Why Suburbs May Become the Next Slums

[marmar]

via AlterNet:



Why Suburbs May Become the Next Slums

By David Villano, Miller-McCune.com. Posted February 18, 2009.

The poor are fleeing our cities, but life is not always greener in the suburbs, even when affordable housing comes with a two-car garage.



The financial meltdown has produced a vast patchwork of foreclosed and abandoned single-family homes across America, accelerating the decades-long migration of our nation's poor from cities to the suburban fringe. In 2005, as rising property values reduced affordable-housing stock in inner-city neighborhoods, suburban poverty, in raw numbers, topped urban poverty for the first time.

The trend will continue. By 2025, predicts planning expert Arthur C. Nelson, America will face a market surplus of 22 million large-lot homes (a sixth of an acre or more), attracting millions of low-income residents deeper into suburbia where decay and social and geographic isolation will pose challenges few see coming.

"As a society, we have fundamentally failed to address our housing policy," said Nelson, director of metropolitan research at the University of Utah. "Suburbia is overbuilt and yet we will keep on building there. Most policymakers don't see the consequences, and those who do are denying reality."

Nelson and others warn that suburbia's least desirable neighborhoods - aging, middle-class tract-home developments far from city centers and mass transit lines — are America's emerging slums, characterized by poverty, crime and other social ills. Treating those ills is complicated by the same qualities that once defined suburbia's appeal — seclusion, homogeneity and low population density. "We built too much of the suburban dream, and now it's coming back to haunt us," Nelson said.

To be sure, the low-income drift to suburbia has less to do with bucolic appeal and more to do with economics. Over the past two decades, the gospel of urbanism has spread though the American mainstream, Nelson and others argue. The young, the affluent, the professional class and empty-nesters are reclaiming the urban living experience — dense, walkable, diverse, mixed-use neighborhoods in and around city centers — while the poor disperse outward in search of cheap rent. Low-income residents often subdivide suburban homes, sharing them with multiple families. Studies reveal that population densities in suburban neighborhoods increase two to four times when low-income families replace the middle-class, Nelson said. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/story/127395/why_suburbs_may_become_the_next_slums/

[cali]

1. good article.

and a plausible scenario. Not everyplace of course, but in many places.

[ixion]

2. I've never been a fan of "suburbs"

Endless rows of generic, poorly-built McMansions (or variations thereof) have always given me the willies.

The crash will turn the suburbs into a wasteland.

[cali]

3. Many suburbs are not "endless rows of ... poorly built McMansions"

but mody suburbs share the same problem of isolation and lack of community.

[ixion]

7. most of the ones I've seen have been just that

and I've seen burbs North to South / East to West. I can't recall one that I found charming.

Just my opinion, of course. ;)

Here's a song that describes my feelings about it:

Little Boxes

1. Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky-tacky,
Little boxes, little boxes,
Little boxes, all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same.

2. And the people in the houses
All go to the university,
And they all get put in boxes,
Little boxes, all the same.
And there's doctors and there's lawyers
And business executives,
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same.

3. And they all play on the golf-course,
And drink their Martini dry,
And they all have pretty children,
And the children go to school.
And the children go to summer camp
And then to the university,
And they all get put in boxes
And they all come out the same.

4. And the boys go into business,
And marry, and raise a family,
And they all get put in boxes,
Little boxes, all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same.

[cali]

9. Oh, believe me, there are some "charming:" suburbs

The one I grew up in is so charming it makes me want to puke. Beautiful homes on lots of acreage, charming downtown and historical preservation. Average cost of a home: over 2 million.

[ixion]

10. I thought the acreages were called exurbs?

But yeah, I see your point in that context. Although suburbs, by definition, don't have an historic downtown district. That's a city or a town, and yes I agree that those can be very nice, with varying undercurrents of pleasantness or creepiness.

Suburbs are the places in between cities -- they specifically lack a downtown urban area. An usually the lot sizes are a third acre or under.


http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/suburb

sub⋅urb

–noun
1. a district lying immediately outside a city or town, esp. a smaller residential community.
2. the suburbs, the area composed of such districts.
3. an outlying part.

[cali]

11. there are a lot of wealthy suburbs around major American cites

partiucularly those in the east. And yeah, they're attractive on a certain level. And then there are suburbs like the suburbs of Burlington, VT, small towns that are now bedroom communities but still retain their essential character.

[JitterbugPerfume]

17. thanks for posting Little Boxes, made of ticky Tacky!

I love that silly song

[ixion]

21. sure thing... yeah, me, too

makes me smile. :)

[AngryAmish]

27. That is just about the most mean spirited and small minded songs I ever heard

When one looks at people and only sees objects, not real people, it is easy to demonize and dismiss them.


Yours included, most criticism of the suburbs is aesthetic - they are "cheap looking" or the ilk. It is the same us v. them situation you see in every separate social group. Like jocks and burnouts in high school.

It is petty and small minded.

[marmar]

4. I can't stand them, even though I live in one (an apartment complex, tho).....

..... I visited a friend's subdivision the other day: Four styles of oversized houses that repeat over and over again, endless circular drives that seem to go nowhere, no actual sidewalks, neighbors who don't know each other and just a creepy feeling of total fakeness.
:puke: :puke: :puke:

[Fumesucker]

6. I'm approaching sixty now..

And every single time in my life that I've gotten too chummy with my neighbors it has ended badly.

Now I pretty much keep to myself.

[KharmaTrain]

5. Actually This Is Back To Where It Once Was...

A century ago, if you lived in "the country" it was cause you couldn't afford the high rents or property values of the city. That all changed with the automobile culture that not only enticed young home buyers to move further and further from the central city, but business and industry as well...leaving totally destroyed inner cities.

The trend began to reverse in the 90's as Yuppies started to shun the suburban scene for the city one and began to "flip" areas into trendy neighborhoods. That housing bubble didn't burst as bad as suburbia and now the city looks again as the ticket to both jobs and being able to survive the tough times ahead.

Here's hoping the city's can cope with this reverse migration and money is used to help not only upgrade services that have long been neglected (transit, schools, health care), but also to seed new industry and business in these areas that would help fuel a revival of the middle class...the only ticket back to real prosperity.

Cheers...

[arcadian]

14. It actually started with the street car.

There are neighborhoods on the National Register of Historic Places that grew up in the outlying areas of places like Philadelphia, Saint Louis, Chicago, Cleveland, and much smaller cities. They called them street car suburbs because the streetcar ran right down the main drag and into the major city. Those were done away with when the automobile interests bought up the streetcars and trashed them. They put in buslines which nobody wanted to travel on so everybody started buying cars. Mass transit was trashed so that Automobile, tire and oil interest could turn a buck. It's the reason why the U.S. doesn't have public mass transit to this day.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb

[TBF]

8. We're already noticing this in our "fast-growing" suburb -

we're in outer suburbs of a large city, in one of the "fastest growing" suburbs of the country. It is a large area, and the west side is growing/thriving with new shopping centers, houses still being built, both older, quiet neighborhoods (like ours) and new McMansions are readily available. In the eastern part of the suburb, which is much older, things are starting to fall down, stores closing, and crime increasing (in both areas as you might imagine).

My spouse and I had been talking recently about moving back closer to the city, but the public schools are still good out here.

[Javaman]

12. I'm always amused by people who slam suburbs...

they fall into a few categories. 1)those that live in the city and have this superior "moral" disdain for suburbs. 2)those that live in the suburbs and have this self loathing complex 2)those that don't even know what a suburb is and feel that they must slam it because everyone else does 4)those who lump all suburbs together and label them as evil 5)those who think all suburbs are ruled by the dictatorial powers of HOA's. 6)Lastly, those who think that anyone that lives in a suburb is, by association, a moron who doesn't care about the environment, shops at china-mart, eats nothing but fast food, has kids that are on PS3 life support and don't give a rats ass about people in general.

I believe I can make a pretty good educated guess that most of the people on DU live in some sort of suburban situation. And that we/us/our parents all have been brainwashed into living this way, because for a good portion of the 20th century and into this century, we were lead to believe that this is the way things should be. Right or wrong, it's just how it is.

So condemning a whole section of society and how it lives and it being based upon the prevailing winds of change rather than historical reasons is ignorant to say the least. Because to me, it seems that slamming the suburbs is the new hate of the green movement.

There are others who believe that rather than pushing people back into over crowded cities, that we try to change our behavior and make the concept of suburbia different by definition. Look toward new foot traffic infrastructure. More bike friendly roads. Grow more of ones own food and switch to wind power and or solar.

What I also find amusing is the answer by those who hate the suburbs is that we need less people. Well, no shit sherlock. But exactly how are you going do that? Or don't you want to talk about the messy details?

Folks, rant and rave all you want about the suburbs but you know what? they are here to stay for a while. and until we get real zoning laws that deal with the issues such as raising chickens, expanding lots for the return of the corner store or mini downtowns, nothing is going to change by just condemning the suburbs in general.

And let's make something very clear, I'm talking about traditional suburbs, not the hinterland exoburbs that were forced upon society as an alternative to people unable to afford grossly jacked up over valued piles of crap mcmansions in the suburbian areas that were built to replace the older neighborhoods.

[Echo In Light]

13. Some good points. I like George Carlin's claim of enjoying living on a waterfront...

"...that way you only have assholes on three sides of you...and if they come from that direction, you can hear em splashing."

[Javaman]

16. LOL I miss George. :) nt

[hunter]

24. As cars fade away those garages facing the street can become instant storefronts.

It's already happening to some extent in my city, legal or not.

I'm glad I live in a place that has a very great potential to become walkable without a lot of fuss. I can already walk to the grocery store, even though I usually do my grocery shopping as part of my other errands. But mostly my car sits in the driveway and the spiders living on it don't seem to mind my occasional driving -- it's just an unusually windy day to them.

My wife and I decided we didn't want to be commuters a long time ago, and we've been very successful at that. It wasn't so much for environmental reasons as it was that we resented the time spent commuting.

[KatyMan]

26. Nice post

Your first paragraph is spot on.
There's nothing wrong with the suburbs. I grew up in the burbs, live in an apt in the burbs, having a house built in the burbs, and there's no way you could convince me to move into town. Just not gonna do it, especially if in town neighborhoods are filled with snide elitists who judge people simply because of where they choose to live.

And, TBF, from reading your post, methinks we're neighbors (more or less), as you can tell by my name :)

[Javaman]

29. yup, just down the block so to speak. UT land. LOL nt

[leftofthedial]

15. considering these neighborhood by and large gave us 30 years of reaganism,

I'd say they've been characterized by crime for a long time now. It's just becoming more overt.

[kwassa]

19. The suburb I live in is as blue as can be, as is the entire region.

During any election campaign here the lawns are cluttered with signs for Democratic candidates.

[leftofthedial]

20. hence the qualifier, "by and large"

[Arugula Latte]

18. Here in Portland, Ore. many of the poor are being pushed East to Gresham.

Portland keeps getting cooler and trendier and renovated, and the poor and new immigrants, etc. are moving out to the close-in 'burbs.

[Marrah_G]

22. I live in the suburbs of Boston

I grew up in the suburbs of Boston.

In a year I will be moving to yet another suburb of Boston.

None are anything like you describe in your OP.

None are going away any time soon or are becoming slums.....

[marmar]

23. I describe in my OP? I wasn't aware that I'd written this article......

Quelle surprise! :think:

[Marrah_G]

28. Sorry- the author of the article, not you.

[kwassa]

25. This article is simplistic, all suburbs are different from one another

There are suburbs that are slums right now, this is not news. Buyers also tend to prefer newer houses to old, and suburbs have been around a long time tend to suffer because of that, though if they are in prime location they will keep their value. Where ever housing is the cheapest is where the poor will go, regardless of location of housing.

The overbuilding really hit the exurbs more than anywhere, rather than the already built-up suburbs, and that is where the highest rates of foreclosure are, with the most homes bought with ARMs.

We live in a beautiful suburb, with lakes, walking paths, and parks, and good schools.

Some cities pull the affluent back into them, but many don't. Many are too rundown or dangerous to attract people, or the costs are just too high for the amount of housing space. Who wants to live in 700 square feet of space when one could live in 4000 square feet for the same price?

[progressivebydesign]

30. Thank you, you're absolutely right.

I saw that article as more doom and gloom pandering.

I have lived in suburbs all of my life, in many different areas. I've lived in mini-urban areas, etc, too. Frankly, not wanting to deal with the noise and crowds and hassles of urban life doesn't make anyone a lesser person, or less intelligent, or less sophisticated. There are too many variables regarding suburbs to take this article seriously.

[MisterP]

31. I'm more worried about the exurbs--bedroom communities nowhere near any employment

other than the gas-and-go, convenience store, or motel: the arbitrary towns in California's southern Central Valley come to mind, and maybe Rancho Cucamonga
I'm in a "mixburb," where people are allowed to grow trees and grass above 1.5 inches, and it's 0.5 mile from non-trucker-and-traveler-oriented businesses (though there's "mushroom communities" on either side: they pop up overnight and have no color...)

[Threedifferentones]

32. The Big Country

I see the shapes,
I remember from maps.
I see the shoreline.
I see the whitecaps.
A baseball diamond, nice weather down there.
I see the school and the houses where the kids are.
Places to park by the factries and buildings.
Restaunts and bar for later in the evening.
Then we come to the farmlands, and the undeveloped areas.
And I have learned how these things work together.
I see the parkway that passes through them all.
And I have learned how to look at these things and I say,

(chorus)

I wouldnt live there if you paid me.
I couldnt live like that, no siree!
I couldnt do the things the way those people do.
I couldnt live there if you paid me to.

I guess its healthy, I guess the air is clean.
I guess those people have fun with their neighbors and friends.
Look at that kitchen and all of that food.
Look at them eat it guess it tastes real good.

They grow it in the farmlands
And they take it to the stores
They put it in the car trunk
And they bring it back home
And I say ...

(chorus)

I say, I wouldnt live there if you paid me.
I couldnt live like that, no siree!
I couldnt do the things the way those people do.
I wouldnt live there if you paid me to.

Im tired of looking out the windows of the airplane
Im tired of travelling, I want to be somewhere.
Its not even worth talking
About those people down there.