Is this the future of Jax urban sprawl?
QuoteNY Times - Opinion - February 10, 2010, 9:30 pm
Slumburbia
By TIMOTHY EGAN
LATHROP, Calif. â€" Drive along foreclosure alley, through new planned communities that look like tile-roofed versions of a 21st century ghost town, and you see what happens when people gamble with houses instead of casino chips.
Dirty flags advertise rock-bottom discounts on empty starter mansions. On the ground, foreclosure signs are tagged with gang graffiti. Empty lots are untended, cratered with mud puddles from the winter storms that have hammered California’s San Joaquin Valley.
Nobody is home in the cities of the future.
In a decade, they saw real property defy reality in real time in these insta-neighborhoods that sprouted in what had been some of the world’s most productive farmland.
In places like Lathrop, Manteca and Tracy, population nearly doubled in 10 years, and home prices tripled. After inhaling all this real estate helium, some developers and their apologists in urban planning circles hailed the boom as the new America at the far exurban fringe. Every citizen a homeowner! Half-acre lots for all! No credit, no problem!
Others saw it as the residential embodiment of the Edward Abbey line that “growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.â€
Now median home prices have fallen from $500,000 to $150,000 â€" among the most precipitous drops in the nation â€" and still the houses sit empty, spooky and see-through, waiting on demography and psychology to catch up.
In strip malls where tenants seem to last no longer than the life cycle of a gold fish, the bottom-feeders have moved in. “Coming soon: Cigarette City,†reads one sign here in Lathrop, near a “Cash Advance†outlet.
Take a pulse: How can a community possibly be healthy when one in eight houses are in some stage of foreclosure? How can a town attract new people when the crime rate has spiked well above the national average? How can a family dream, or even save, when unemployment hovers around 16 percent?
Yet if these staggered exurbs, about two hours inland from San Francisco, were an illness, they would not quite be Abbey’s cancer. Though sick, foreclosure alley is not terminal. This is not Detroit with sunshine. It will be reborn, remade, inhabited. The question is: as what?
Nationwide, a record 2.8 million homes received foreclosure notices last year â€" up 119 percent from two years ago. Just under 5 million homeowners â€" 1 in 10 mortgages â€" owe more than their houses are worth. The impulse is to walk away. Surrender. And many have.
What they leave behind, along with the gang presence, the vandalism and the absence of vested owners, is a slum. A new slum. In an influential article in the Atlantic in 2008, the writer Christopher B. Leinberger predicted that the catastrophic collapse of the new home market could turn many of today’s McMansions into tenements.
I’m not sure of that. After several days in foreclosure alley, this broad swath of the Central Valley that has been rated by some economists as the most stressed region during the Great Recession, I can’t see such apocalyptic forecasts coming true.
Yes, huge developments are empty, with rising crime at the edges, and thousands of homes owned by banks that can’t unload them even at fire-sale prices.
But through it all, the country churns and expands, unlike most other Western democracies. That great American natural resource â€" tomorrow â€" will have to save the suburban slums.
Through immigration and high birth rates, the United States is expected to add another 100 million people by 2050. If you don’t believe me, consider that we’ve added 105 million people since 1970. This is more than the population of France. More than Italy. More than Germany. Currently, we have a net gain of one person every 13 seconds.
At some point, the market will settle on proper pricing levels. At its peak, only 11 percent of the people in this valley could afford the median home price.
In the meantime, during these low, ragged years, a few lessons about urban planning can be picked from the stucco pile.
One is that, at least here in California, the outlying cities themselves encouraged the boom, spurred by the state’s broken tax system. Hemmed in by property tax limitations, cities were compelled to increase revenue by the easiest route: expanding urban boundaries. They let developers plow up walnut groves and vineyards and places that were supposed to be strawberry fields forever to pay for services demanded by new school parents and park users.
Second, look at the cities with stable and recovering home markets. On this coast, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle and San Diego come to mind. All of these cities have fairly strict development codes, trying to hem in their excess sprawl. Developers, many of them, hate these restrictions. They said the coastal cities would eventually price the middle class out, and start to empty.
It hasn’t happened. Just the opposite. The developers’ favorite role models, the laissez faire free-for-alls â€" Las Vegas, the Phoenix metro area, South Florida, this valley â€" are the most troubled, the suburban slums.
Come see: this is what happens when money and market, alone, guide the way we live.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/10/slumburbia/?hp
I doubt it would ever be that severe.
When it comes to "Growth",losing an illusion makes us wiser than accepting the development industry brand of truth and theme of "inevitable".
Quote from: copperfiend on February 11, 2010, 10:12:09 AM
I doubt it would ever be that severe.
Look to parts of Arlington and a few other suburban hotspots and say that 10 times fast! ;)
Quote from: stjr on February 11, 2010, 10:17:00 AM
Look to parts of Arlington and a few other suburban hotspots and say that 10 times fast! ;)
Yeah, hotspots 30 years ago.
Yes and the problem of making a these neighborhoods is making a comeback after the downturn. The sprawlhoods value is always in being the newest master planned community around. So they really can't cope with time lapses.
Quote from: reednavy on February 11, 2010, 10:19:42 AM
Quote from: stjr on February 11, 2010, 10:17:00 AM
Look to parts of Arlington and a few other suburban hotspots and say that 10 times fast! ;)
Yeah, hotspots 30 years ago.
Why is being 30 years old a bad thing?
Quote from: JeffreyS on February 11, 2010, 10:23:20 AM
Why is being 30 years old a bad thing?
Never said it was bad, just pointing out it's age. It was a hotspot well back then.
Quote from: stjr on February 11, 2010, 10:17:00 AM
Quote from: copperfiend on February 11, 2010, 10:12:09 AM
I doubt it would ever be that severe.
Look to parts of Arlington and a few other suburban hotspots and say that 10 times fast! ;)
Arlington isn't a hotspot. The California neighborhood mentioned in the article is described as being starter mansions built on farmland. Not sure that is anything close to Arlington.
Quote from: copperfiend on February 11, 2010, 10:32:09 AM
Quote from: stjr on February 11, 2010, 10:17:00 AM
Quote from: copperfiend on February 11, 2010, 10:12:09 AM
I doubt it would ever be that severe.
Look to parts of Arlington and a few other suburban hotspots and say that 10 times fast! ;)
Arlington isn't a hotspot. The California neighborhood mentioned in the article is described as being starter mansions built on farmland. Not sure that is anything close to Arlington.
Sounds like Nocatee.
Quote from: Captain Zissou on February 11, 2010, 10:41:00 AM
Sounds like Nocatee.
and the WGV, Fleming Island, Bartram Park, etc.
What part of Fleming Island?
This may be happening... but not here. I can't think of any completely abandoned areas or neighborhoods here in Jax. Even out lying 'sprawl' areas like WGV are somewhat populated and attract plenty of retirees.
Your right and if we make some changes now it won't happen here to any great degree.
If anything we're the complete opposite. Our downtown core has been abandoned and the suburbs are thriving :-\
Arlington, Regency and those areas inbetween were built on farm land and woods. The regency area, ie sand dunes, was part of the flux mining back during WW2. That mining extended from near the river to J Turner area. My ex-law great aunt and uncle had property out that way. He also worked on many of the South Side Estates houses. It was not as "hot" thirty years ago(1980) as it was in the 1950s and 1960s when they built a lot of houses during the marketing to the returning GIs boom.
Exactly, this has nothing to do with the housing bubble.
http://www.metrojacksonville.com/forum/index.php?topic=4456.0 (http://www.metrojacksonville.com/forum/index.php?topic=4456.0)
Quote from: Shwaz on February 11, 2010, 11:19:16 AM
http://www.metrojacksonville.com/forum/index.php?topic=4456.0 (http://www.metrojacksonville.com/forum/index.php?topic=4456.0)
Affordable my ass.
Quote from: reednavy on February 11, 2010, 11:21:38 AM
Quote from: Shwaz on February 11, 2010, 11:19:16 AM
http://www.metrojacksonville.com/forum/index.php?topic=4456.0 (http://www.metrojacksonville.com/forum/index.php?topic=4456.0)
Affordable my ass.
Huh? You can buy brand new for less than $100 per sq ft - compare that to Riverside / Avondale or Springfield.
Quote from: reednavy on February 11, 2010, 11:21:38 AM
Quote from: Shwaz on February 11, 2010, 11:19:16 AM
http://www.metrojacksonville.com/forum/index.php?topic=4456.0 (http://www.metrojacksonville.com/forum/index.php?topic=4456.0)
Affordable my ass.
tell that to the folks in DC, Boston, and California...or even our friends in South Florida!
Quote from: reednavy on February 11, 2010, 11:21:38 AM
Quote from: Shwaz on February 11, 2010, 11:19:16 AM
http://www.metrojacksonville.com/forum/index.php?topic=4456.0 (http://www.metrojacksonville.com/forum/index.php?topic=4456.0)
........Affordable my ass..........
It is if you make the median income listed in the article. That was the highest I've seen the median income for the area. For most it is a nice place to live outside of Duval county.
Then again if you are selling that other thing you mention in your comment they have a place for you on the thread about Hamsterville.
Quote from: tufsu1 on February 11, 2010, 11:25:37 AM
tell that to the folks in DC, Boston, and California...or even our friends in South Florida!
Well that's a no shitter right there.
The suburbs here are great. The advantage of being human is we can learn from others experiences. We do not have to rely on instincts or our own trial and errors to learn something new. So we have only experienced small pockets of abandoned homes and deflated values. We can do something before it gets worse because we have seen how the pattern has played out elsewhere. Do we want to sprawl until only suburbia remains here? No urban or rural lifestyles in NE Florida is not for me.
Oh, the one big flop so far has been Rivertown. The most epic waste of land I've ever seen. Plowed down forestland on a SCENIC DRIVE ROUTE, and now only about 10 homes were ever built, the rest is just weed and pipes sticking out of the ground.
IMHO, the developers should be taken to court and be forced to turn the remainder of the land back into what it is was like before, at all costs. If that means trucking in full size trees and all, so be it.
Rivertown is funny because they did not want the outer beltway to come near them. I guess that developer needs sprawl 101.
Quote from: stjr on February 11, 2010, 10:17:00 AM
Look to parts of Arlington and a few other suburban hotspots and say that 10 times fast! ;)
I guess I wasn't very clear here using the word "hotspots". I intended it to refer to criminal hotspots, not economic hotspots!
Quote from: stjr on February 11, 2010, 12:21:26 PM
Quote from: stjr on February 11, 2010, 10:17:00 AM
Look to parts of Arlington and a few other suburban hotspots and say that 10 times fast! ;)
I guess I wasn't very clear here using the word "hotspots". I intended it to refer to criminal hotspots, not economic hotspots!
But Arlington is nothing like the neighborhood in the posted article.
Quote from: copperfiend on February 11, 2010, 12:25:58 PM
But Arlington is nothing like the neighborhood in the posted article.
As already noted, Arlington has a 30 year head start. At one time, much of it was the "insta-neighborhoods" referred to in the article. The article is saying that today's new developments may one day face the issues that parts of Arlington faces.
The point being made is not dependent on the economic level of the neighborhood as much as a pattern of poor planning and design. See the "urban planning" lessons the writer points to in the end:QuoteIn the meantime, during these low, ragged years, a few lessons about urban planning can be picked from the stucco pile.
One is that, at least here in California, the outlying cities themselves encouraged the boom, spurred by the state’s broken tax system. Hemmed in by property tax limitations, cities were compelled to increase revenue by the easiest route: expanding urban boundaries. They let developers plow up walnut groves and vineyards and places that were supposed to be strawberry fields forever to pay for services demanded by new school parents and park users.
Second, look at the cities with stable and recovering home markets. On this coast, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle and San Diego come to mind. All of these cities have fairly strict development codes, trying to hem in their excess sprawl. Developers, many of them, hate these restrictions. They said the coastal cities would eventually price the middle class out, and start to empty.
It hasn’t happened. Just the opposite. The developers’ favorite role models, the laissez faire free-for-alls â€" Las Vegas, the Phoenix metro area, South Florida, this valley â€" are the most troubled, the suburban slums.
Quote from: stjr on February 11, 2010, 12:42:44 PM
Quote from: copperfiend on February 11, 2010, 12:25:58 PM
But Arlington is nothing like the neighborhood in the posted article.
As already noted, Arlington has a 30 year head start. At one time, much of it was the "insta-neighborhoods" referred to in the article. The article is saying that today's new developments may one day face the issues that parts of Arlington faces.
The point being made is not dependent on the economic level of the neighborhood as much as a pattern of poor planning and design. See the "urban planning" lessons the writer point to in the end:
QuoteIn the meantime, during these low, ragged years, a few lessons about urban planning can be picked from the stucco pile.
One is that, at least here in California, the outlying cities themselves encouraged the boom, spurred by the state’s broken tax system. Hemmed in by property tax limitations, cities were compelled to increase revenue by the easiest route: expanding urban boundaries. They let developers plow up walnut groves and vineyards and places that were supposed to be strawberry fields forever to pay for services demanded by new school parents and park users.
Second, look at the cities with stable and recovering home markets. On this coast, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle and San Diego come to mind. All of these cities have fairly strict development codes, trying to hem in their excess sprawl. Developers, many of them, hate these restrictions. They said the coastal cities would eventually price the middle class out, and start to empty.
It hasn’t happened. Just the opposite. The developers’ favorite role models, the laissez faire free-for-alls â€" Las Vegas, the Phoenix metro area, South Florida, this valley â€" are the most troubled, the suburban slums.
I disagree. The article drove the reality of mc mansion communities off the grid that never got off the ground and never will... resulting in high crime rates and a community that resembles the 9th ward post katrina.
Not about a thriving community that in 30 years may become abandoned and crime ridden.