Is This the End of the Suburbs? Leigh Gallagher Thinks So
In Leigh Gallagher (right)
For sixty years, urban areas have become decentralized, and downtowns turned into ugly, parking lot deserts where only marginalized people lived.
Brand new, cheap houses on leafy, suburban lots pulled legions of people with good jobs away from the cities, and the government's massive interstate highway system enabled the exodus to continue.
Federal policy directed money away from urban areas to suburbs, and whole city areas were bulldozed to make way for highways made for suburban commuters.
Jobs followed the middle-class too, and by 2000 two thirds of office space was sited outside city centers.
However, the second half of the 20th century was an anomalous blip in the history of settlement patterns.
For thousands of years, "cities were the centers of culture, commerce, and the arts", and this is where the rich and middle-class lived, and the poor lived at the edges.
Today, the pendulum is swinging back in favor or the cities, but the trend is only beginning and America is still stuck in the old, suburban paradigm.
Suburbs exist around the world but only in America do such a huge percentage of its middle-class live in suburban areas that are far from work, and in homes on enormous lots by urban standards.
The face of suburbia is composed of large-scale developments of strip malls, mid-rise office buildings, big-box stores, and chain restaurants adjacent to highways.
They have no central or core areas, are strictly low-density, and in many cases grew into notorious mini regions such as Silicon Valley, Route 128, and – worst of all – the egregiously sprawling Orange County near Los Angeles.
In just the 30 years from 1970 to 2000, suburbs doubled their land area.
However, cracks began appearing in the veneer of suburban appeal in the early 2000's, especially during the Great Recession.
During this period, the attendant housing bust was largely a suburban one, with residential land values falling by as much as 70% - necessitating the resale of formerly agricultural land back to the original farmer owners.
The End of the Suburbs
The precipitous drop in suburban land values across America was in large part a symptom of the myriad of ecological and socioeconomic problems associated with sprawling development.
Suburban sprawl emerged as a major social and economic issue with health and well-being ramifications due to pollution, massive road congestion, and loss of personal time owing to time spent behind the wheel.
Suburban poverty and crime escalated during this time while it decreased in cities.
Experts have linked teenage social problems in suburbs with decreased time spent with parents who commute long distances to work, and according to Robert Putnam, the author of Bowling Alone, 10 minutes more of commuting equates to 10% fewer social connections.
Furthermore, suburbs as we know them have a tremendous lack of appeal to Millenials, a sentiment succinctly described as boring and "like the end of the world" by one thirty-something executive who grew up in a Long Island suburb.
This type of view is wide-spread in television, movies and books, with cul-de-sac life being portrayed in dark terms.
Yet, owing to American individualistic, cultural moors, urban skeptics say that young people don't hate suburbs, rather they just don't like to be bored.
Thus, according to Generation Y expert Hira, "the right urbanized suburbs" will satisfy the demand for young families who don't want to live in inner city areas.
The Rise of the City
For the first time in ninety years, large American cities grew more than their combined suburbs.
According to a recent survey by the Robert C. Lesser and Company, 77% of Millenials plan to live in and around an urban core, further proof that millenials lack the motivation of previous generations to maintain big houses and car payments.
Today's home buyers and renters want to live in walkable communities, the type advocated by people like UCLA's Dr. Richard Jackson, who points to the influence of urban design on well being.
Healthier communities are those that "draw people out into the environment and get them walking and exercising naturally", with protected bike lanes and safer walking paths, green spaces, and cleaner air.
The Case for Smarter Cities
Our society has changed in fundamental ways that affect the type of housing demanded.
Marriage is delayed so people can focus on building their careers, which means fewer children are born.
More women are working outside the home than ever before, more people are living alone than ever before, and there is a proclivity of Millenials to stay at home longer - which is disrupting the normal economic cycle.
And suburbs are graying, so their economic strength is decreasing since it is families with children that bring buying power to a community.
Moreover, people are awakening to the reality that the cost of a lengthy commute in terms of time and money cancels out the lower cost of the bigger house.
Leigh Gallagher, the author of The End of the Suburbs, while putting forth a good study of the demise of auto-centric, 20th century style suburbia, does not write about the emerging mega-regions which will absorb most of the population increase of 100,000,000 people expected by 2050.
A suggested sequel to The End of the Suburbs might be a book concerning the opportunity and heavy responsibility we face today to build our future cities and redesign our existing suburbs to be appealing and environmentally smart places to live.