When the Suburbs Look Like Cities

This week, Newsweek asks about "The Suburban Challenge."

And, no, they're not talking about SUVs.

The majority of jobs are now located in the suburbs, as are the majority of foreign-born residents. More people living below the poverty line live in the suburbs than in the nation's cities. Add to that the mortgage crisis, urban-centered public services, and what President Barack Obama called an "outdated 'urban' agenda that focuses extensively on the problems in our cities."

From the article by Brookings Institution vice president Bruce Katz and Metropolitan Policy Program research associate Jennifer Bradley:

"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They no longer represent a retreat from the tumult of American life, but the locus of it.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?"

Katz and Bradley say that all levels of government need to reinvent the physical landscape, creating more public transit and walkable communities, and treat metropolitan areas as a whole:

"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."

I don't totally agree with all of that, but as suburbs age, they definitely run into the same problems cities have — only without the inherent advantages of the urban core. Take Hickory Hill, for example. I think Dr. Janikowski and Dr. Betts with the U of M have talked about relocating site-based services (or having them relocated) to apartment buildings in Southeast Memphis.

The idea is that is where those services' clients are and, if the clients can't get to the service, bring the service to the clients.

Saving the Suburbs?

With the mortgage crisis ongoing, NYT blogger Allison Arieff says the question now "isn't really how to better design homes and communities, but rather what are we going to do with all the homes and communities we're left with."

"In urban areas, there’s rich precedent for the transformation or reuse of abandoned lots or buildings. Vacant lots have been converted into pocket parks, community gardens and pop-up stores (or they remain vacant, anxiously awaiting recovery and subsequent conversion into high-end office space condos). Old homes get divided into apartments, old factories into lofts, old warehouses into retail."

But what to do with the disposable houses in the suburbs? Those neighborhoods that were never finished or the houses that have been abandoned?

Arieff mentions swimming pool skate parks, de-construction for material reuse, and subdivided McMansions, among others:

"I did visit a housing development last year that offered 'quartets,' McMansions subdivided into four units with four separate entrances. These promised potential buyers the status of a McMansion with the convenience of a condominium, but the concept felt like it was created more to preserve the property values of larger neighboring homes than to serve the needs of the community’s residents."

(Actually, Arieff's blog post touches on a lot of subjects near and dear to my heart: Dogtown and Z-Boys, Van Jones, Julia Christensen's book, 'Big Box Reuse.'")

It's an interesting post, but just as interesting are the ideas from her commenters: retrofit homes for senior housing, used abandoned neighborhoods for fire department training, or deconstruct the communities and let nature take its course.

(more) State of the Suburb

The Economist has a story about the status of the suburbs and how they've become more like the center city.

For instance, suburbs nationwide have gotten more diverse: The suburban Asian population grew 16 percent between 2000 and 2006, the suburban black population grew by 24 percent during the same period, and the suburban Hispanic population grew by 60 percent.

They also have more economic opportunities than they once did — "With some 60,000 jobs and 20,000 houses, Valencia [California] boasts a better ratio of employment to homes than the city of Los Angeles. And still its businesses grow."

But suburbs also have rising crime rates, their residents often have tiresome commutes, and a multitude of foreclosures are threatening the budgets of their governmental bodies.

From the Economist:

"James Kunstler, an American urbanist, says [suburbs] represent 'the greatest misallocation of resources the world has ever known'. Richard Florida, an influential writer, sees them as incidental, at best, to cities' highest purpose, which is to concentrate young, creative folk who will come up with brilliant innovations. Now that America worries about global warming, the acres of bungalows and freeway exit ramps seem not just pointless but harmful.

Although much of this is nonsense, it cannot be denied that a little sheen has come off America's suburbs in the past year."

I'm not sure what is nonsense about freeways contributing to waste and pollution, but here's where I've gotten stuck. The story examines suburban shopping districts meant to evoke old town centers — perhaps like the Avenue at Carriage Crossing — and comes to this conclusion:

"The popularity of such confections suggests that Americans want to spend time in places that look like cities but feel like suburbs. They hint at a broader pattern: cities and suburbs are converging. This is not entirely good news."

I don't completely understand. Americans like places that look like a city but feel like a suburb? Is this code for safe? Well-kept? Homogeneous? All the things the article says the suburbs aren't anymore?

suburban stuck update

Today, the NYT has reaction to Paul Krugman's "Stranded In Suburbia" column (referenced here on the 19th).

Like usual, some people agree; some don't. Just thought I'd point out that one of the letters to the editor is from former Memphian and CEOs for Cities pres Carol Coletta.

gas and geography

In the NYT today, Paul Krugman says he sees the future.

He's in Berlin, and he's talking about a future where people own more fuel-efficient cars and drive them less, because they live in a place where they don't have to:

"To see what I’m talking about, consider where I am at the moment: in a pleasant, middle-class neighborhood consisting mainly of four- or five-story apartment buildings, with easy access to public transit and plenty of local shopping.

It’s the kind of neighborhood in which people don’t have to drive a lot, but it’s also a kind of neighborhood that barely exists in America, even in big metropolitan areas. Greater Atlanta has roughly the same population as Greater Berlin — but Berlin is a city of trains, buses and bikes, while Atlanta is a city of cars, cars and cars."

And Atlantan soccer moms behind the wheel, cursing every minute of it.

I mention that because what Krugman is talking about is a huge cultural shift, one that will only happen as individuals change their behavior. And sometimes those take time to build critical mass. But if there's any group that can enact a cultural shift, it may be soccer moms.

Suburban Shrink

So I've been playing with the idea of moving recently. I love my house, love everything about it, except for one thing ... its location. (I know! First rule of real estate!)

I still love the actual neighborhood and the physical surroundings, but the morning and evening commutes are annoying, and getting more annoying as they get costlier.

When I first started looking for a house several years ago, I quickly realized I couldn't afford to buy in Midtown (what a surprise that was!) without buying a huge dog. Or two. All the houses in my price range were either next to meth labs or were meth labs.

Now I'm wondering if it wouldn't be better to move closer to the core city, meth labs and all. So I was interested to see this BusinessWeek Q&A with author James Howard Kunstler about how the oil crisis could mean an end to suburbia.

"Given the supply constraints, he says the U.S. will have to rethink suburban sprawl, bringing an end to strip malls, big-box stores, and other trappings of the automotive era. Kunstler, 59, predicts a return to towns and cities centered around a retail hub."

Kunstler thinks that we'll be in serious trouble within the next five years. Of course, the article notes that Kunstler predicted a Y2K meltdown, as well, so it might be he's just a doomsday-er.

But Kunstler's not the only one. Unless he was sitting in the booth behind me last night at The Cove, this is exactly what people are thinking and talking about.