Suburban D.C. even has its own brand of ride-sharing called slugging. The practice began during the energy crisis in the 1970s to take advantage of HOV lanes, and as instability in the Middle East pushes oil prices near $100 per barrel, it's on the rise.
Many suburbs are also beating cities when it comes to recycling. Chicago, supposedly green, recycles less than 19 percent of its waste, compared with 40 percent in Arlington, Va. And a place like Community Forklift - a vast warehouse in Edmonston, Md., where used building materials are resold for a fraction of their original cost - couldn't afford to pay rent in the District.
For the eco-minded, there's even a silver lining to population growth: If the United States adds 110 million more people by 2050 as the census predicts, suburbs will have to grow denser, more walkable and more public-transit-friendly, increasing our sense of shared identity.
Everyone with a prejudice against the suburbs will have to get over it. Even me.
billywimsatt@gmail.com
William Upski Wimsatt is the author, most recently, of "Please Don't Bomb the Suburbs."
Sunday, January 25, 2009
The Suburban Challenge
http://www.newsweek.com/id/180028
The Suburban Challenge
Washington needs to recognize that many of the country's biggest problems—and biggest opportunities—have moved beyond the city limits to the burbs.
Bruce Katz and Jennifer Bradley
NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated Jan 26, 2009
The suburb is one of America's most treasured stereotypes. Writers can argue whether suburbs are the apotheosis of the American Dream or a suffocating nightmare of sameness, but there's general agreement on their defining characteristics. Suburbs are middle-class family values expressed in stucco, brick and carpet grass. They're all the things that America's noisy, diverse, striving, poor cities are not.
But the suburbs as we think of them are vanishing.
They no longer represent a retreat from the tumult of American life, but the locus of it. What do we do now that they resemble our cities, in good ways and bad?
Suburbs now provide more jobs than cities. Only about 22 percent of jobs in major metropolitan areas are located within three miles of a traditional downtown; twice as many are more than 10 miles out. Suburbs also host more immigrants: in the largest metropolitan areas, nearly six in 10 foreign-born residents now live in the suburbs. In places like Charlotte, N.C., Minneapolis, Sacramento, Calif., and Washington, the first address of many new Americans is most likely down a suburban lane.
Then there are the downsides. Nationwide, a million more suburbanites are living below the poverty line than city dwellers. Suburban St. Louis County, Mo., has 50 percent more working-poor families than the city of St. Louis itself. The mortgage crisis only adds to the problems. The foreclosure rate in Clayton County, which encompasses many of Atlanta's southern suburbs, is twice as high as that in Atlanta. Homes in neighborhoods close to downtown Chicago, Pittsburgh and Portland, Ore., have held their value, while prices for homes far from those urban cores have plummeted, according to new research by Joe Cortright, an economist at Impresa Consulting.
America can't ensure its leading place in the global economy unless we grapple with the problems and opportunities of our suburbs. Nonprofits, long focused on inner cities, need to reach out to poor families and immigrants in the suburbs. The federal government should support the production and preservation of affordable housing there. Even more important, Washington needs to recognize that suburban governments are being flattened by the housing crisis—they don't have the experience or the capacity to slow the tide of foreclosures or deal with neighborhoods strafed by vacancies. The Feds need to use some of the billions in recovery funding to help local governments buy up foreclosed properties and put that land to productive use.
The challenge goes beyond the current crisis. The mental line between city and suburb no longer makes much sense; policies need to treat metropolitan areas as a whole. Washington should support regional clusters for high-tech industries and other sectors. Such clusters foster innovation and economic growth, and they don't gather neatly in one municipality or another. That's why we speak of Silicon Valley and Route 128, rather than San Jose or Boston. Federal job-training funds should reflect the way metropolitan economies actually work: in clusters of firms that span boundaries.
And all levels of government need to reinvent the physical landscape. We need to create walkable communities and more public transit to link people in the burbs to jobs, schools, concert halls and sports fields that may be in the next neighborhood, the next municipality or the next county. As much as they may love their SUVs, suburbanites would benefit from lower greenhouse-gas emissions, less traffic and higher housing values (proximity to transit boosts home prices).
The federal government has a key role to play by providing funds and lowering regulatory hurdles. Certainly President Barack Obama seems aware of the challenge: he has decried the "outdated 'urban' agenda that focuses exclusively on the problems in our cities, and ignores our growing metro areas" and has pledged "a strategy that's about South Florida as much as Miami; that's about Mesa and Scottsdale as much as Phoenix; that's about Stamford and northern New Jersey as much as New York City." His office of urban policy promises to be the generator of that strategy.
The end of the (traditional) suburbs was inevitable. Hopeful, mobile Americans may once have thought they could leave behind the pressures, demands and compromises of city life. But social concerns inexorably follow society. Our leaders, starting with a metro-minded president, now have to make the mental jump across the urban-suburban boundary, and catch up.
Katz is a vice president at the Brookings Institution and founder and director of its Metropolitan Policy Program. Bradley is a senior research associate there.
The Suburban Challenge
Washington needs to recognize that many of the country's biggest problems—and biggest opportunities—have moved beyond the city limits to the burbs.
Bruce Katz and Jennifer Bradley
NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated Jan 26, 2009
The suburb is one of America's most treasured stereotypes. Writers can argue whether suburbs are the apotheosis of the American Dream or a suffocating nightmare of sameness, but there's general agreement on their defining characteristics. Suburbs are middle-class family values expressed in stucco, brick and carpet grass. They're all the things that America's noisy, diverse, striving, poor cities are not.
But the suburbs as we think of them are vanishing.
They no longer represent a retreat from the tumult of American life, but the locus of it. What do we do now that they resemble our cities, in good ways and bad?
Suburbs now provide more jobs than cities. Only about 22 percent of jobs in major metropolitan areas are located within three miles of a traditional downtown; twice as many are more than 10 miles out. Suburbs also host more immigrants: in the largest metropolitan areas, nearly six in 10 foreign-born residents now live in the suburbs. In places like Charlotte, N.C., Minneapolis, Sacramento, Calif., and Washington, the first address of many new Americans is most likely down a suburban lane.
Then there are the downsides. Nationwide, a million more suburbanites are living below the poverty line than city dwellers. Suburban St. Louis County, Mo., has 50 percent more working-poor families than the city of St. Louis itself. The mortgage crisis only adds to the problems. The foreclosure rate in Clayton County, which encompasses many of Atlanta's southern suburbs, is twice as high as that in Atlanta. Homes in neighborhoods close to downtown Chicago, Pittsburgh and Portland, Ore., have held their value, while prices for homes far from those urban cores have plummeted, according to new research by Joe Cortright, an economist at Impresa Consulting.
America can't ensure its leading place in the global economy unless we grapple with the problems and opportunities of our suburbs. Nonprofits, long focused on inner cities, need to reach out to poor families and immigrants in the suburbs. The federal government should support the production and preservation of affordable housing there. Even more important, Washington needs to recognize that suburban governments are being flattened by the housing crisis—they don't have the experience or the capacity to slow the tide of foreclosures or deal with neighborhoods strafed by vacancies. The Feds need to use some of the billions in recovery funding to help local governments buy up foreclosed properties and put that land to productive use.
The challenge goes beyond the current crisis. The mental line between city and suburb no longer makes much sense; policies need to treat metropolitan areas as a whole. Washington should support regional clusters for high-tech industries and other sectors. Such clusters foster innovation and economic growth, and they don't gather neatly in one municipality or another. That's why we speak of Silicon Valley and Route 128, rather than San Jose or Boston. Federal job-training funds should reflect the way metropolitan economies actually work: in clusters of firms that span boundaries.
And all levels of government need to reinvent the physical landscape. We need to create walkable communities and more public transit to link people in the burbs to jobs, schools, concert halls and sports fields that may be in the next neighborhood, the next municipality or the next county. As much as they may love their SUVs, suburbanites would benefit from lower greenhouse-gas emissions, less traffic and higher housing values (proximity to transit boosts home prices).
The federal government has a key role to play by providing funds and lowering regulatory hurdles. Certainly President Barack Obama seems aware of the challenge: he has decried the "outdated 'urban' agenda that focuses exclusively on the problems in our cities, and ignores our growing metro areas" and has pledged "a strategy that's about South Florida as much as Miami; that's about Mesa and Scottsdale as much as Phoenix; that's about Stamford and northern New Jersey as much as New York City." His office of urban policy promises to be the generator of that strategy.
The end of the (traditional) suburbs was inevitable. Hopeful, mobile Americans may once have thought they could leave behind the pressures, demands and compromises of city life. But social concerns inexorably follow society. Our leaders, starting with a metro-minded president, now have to make the mental jump across the urban-suburban boundary, and catch up.
Katz is a vice president at the Brookings Institution and founder and director of its Metropolitan Policy Program. Bradley is a senior research associate there.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Is Suburbia Turning Into Slumburbia?
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/03/14/carollloyd.DTL
Is Suburbia Turning Into Slumburbia?
By Carol Lloyd, Special to SF Gate
Friday, March 14, 2008
Every coin has its flip side. Last week, I explored how San Francisco and other centers of innovation around the globe are resisting the downward vortex of the housing market. These fabled super cities, Richard Florida contends in his new book, "Who's Your City," are attracting an increasingly disproportionate number of educated, creative knowledge workers who fuel the economy. In turn, these folks are keeping housing prices relatively high despite recurring appearances of the R-word on our front pages.
The dark side of this surreality is that the places far from these hallowed urban cores are experiencing unprecedented decline and, according to some experts, threaten to become tomorrow's slums.
We're not talking about mean inner city streets getting meaner, we're talking about the pristine, newly built developments of four-bedroom, three-bath dream homes produced in the last housing boom becoming ghettos for the poor and the disenfranchised.
Slumburbia? After decades of middle class flight from the cities in search of safe neighborhoods and good schools — a flight that continues today even from gentrified cities like San Francisco — it's hard to conjure the image of a truly derelict suburbia. Will all those manicured lawns sprout weeds and broken bottles like a Baltimore back alley? Will drug dealers take over the local cul-de-sac? Will squatters set up camp in the neighbor's McMansion?
All this seems unfathomable, but it's the prediction du jour for some urban planners who make it their business to track the larger sociological implications of our land use.
Of course, we've all heard about the tsunami of foreclosures that has descended on much of the country. But not all real estate disaster areas are created equal: This week RealtyTrac released new foreclosure numbers about cities that were hit the hardest in February. Stockton, with nearly 5 percent of all households at some stage of foreclosure, got the honor of ringing up the second highest foreclosure rate nationwide, after Cape Coral-Fort Myers, Fla. Other sprawling California regions dominated the list: Modesto at No. 3, Merced at No. 4, Riverside-San Bernardino at No. 5, Bakersfield at No. 7, Vallejo-Fairfield at No. 8, and Sacramento at No. 9.
What do all these places have in common? Suburbs upon sprawling new suburbs. Does this suggest that the American dream of the large-lot single family home is doomed? Some experts think so.
"Over the last few decades we've structurally overinvested in fringe real estate," explains Christopher Leinberger, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institute and a former developer. "Builders are experts in overbuilding, in terms of cyclical overbuilding, like lemmings to the sea. But this time it's different. It's not just a cycle. It's going to take more than two or three years to recover from this."
Last fall, Leinberger published "The Option of Urbanism," a book about the changing sociology of the built environment. Like Florida, he sees the growing attraction to urban living as a matter of critical importance. This month, his essay in the Atlantic magazine provocatively asserts that McMansion developments would deteriorate into crime ridden, impoverished slums. In the piece he mentions several instances of suburban neighborhoods getting hit so hard by the recent downturn that they already exhibit the tell-tale signs of deep decline: Looters stealing copper pipe and siding from new homes, gunshots puncturing picture-perfect facades, squatters taking up residence in abandoned houses.
When asked if the edge suburbs are turning into slums, Florida concurs with Leinberger's ominous vision, "Yes, they are already well on their way," he says. "The knowledge workers can't afford the time cost, they can't afford the commuting time."
But mostly Leinberger is predicting the future rather than describing the present, arguing that the pendulum has swung too far toward isolated, car-dependent single-family-home neighborhoods to be sustainable. (In his description of the city, he's not including older inner suburbs like Berkeley or Palo Alto that have walkable urban neighborhoods and public transit; he's talking about the hillsides of homes detached from urbanized towns.) Now with high gas prices, long commutes, a bad job market and a new attraction to walkable urban living, it's just a matter of time before suburban fringes begin to absorb the people that can't make it in the city.
If newly built suburbs in decline sound like a less formidable problem than the neglect and misery of our inner cities beginning in the 1960s, with their generation after generation of children raised amid violence, drug addiction and hopelessness, maybe our imaginations are failing us. In Europe, where the cities never died, the suburbs have long been the homes of last resort for the poor and the marginalized. Just last week, French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced yet another plan to revive the suburban slums that erupted in riots in 2005 — the 16th such proposal in 31 years.
Florida and Leinberger say that retooling the suburbs is going to make urban renewal look like a walk in the park.
"Suburb development is really fragile," Leinberger explains. "It's going to be very complex to rebuild."
As Leinberger notes, new suburbs tend to be situated far from public transport, social services and commerce, so they are particularly bad places for people who can't afford cars. The housing stock isn't terribly flexible. Compared to the sturdy older buildings in the city that got chopped up into apartments, it's not easy to take a production-built house with three bedrooms and turn it into good multifamily housing. What's more, the neighborhood infrastructure isn't designed for higher density or commercial uses: The streets are often thinner, the pipes and drainage not built for heavier use.
Newer suburbs are also financially vulnerable: They depend on developers' fees and property taxes to pay for the communities. "When the growth stops and the property values fall," says Leinberger, "suddenly you're going to have this wicked situation where social costs are rising as funding dries up, but without any other tax sources from commercial or industrial activity."
This inherent fragility springs from some of the same regulations that make suburbs easier to build and therefore better bets for developers. By definition, suburbs are zoned for residential single family or maybe residential low density multifamily. They don't require the complex planning or infrastructure building essential for commercial, industrial and high density housing. In many parts of the country — whether through state law or local ordinances — single family housing is the only new development that can be legally built. And because Fannie Mae will not finance rental developments that predict that more than 25 percent of the rent will come from nonresidential income, mixed use developments — like old fashioned main streets where apartments are built above the bakery and the butcher shop — are often perceived as more risky.
"It's not the developers' fault," explains John Norquist, former mayor of Milwaukee, Wis., and president of the Congress for the New Urbanism. "They didn't create this system, they just inherited it."
Despite all this doom and gloom, the experts say we may be witnessing the evolution of the American dream toward a far healthier, more ecological vision.
"It's an enormous opportunity," says Norquist, "Thirty percent of the housing stock that will exist in 2030 hasn't been built yet. Developers who are creating walkable neighborhoods are doing very well." Indeed, the fact that Americans are embracing walkable neighborhoods is a good thing for their waistlines, their pocketbooks and the planet. "(Al) Gore talks about the inconvenient truth," says Norquist, "I call this the convenient solution: living in a more urban way."
To accelerate this trend, Leinberger is trying to work with cities that don't have revived downtowns to help pave the way for the kind of walkable redevelopment that will attract jobs and residents. Building walkable urban developments won't guarantee a city's success, says Leinberger, but it is an essential first step.
"If you build, will they come?" asks Leinberger. "You just don't know. But if you don't build it, there's not a prayer they will come."
Is Suburbia Turning Into Slumburbia?
By Carol Lloyd, Special to SF Gate
Friday, March 14, 2008
Every coin has its flip side. Last week, I explored how San Francisco and other centers of innovation around the globe are resisting the downward vortex of the housing market. These fabled super cities, Richard Florida contends in his new book, "Who's Your City," are attracting an increasingly disproportionate number of educated, creative knowledge workers who fuel the economy. In turn, these folks are keeping housing prices relatively high despite recurring appearances of the R-word on our front pages.
The dark side of this surreality is that the places far from these hallowed urban cores are experiencing unprecedented decline and, according to some experts, threaten to become tomorrow's slums.
We're not talking about mean inner city streets getting meaner, we're talking about the pristine, newly built developments of four-bedroom, three-bath dream homes produced in the last housing boom becoming ghettos for the poor and the disenfranchised.
Slumburbia? After decades of middle class flight from the cities in search of safe neighborhoods and good schools — a flight that continues today even from gentrified cities like San Francisco — it's hard to conjure the image of a truly derelict suburbia. Will all those manicured lawns sprout weeds and broken bottles like a Baltimore back alley? Will drug dealers take over the local cul-de-sac? Will squatters set up camp in the neighbor's McMansion?
All this seems unfathomable, but it's the prediction du jour for some urban planners who make it their business to track the larger sociological implications of our land use.
Of course, we've all heard about the tsunami of foreclosures that has descended on much of the country. But not all real estate disaster areas are created equal: This week RealtyTrac released new foreclosure numbers about cities that were hit the hardest in February. Stockton, with nearly 5 percent of all households at some stage of foreclosure, got the honor of ringing up the second highest foreclosure rate nationwide, after Cape Coral-Fort Myers, Fla. Other sprawling California regions dominated the list: Modesto at No. 3, Merced at No. 4, Riverside-San Bernardino at No. 5, Bakersfield at No. 7, Vallejo-Fairfield at No. 8, and Sacramento at No. 9.
What do all these places have in common? Suburbs upon sprawling new suburbs. Does this suggest that the American dream of the large-lot single family home is doomed? Some experts think so.
"Over the last few decades we've structurally overinvested in fringe real estate," explains Christopher Leinberger, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institute and a former developer. "Builders are experts in overbuilding, in terms of cyclical overbuilding, like lemmings to the sea. But this time it's different. It's not just a cycle. It's going to take more than two or three years to recover from this."
Last fall, Leinberger published "The Option of Urbanism," a book about the changing sociology of the built environment. Like Florida, he sees the growing attraction to urban living as a matter of critical importance. This month, his essay in the Atlantic magazine provocatively asserts that McMansion developments would deteriorate into crime ridden, impoverished slums. In the piece he mentions several instances of suburban neighborhoods getting hit so hard by the recent downturn that they already exhibit the tell-tale signs of deep decline: Looters stealing copper pipe and siding from new homes, gunshots puncturing picture-perfect facades, squatters taking up residence in abandoned houses.
When asked if the edge suburbs are turning into slums, Florida concurs with Leinberger's ominous vision, "Yes, they are already well on their way," he says. "The knowledge workers can't afford the time cost, they can't afford the commuting time."
But mostly Leinberger is predicting the future rather than describing the present, arguing that the pendulum has swung too far toward isolated, car-dependent single-family-home neighborhoods to be sustainable. (In his description of the city, he's not including older inner suburbs like Berkeley or Palo Alto that have walkable urban neighborhoods and public transit; he's talking about the hillsides of homes detached from urbanized towns.) Now with high gas prices, long commutes, a bad job market and a new attraction to walkable urban living, it's just a matter of time before suburban fringes begin to absorb the people that can't make it in the city.
If newly built suburbs in decline sound like a less formidable problem than the neglect and misery of our inner cities beginning in the 1960s, with their generation after generation of children raised amid violence, drug addiction and hopelessness, maybe our imaginations are failing us. In Europe, where the cities never died, the suburbs have long been the homes of last resort for the poor and the marginalized. Just last week, French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced yet another plan to revive the suburban slums that erupted in riots in 2005 — the 16th such proposal in 31 years.
Florida and Leinberger say that retooling the suburbs is going to make urban renewal look like a walk in the park.
"Suburb development is really fragile," Leinberger explains. "It's going to be very complex to rebuild."
As Leinberger notes, new suburbs tend to be situated far from public transport, social services and commerce, so they are particularly bad places for people who can't afford cars. The housing stock isn't terribly flexible. Compared to the sturdy older buildings in the city that got chopped up into apartments, it's not easy to take a production-built house with three bedrooms and turn it into good multifamily housing. What's more, the neighborhood infrastructure isn't designed for higher density or commercial uses: The streets are often thinner, the pipes and drainage not built for heavier use.
Newer suburbs are also financially vulnerable: They depend on developers' fees and property taxes to pay for the communities. "When the growth stops and the property values fall," says Leinberger, "suddenly you're going to have this wicked situation where social costs are rising as funding dries up, but without any other tax sources from commercial or industrial activity."
This inherent fragility springs from some of the same regulations that make suburbs easier to build and therefore better bets for developers. By definition, suburbs are zoned for residential single family or maybe residential low density multifamily. They don't require the complex planning or infrastructure building essential for commercial, industrial and high density housing. In many parts of the country — whether through state law or local ordinances — single family housing is the only new development that can be legally built. And because Fannie Mae will not finance rental developments that predict that more than 25 percent of the rent will come from nonresidential income, mixed use developments — like old fashioned main streets where apartments are built above the bakery and the butcher shop — are often perceived as more risky.
"It's not the developers' fault," explains John Norquist, former mayor of Milwaukee, Wis., and president of the Congress for the New Urbanism. "They didn't create this system, they just inherited it."
Despite all this doom and gloom, the experts say we may be witnessing the evolution of the American dream toward a far healthier, more ecological vision.
"It's an enormous opportunity," says Norquist, "Thirty percent of the housing stock that will exist in 2030 hasn't been built yet. Developers who are creating walkable neighborhoods are doing very well." Indeed, the fact that Americans are embracing walkable neighborhoods is a good thing for their waistlines, their pocketbooks and the planet. "(Al) Gore talks about the inconvenient truth," says Norquist, "I call this the convenient solution: living in a more urban way."
To accelerate this trend, Leinberger is trying to work with cities that don't have revived downtowns to help pave the way for the kind of walkable redevelopment that will attract jobs and residents. Building walkable urban developments won't guarantee a city's success, says Leinberger, but it is an essential first step.
"If you build, will they come?" asks Leinberger. "You just don't know. But if you don't build it, there's not a prayer they will come."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
