Suburbs: The Next Slum?

[Traveller]

The Next Slum?
by Christopher B. Leinberger
Director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech

The subprime crisis is just the tip of the iceberg. Fundamental changes in American life may turn today’s McMansions into tomorrow’s tenements.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200803/subprime

[Lunican]

In related news from today's New York Times:

Mortgage Defaults Reach a New High

By VIKAS BAJAJ
Published: March 6, 2008

WASHINGTON â€" Defaults on home mortgages touched another all-time high at the end of the last year as foreclosures surged on adjustable-rate mortgages, an industry group reported on Thursday.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/06/business/06cnd-mortgage.html

[Ocklawaha]

Sprawl and giant planned developments generally fall into this pit. One need only drive to Deltona to see it on a huge scale. What started as tiny $8,000 dollar homes for retirement, got swept into the Daytona-Orlando metro and today, dotted with much larger and newer homes it has sunk into the sand. Values are low, crime is soaring, and things are generally out of control.

The over-the-hill new community, is now the cheap ground, and the dumping place for the poor and working class of the Metro's. The mix of the original retired community, the working poor and zillions of Northern Transplants that just can't believe they can sell the 7Th floor row house condo, and buy a home and lot. Trouble is few are qualified to care for a yard, a home and a lot.

The answer is two-fold, jump over it and go on to the next new development... Example, Yukon (torn down) to Ortega Hills, to the new Ortega Bluff community. 3 generations of going one more step and leaving a trail of ruin.

All of the early tract developments close into Jax have seen this happen, University Blvd. then Arlington, Murray Hill, Paxon and Norwood, were all once THE ADDRESS TO HAVE... Some are crawling back up, others still in decline, but leaping into Town Center, River City Market Place or Middleburg isn't going to stop this pattern.

DECENT MASS TRANSIT COULD!

Ocklawaha

[sheclown]

Seems to me, one of the issues is a lack of respect for one another.  Sometimes, that lack reflects itself as a general disregard for the value of people different than ourselves, and sometimes that lack shows itself in violent acts towards others.  Violence is out there, everywhere, it just differs by degrees.

When we don't treat each other with dignity, we set up a society where the only people who matter are ourselves.

It is everything from Pulp Fiction to Shock Jock Radio and everything in between.  It is the afterbirth of the "Me Generation."

[teresangel]

I remember as a kid Regency was where to go.  My grandmother would take me shopping at the mall, and then it  was Piccadilly for lunch and then the movies.  These days I see more homeless in Regency than I see on my route to my apartment in Springfield.  Retailers in that part of town walk into their public restrooms to find the homeless washing their feet and clothes in the sink. 

I couldn't be paid to move back out to Deerwood.  Experienced and witnessed more crime there than in Springfield/Riverside combined.  Sandalwood was a nightmare, but you wouldn't have known it by the rent I paid.

As we continue to surge out, or turn our focus on the center, suburbia is abandoned, discarded.  After the newness wears off, we're faced with monotony and homogeny(sp?) and a lot less space between ourselves and the neighbors we were too busy to get to know.  We're a lot closer to Gibson's Sprawl than most people want to realize.

K, putting the soapbox away now