Very interesting point of view....
QuoteUrban nostalgists say Americans ought to want to live in dense downtownsâ€"and simply ignore overwhelming evidence to the contrary, writes Joel Kotkin.
The “silver lining†in our five-years-and-running Great Recession, we’re told, is that Americans have finally taken heed of their betters and are finally rejecting the empty allure of suburban space and returning to the urban core.
“We’ve reached the limits of suburban development,†HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan declared in 2010. “People are beginning to vote with their feet and come back to the central cities.†Ed Glaeser’s Triumph of the City and Alan Ehrenhalt’s The Great Inversionâ€"widely praised and accepted by the highest echelons of academia, press, business, and governmentâ€"have advanced much the same claim, and just last week a report on jobs during the downturn garnered headlines like “City Centers in U.S. Gain Share of Jobs as Suburbs Lose.â€
There’s just one problem with this narrative: none of it is true. A funny thing happened on the way to the long-trumpeted triumph of the city: the suburbs not only survived but have begun to regain their allure as Americans have continued aspiring to single-family homes.
Read the actual Brookings report that led to the “Suburbs Lose†headline: it shows that in 91 of America’s 100 biggest metro areas, the share of jobs located within three miles of downtown declined over the 2000s. Only Washington, D.C., saw significant growth.
To be sure, our ongoing Great Recession slowed the rate of outward expansion but it didn’t stop itâ€"and it certainly didn’t lead to a jobs boom in the urban core.
“Absent policy changes as the economy starts to gain steam,†report author and urban booster Elizabeth Kneebone warned Bloomberg, “there’s every reason to believe that trend [of what she calls “jobs sprawlâ€] will continue.â€
The Hate Affair With Suburbia
Suburbs have never been popular with the chattering classes, whose members tend to cluster in a handful of denser, urban communitiesâ€"and who tend to assume that place shapes behavior, so that if others are pushed to live in these communities they will also behave in a more enlightened fashion, like the chatterers. This is a fallacy with a long pedigree in planning circles, going back to the housing projects of the 1940s, which were built in no small part on the evidently absurd, and eventually discredited, assumption that if the poor had the same sort of housing stock as the rich, they would behave in the same ways.
Today’s planning class has adopted what I call a retro-urbanist position, essentially identifying city life with the dense, highly centralized and transit-dependent form that emerged with the industrial revolution. When the cityâ€"a protean form that is always changing, and usually expands as it growsâ€"takes a different form, they simply can’t see it as urban growth.
In his masterwork A Planet of Cities, NYU economist Solly Angel explains that virtually all major cities in the U.S. and the world grow outward and become less dense in the process. Suburbs are expanding relative to urban cores in every one of the world’s 28 megacities, including New York and Los Angeles. Far from a perversion of urbanism, Angel suggests, this is the process by which cities have grown since men first established them.
In the U.S., the hate affair with suburbs and single-family housing, even in the city, dates to their rapid growth in the American boom after the first World War. In 1921 historian and literary criticic Lewis Mumford described the expansion of New York’s outer boroughs as a “dissolute landscape,†“a no-man’s land which was neither town or country.†Decades later, Robert Caro described the new rows of small, mostly attached housesâ€"still the heart of the city’s housing stockâ€"built in the post-war years as “blossoming hideously†as New Yorkers fled venerable, and congested, parts of Brooklyn and Manhattan for more spacious, tree-lined streets farther east, south, and north.
full article: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/04/29/the-triumph-of-suburbia-despite-downtown-hype-americans-choose-sprawl.html
Factually, everything in the first half of what he's saying is correct. The urbanist narrative is that people are flocking back to downtowns and older neighborhoods in droves. The statistics do not bear that out.
The best quote in there is:
Quote“Absent policy changes as the economy starts to gain steam,†report author and urban booster Elizabeth Kneebone warned Bloomberg, “there’s every reason to believe that trend [of what she calls “jobs sprawlâ€] will continue.â€
It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that suburbanization has resumed its relentless march. Housing and development policies at every level of government (bar extremely isolated examples at the local level) continue to favor SFH and strip mall over anything else. From zoning to infrastructure choices to FHA/VA loan criteria, I'd argue that in the overwhelming majority of cases it makes just too much economic sense for builders and buyers to go with a sprawling suburb over the core.
Additionally, hostility by urbanists to the very idea of suburbs means that there are often no voices outside the core to advocate for urbanist-friendly ideas. Too many seem to have the philosophy "single-family home = bad!" and poo-pah the idea of walkable, green, transit-oriented SFH subdevelopments. The RiverTown community in St. John's says all the right things: sidewalks, front porches, walking-friendly! But it falls short in execution: extremely limited density of use, bizarre street layout, no provisions for transit. We focus so much on the design of a 7-11 or Dollar Store, or a 220-unit apartment building, but seem to simply shrug our shoulders at a 4,170-acre master planned community as just another example of sprawl.
The argument we need to be stridently making is two-fold:
- There is pent-up demand for downtown/core neighborhood living, but existing policies at every level have made for an unlevel playing field
- Many urbanist interventions address basic quality-of-life concerns that are shared whether you're single in an urban shoebox or are married with 2 kids and half a dog playing in the yard.
By embedding urbanist principles in all manifestations of metropolitan development, we get salient examples of those principles in action and inculcate suburb dwellers to more pleasant and livable standards of how a neighborhood should feel whether it's a bustling downtown, a medium-density in-town neighborhood or a single-family subdevelopment. With the resultant effect on home values relative to more typical sprawl developments, it's easier to make the argument that leveling the playing field doesn't inherently have to come at the expense of the suburbs.
Quote from: JFman00 on May 20, 2013, 11:54:03 AM
The argument we need to be stridently making is two-fold:
- There is pent-up demand for downtown/core neighborhood living, but existing policies at every level have made for an unlevel playing field
- Many urbanist interventions address basic quality-of-life concerns that are shared whether you're single in an urban shoebox or are married with 2 kids and half a dog playing in the yard.
By embedding urbanist principles in all manifestations of metropolitan development, we get salient examples of those principles in action and inculcate suburb dwellers to more pleasant and livable standards of how a neighborhood should feel whether it's a bustling downtown, a medium-density in-town neighborhood or a single-family subdevelopment. With the resultant effect on home values relative to more typical sprawl developments, it's easier to make the argument that leveling the playing field doesn't inherently have to come at the expense of the suburbs.
Great points, JFman00! This is one of the reasons I favor going to a form-based zoning code. There's no reason we can't have well designed suburban areas. After all, they aren't going anywhere.
For those interested in looking more closely at how the federal government subsidizes sprawl (as opposed to a free market policy) see:
http://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/2013/02/25/taking-a-close-look-at-the-federal-governments-spending-on-real-estate/
To see how local government subsidizes inefficient urban sprawl (by transfering cost of new development to existing homeowners, while deflating the market value of existing housing investments) examine the current moritorium on the mobility fee.
Its already been said that its an unfair playing field. If you treat the cores like a forgotten afterthought, as a dumping ground & put all the "things" in the suburbs, then of course those areas are not gonna be as attractive to most people. America is nothing but a money grab these days anyway, fueled by developing more & more outwards so everyone can use more energy, drive more, have giant lawns that they never use, developing on cheap lands, back room deals with local politicians, and so banks can write more loans for basically junk housing that falls apart in 10 years. The reason why these studies come out the way they do is because frankly most of America's cities are shit holes. They weren't always, but they are now.
But go to any, and I mean ANY, real town that has got their act together & you'll see that most people under 40 are clamoring to get to the cores, would love to get rid of their cars all together & loathe suburban living.
But on the other hand, there's a lot of people who just don't get it as well. And thats because they've never really been exposed to what real urban living looks like. Just the other day my good friend was asking my advice about housing back in Lexington. He already owns a house (that he's renting & upside down in) in one part of town thats in the outer suburbs, which he lived in years before. He's looking for yet another house, but this time in another outer suburb on the other side of town (like its somehow going to be magically different). I told him what I thought, the more urban areas I would personally look thats affordable/safe, etc. Anyways, he wouldn't even entertain it. Then proceeded to tell me how boring life used to be for him there, how he never had many friends, couldn't meet people, etc. Well, no shit Sherlock. I wonder why that is?? ::)
I swear some people just don't get it.
More from the same guy...
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/05/21/poverty-and-growth-retro-urbanists-cling-to-the-myth-of-suburban-decline.html
Quote
Poverty and Growth: Retro-Urbanists Cling to the Myth of Suburban Decline
by Joel Kotkin, Wendell CoxMay 21, 2013 4:45 AM EDT
Suburbs have more poor people mainly because they have more people, write Joel Kotkin and Wendell Cox.
In the wake of the post-2008 housing bust, suburbia has become associated with many of the same ills long associated with cities, as our urban-based press corps and cultural elite cheerfully sneer at each new sign of decline, most recently a study released Monday by the Brookings Institutionâ€"which has become something of a Vatican for anti-suburban theologyâ€"trumpeting the news that there are now 1 million more poor people in America’s suburbs than in its cities.
America’s suburbs, noted one British journalist, are becoming “ghost towns†as middle-class former suburbanites migrate to the central core. That’s simply untrue: both the 2010 Census and other more recent analyses demonstrate that America is becoming steadily more suburban: 44 million Americans live in America’s 51 major metropolitan areas, while nearly 122 million Americans live in their suburbs. In other words, nearly three quarters of metropolitan Americans live in suburbs, not core cities.
The main reason there are now more poor people in the suburbs is that there are now many more people in the suburbs, which have represented almost all of America’s net population growth in recent years. Despite trite talk about “suburban ghettos,†suburbs have a poverty rate roughly half that of urban centers (20.9 percent in core compared to 11.4 percent in the suburbs as of 2010).
To be sure, poverty in suburbs, or anywhere else, must be addressed. But not long ago, suburbs were widely criticized for being homogeneous; now they are mocked for having many of the problems associated with being “inclusive.â€
Many poor suburbs are developing because minorities and working-class populations are moving to suburbs. Yet even accounting for these shifts, cities continue to contain pockets of wealth and gentrification that give way to swathes of poverty. In Brooklyn, it’s a short walk east from designer shoe stores and locavore eateries to vast stretches of slumscape. The sad fact is that in American cities, poor peopleâ€"not hipsters or yuppiesâ€"constitute the fastest-growing population. In the core cities of the 51 metropolitan areas, 81 percent of the population increase over the past decade was under the poverty line, compared to 32 percent of the suburban population increase.
In Chicago, oft cited as an exemplar of “the great inversion†of affluence from suburbs to cities, the city poverty rate stands at 22.5 percent, compared to 10 percent in the suburbs. In New York, roughly 20 percent of the city population lives in poverty, compared to only 9 percent in the suburbs.
Looking at it from a national perspective, most of the major metropolitan counties with the highest rates of poverty are all urban core, starting with the Bronx, with 30 percent of people living under the poverty line, followed by Orleans Parish (New Orleans), Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Richmond, Va. In contrast all 10 large counties with the lowest poverty rates are all suburban.
This divergence has an impact on other measurements of social health. Despite substantial improvement in crime rates in “core cities†over the past two decades, suburban areas generally have substantially lower crime rates, according to Brookings Institution’s own research. Yet at the same time suburban burgs dominate the list of safest cities over 100,000 led by Irvine and Temecula, Calif., followed by Cary, N.C. Overall suburban crime remains far lower than that in core cities.
A review of 2011 crime data, as reported by the FBI, indicates that the violent-crime rate in the core cities of major metropolitan areas was approximately 3.4 times that of the suburbs. (The data covers 47 of the 51 metropolitan areas with more than 1 million population, with data not being available for Chicago, Las Vegas, Minneapolis-St. Paul, and Providence.)
In the least suburbanized core cities, that is places that have annexed little or no territory since before World War II (New York, Philadelphia, Washington, etc.) the violent crime rate was 4.3 times the suburban rate. Among the 24 metropolitan areas that had strong central cities at the beginning of World War II but which have significant amounts of postwar suburban territory (Portland, Seattle, Milwaukee, Los Angeles, etc.), the violent crime rate is 3.1 times the suburban rate. Among the metropolitan areas that did not have strong preâ€"World War II core cities (San Jose, Austin, Phoenix, etc.), the violent crime rate was 2.2 times the suburban rate. Basically, the more suburban the metropolis, the lower the crime rate.
Rather than castigating suburbs for exaggerated dysfunction, retro-urbanists would be much better served focusing on how to correct and confront the issue of poverty, which continues to concentrate heavily in the urban core and elsewhere in America.
Joel Kotkin is a presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University and a contributing editor to the City Journal.
Wendell Cox is principal of Demographia, a public policy and demographic consultancy located in the St. Louis metropolitan area. He was a three term member of the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission and a visiting professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, a national university in Paris.
Quote from: peestandingup on May 20, 2013, 07:10:18 PM
But on the other hand, there's a lot of people who just don't get it as well.
Clearly you are unbiased towards the suburbs. Everyone should be forced to live in a crammed up 60 block radius in the heart of the city, no questions asked, gotcha...
Quote from: thelakelander on May 20, 2013, 04:04:53 PM
Quote from: JFman00 on May 20, 2013, 11:54:03 AM
The argument we need to be stridently making is two-fold:
- There is pent-up demand for downtown/core neighborhood living, but existing policies at every level have made for an unlevel playing field
- Many urbanist interventions address basic quality-of-life concerns that are shared whether you're single in an urban shoebox or are married with 2 kids and half a dog playing in the yard.
By embedding urbanist principles in all manifestations of metropolitan development, we get salient examples of those principles in action and inculcate suburb dwellers to more pleasant and livable standards of how a neighborhood should feel whether it's a bustling downtown, a medium-density in-town neighborhood or a single-family subdevelopment. With the resultant effect on home values relative to more typical sprawl developments, it's easier to make the argument that leveling the playing field doesn't inherently have to come at the expense of the suburbs.
Great points, JFman00! This is one of the reasons I favor going to a form-based zoning code. There's no reason we can't have well designed suburban areas. After all, they aren't going anywhere.
Locally, I'd say a reason this happens is that it's hard enough to get "urbanist principles" implemented in the urban neighborhoods that already have the infrastructure for them, there just hasn't been much energy to get them in the suburbs. Once we get them up and going in the urban core I expect to see more demand for better planning and redevelopment in the suburbs.
Quote from: I-10east on May 21, 2013, 10:53:15 AM
Quote from: peestandingup on May 20, 2013, 07:10:18 PM
But on the other hand, there's a lot of people who just don't get it as well.
Clearly you are unbiased towards the suburbs. Everyone should be forced to live in a crammed up 60 block radius in the heart of the city, no questions asked, gotcha...
Uh, actually I was referring him to an older suburban-style neighborhood still inside the core that's nothing but houses. Instead of some place out off a highway not connected to anything, which is your typical suburban fare there.
Any other conclusions you'd like to jump to? Or are we done here & you're ready to skip to the next discussion where you offer nothing?