Suburbia RIP?

[GreekMan 246]

http://finance.yahoo.com/family-home/article/106732/Suburbia-R-I-P

Suburbia R.I.P.

The downturn has accomplished what a generation of designers and planners could not: it has turned back the tide of suburban sprawl. In the wake of the foreclosure crisis many new subdivisions are left half built and more established suburbs face abandonment. Cul-de-sac neighborhoods once filled with the sound of backyard barbecues and playing children are falling silent. Communities like Elk Grove, Calif., and Windy Ridge, N.C., are slowly turning into ghost towns with overgrown lawns, vacant strip malls and squatters camping in empty homes. In Cleveland alone, one of every 13 houses is now vacant, according to an article published Sunday in The New York Times magazine.

The demand for suburban homes may never recover, given the long-term prospects of energy costs for commuting and heating, and the prohibitive inefficiencies of low-density construction. The whole suburban idea was founded on disposable spending and the promise of cheap gas. Without them, it may wither. A study by the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech predicts that by 2025 there will be as many as 22 million unwanted large-lot homes in suburban areas.

The suburb has been a costly experiment. Thirty-five percent of the nation's wealth has been invested in building a drivable suburban landscape, according to Christopher Leinberger, an urban planning professor at the University of Michigan and visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution. James Howard Kunstler, author of "The Geography of Nowhere," has been saying for years that we can no longer afford suburbs. "If Americans think they've been grifted by Goldman Sachs and Bernie Madoff, wait until they find out what a swindle the so-called 'American Dream' of suburban life turns out to be," he wrote on his blog this week.So what's to become of all those leafy subdivisions with their Palladian detailing and tasteful signage? Already low or middle-income families priced out of cities and better neighborhoods are moving into McMansions divided for multi-family use. Alison Arieff, who blogs for The New York Times, visited one such tract mansion that was split into four units, or "quartets," each with its own entrance, which is not unlike what happened to many stately homes in the 1930s. The difference, of course, is that the 1930s homes held up because they were made with solid materials, and today's spec homes are all hollow doors, plastic columns and faux stone facades.

There is also speculation that subdivision homes could be dismantled and sold for scrap now that a mini-industry for repurposed lumber and other materials has evolved over the last few years. Around the periphery of these discussions is the specter of the suburb as a ghost town patrolled by squatters and looters, as if Mad Max had come to the cul-de-sac.

 If the suburb is a big loser in mortgage crisis episode, then who is the winner? Not surprisingly, the New Urbanists, a group of planners, developers and architects devoted to building walkable towns based on traditional designs, have interpreted the downturn as vindication of their plans for mixed-use communities where people can stroll from their homes to schools and restaurants.Richard Florida, a Toronto business professor and author of "Who's Your City?: How the Creative Economy Is Making Where to Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life," argues that dense and diverse cities with "accelerated rates of urban metabolism" are the communities most likely to innovate their way through economic crisis. In an article published in this month's issue of The Atlantic, he posits that New York is at a relative advantage, despite losing a chunk of its financial engine, because the jostling proximity of architects, fashion designers, software writers and other creative types will reenergize its economy.

 

 

I find this interesting since we all talk about sprawl constantly.  I like sprawl and i hop that it dosen't go out of style....

Your thoughts?

 

[Haljackey 17,332]

Originally posted by: GreekMan

I like sprawl and i hope that it dosen't go out of style....

quote>

Well, I don't.  Sprawl is founded on completely unsustainable principles, and oh yes we are going to feel the consequences for a very long time.

Once the global economy recovers (which one of my professors said could take as many as 40 years), you're going to see fuel prices spike unlike anything we've ever seen before.  Not only will they hit the highest prices before the world economic slowdown in record time, they will continue to climb to unprecedented heights.  What happens to suburbia when fuel prices go up?  Well let me list just a few...

-Gasoline prices increase, making it more expensive to fuel your car.

-It will cost more to heat your home.

-Goods may cost more, with businesses taking most of the costs where it hurts to keep themselves competitive.  This means lower wages for staff, layoffs, etc..

-Food prices will skyrocket due to high transportation costs.  Imported goods will be significantly impacted, so an emphasis will be put on "buy local" goods to save money.  However in places where fresh produce must be imported in the winter months, only the very rich will be able to afford it.

-Tourism will fall as a whole worldwide.  Most, if not all airlines will go bankrupt.

-I could go on and on all day about this...

So, what can we do?  We need to stop sprawl now and invest in mass transit, and clean, renewable energy for cars.  By increasing the density of our cities, we can maximize the amount of farmland, which will be essential when "buy local" becomes substantially cheaper than goods trucked in from elsewhere.

This news isn't new.  People have been saying it for quite a while.  The short-term effects of sprawl may have been the "American Dream" for many people since the end of WWII, but its now the 21st century.  We need to be responsible for our actions and look at the long term consequences sprawl will have just like global warming/climate change and do our best to counter it.

Suburban areas is one thing, but sprawl/suburbia is another.  Its natural for cities to have some lower density areas around its edge, as long as it is controlled.  Large cities can have runaway sprawl that can chew through valuable, fertile farmland.  Once you pave paradise, you can never truly restore it to its former glory.

[Wrightguy0 40]

Haljacky has a good point, look at how much farmland was lost in the Los Angeles basin, I don't think there is any left.

[ExiL3 10]

A transportation network built solely on cars is unsustainable anyhoo, I don't see why they didn't see this coming?

Not to sound like an arse, but seriously look to Europe or some Asian countries, a good public transportation system is vital for any city, many North American cities totally missed that fact...

take care,

[Glenni 1,444]

Well.... the American style of suburbs might die out... As for European and Asian ones, i don't know. Our tend to be more dense, and more like cities outside the old city centre.

There are many people who live in suburbs in Norway too, but for us it's not that big of a disaster if we can't afford a car, because there's bus just a 100 metres away or less. Or in Oslo's case they got trams and metro trains.

The same applies to most European countries and a few Asian countries.

To keep your beloved suburbs you will have to replan the whole thing, you need more bus routes, trams, or metro trains to maintain the suburbs, just cars or a poor bus route planning really doesn't help.

[Muck308 55]

Originally posted by: Wrightguy0 Haljacky has a good point, look at how much farmland was lost in the Los Angeles basin, I don't think there is any left.

quote>

 

That he does. Although I beleive there are still some orange groves in Orange County but I'm not positive. 

I find this interesting but also inevitable. It was only about 8 or 9 years ago that I was reading about the exurb trend. Similar to suburbs but differing from them only by the fact that an exurb is a community that is well out of the city or the economic center of a region. Even farther out than the suburbs.

I couldn't agree more with the fact that we need efficient mass transit. Especially in cities like LA or my hometown of Pittsburgh. We have light rail but only downtown and the southern half of the city. A tunnel has been dug but not completed to the North Shore across from the CBD, but funding has ceased and who knows when it will be completed. I cannot imagine how they would extend the trolley to the northern suburbs unless vacant housing allows for deconstruction of neighborhoods. Perhaps an elevated train line could be built over a highway. Otherwise the only option is a bus. The Port Authority cut a lot of routes a few years ago. It's nearly impossible to get around this city without a car. Buses run into downtown and thats about it. If you want to travel two miles to the east and you are already 10 miles north of the city, your only option is to take a bus downtown and then another back out. Ridiculous. My buddy takes 3 hours to get to work via bus and that trip would take about 20 minutes traveling directly in a car. This will situation will improve I'm sure, but it will take years.

Without quick efficient mass transit I don't see how outlying communities could survive.

[Jasoncw 11,843]

Sprawl basically has everything going against it. The only things going for it are misguided (imo) cultural and social motivations, and outdated but well established planning/financial/etc. beaucracies.

I'm a student and the University of Michigan's College of Architecture and Urban Planning, and there have been several lectures based entirely on the suburbs, and you'd be surprised at how many studies and pie charts and rationale you can fit into a 1.5 hour lecture, but unfortunately we don't have copies of the lectures or anything like that to spread the word with. Coincidentally a few weeks ago I was at a lecture by Christopher Leinberger (from the article) and he said that the content was online.

So here's the Brookings Institution's page on sprawl (note there's multiple pages, click "more on sprawl"): http://www.brookings.edu/topics/sprawl.aspx

[nofunk 1,933]

The demand for suburban homes may never recover, given the long-term prospects of energy costs for commuting and heating, and the prohibitive inefficiencies of low-density construction.quote>

Dream on. People like to rail against sprawl and suburbia with very little real or historical knowledge of the subject.

The suburbs have not been just a "costly experiment" as the article claims; people have been sprawling for millenia, and there are deep-seated reasons for this. (Read a book like Bruegmann's Sprawl: A Compact History or Hayden's Building Suburbia if you want to know more.) Even ancient Rome had suburbs (that's where the term--suburbium--comes from). Suburbs and sprawl are not going away, even given the current economic crisis, the spike in fuel costs, and our new-found social interest in sustainability.

That said, I do suspect we will see a shift away from truly egregious sprawl, towards smarter and more compact development. Transit-oriented design, more fuel-efficient cars, clean energy, and energy-efficient homes are all things that we'll start to see more of in the future. It's definitely a step in the right direction, and in some ways I am happy that rocketing fuel costs and the current recession have curbed our thoughtless, consumer-driven development.

But don't expect people to start dashing out of the countryside to refill central cities. It's not going to happen.

[GMT 389]

There's always ups and downs concerning living in suburbs.

people fled towards the cities because of jobs, then the cities got overcrowded and people fled back to the surounding areas. Suburbs grew bigger, moved further out into the countryside and ways got longer (and more expensive) so people want to go back to the cities. This trend continues for some time and then it goes the other way around... again...

[Haljackey 17,332]

Originally posted by: Glenni Well.... the American style of suburbs might die out... As for European and Asian ones, i don't know. Our tend to be more dense, and more like cities outside the old city centre.

quote>

True, different countries will face different challenges.  The USA will most likely get hit the hardest because of the amount of sprawl some of their cities have.  When one usually thinks of a "big city", they think that its a large, dense, populated area, not the actual physical size of the urban area.

So, why did sprawl become such a problem in North American cities?  It has to do with the fact that the government wasn't prepared for huge amounts of low density growth.  At the end of WWII, most cities were smaller and denser compared to today.  The municipal government only had control of the city proper not much more. 

The municipal governments wanted to keep control of their city's growth, only zoning mid-to-high density in the few open areas they controlled.  If you wanted to sprawl, you had to go away from the city. Communities outside of the city's boundaries wanted to cash-in on the amount of money suburban expansion would bring.  Land owners sold huge areas to developers and kicked the farmers out, getting enough from it to retire on.  This cycle continued for a long time until the urban area was no longer known by the city it surrounded, but by the name of the county it consumed.  Examples include "Orange County" for LA, and "Wayne County" for Detroit.

If you look at cites outside NA, the area of control for municipal governments stretches far beyond the city itself.  A great example is in China, where many cities are considered their own provinces/states/territories.  If the cities in NA had this status, the level of sprawl would have been much more controlled.

The best example I can think of is Toronto.  Over the past few years, the city has asked the government of Canada to be treated like a province so it can better control the issues the city faces.  Although Canadian cities are about 2.5x denser on average than their American counterparts, sprawl is still an issue here, especially in regions outside of a city's control.  Toronto is now known as the "GTA" or "Greater Toronto Area" because the geographic size of the urban area is many times larger than the city of Toronto itself.  The "GTA" can also be divided into subareas, such as "Region of Peel", "Region of York", and "The Golden Horseshoe".  The government has created a "greenbelt" around the urban area in an attempt to limit urban expansion and promote high density growth, but so far it hasn't worked that well.

...And we haven't even touched on the issues of globalization and shipping yet.  Although it may be cheaper to make a product in China and ship it back here, do the pros actually outweigh the cons?

[ILL Tonkso 1,237]

Suburbia is not a bad thing unless it passes underneath a certain population density and does not include proper, reliable public transport.

Lets look at Manchester for example. Mancunian suburban sprawl has pretty much swallowed the entire Greater Manchester area and yes, it does have its motorways but these suburbs would simply not exist if it werent for Greater Manchesters suburban rail, the Manchester Metrolink Trams and strong bus services. Look at this Rail map for the city for example? The Thin Blue Line represents the Metrolink whilst thicker lines represent suburban rail. The Metrolink is also set to expand to three times the size over the next few years too. http://www.gmpte.com/pdfmaps/GMPTERaildiagA4.pdf

Manchester has exactly 100 Suburban Rail stations, aswell as 37 Metrolink (soon to be 115).

Serious Transport is what makes Suburbia sustainable.

[hamsterTK 93]

Well lets not look at this as saying that suburbs in general are going away, because it's not, ever.

I think what is being said is that the kind of rapid speculative housing development fueled by the housing bubble of the 2000's is slowing down or stopped for some time.

[saltandsauce 0]

suburbs are nothing new, however most suburbs built were dense things of flats reaching 3-5 storeys.

i don't think suburbs and public transport really go together, since it takes a certain density of people to make a railway line profitable which is why suburbs DON'T have public transport. Europe is happy to pour money into public transport but the USA looks more reluctant. so really it's low rise stuf that you need to keep infrastructure costs down (school with a viable number of pupils without buses, pipe maintainance, road maintainance and businesses such as butchers,bakers and candlestick makers),without making congestion high (as high rises do you can't fit everyone in a building onto the sidewalk)

[nofunk 1,933]

So, why did sprawl become such a problem in North American cities?  It has to do with the fact that the government wasn't prepared for huge amounts of low density growth.  At the end of WWII, most cities were smaller and denser compared to today.  The municipal government only had control of the city proper not much more.quote>

 

The government wasn't prepared for it? The government helped bring it about! After the war the Federal government offered mortgage subsidies to soliders returning home, started the Interstate program, and forced local governments to implement single-use zoning. Even today, transportation funding priorities in America are upside down: new construtcion gets the greatest number of funds, while public transportation and alternative modes get the least.

Not only that, but small local governments acommodate sprawl (read: actively encourage) because new development means new property tax revenues.

I'm not disagreeing with your analysis, but you make it sound like governments were blind-sided by this when they in fact promoted policies and incentives that encouraged sprawl.

Suburbia is not a bad thing...quote>

Exactly, Tonkso. People have to live somewhere, and not everyone wants to live in towers in the center of town. Because population is growing, the amount of land required to hold us necessarily has to increase, but if it is done in a smart way--like along mass transit corridors--then I see nothing wrong with it. It is the sprawling, auto-dependent, 5-acre lot exurbs that I see as the problem.

[Odainsaker 2,135]

We should use the opportunity...next step is to recalibrate the various transportation departments away from highway building and towards mass transit. Better yet, just outright freeze all new sprawl-serving infrastructure to current levels, and let both the existing and any new sprawl choke on their own congestion and survive on their own without further billion dollar public subsidies. Time for some die-back.

Okay, not likely to happen...afterall, sprawl is where the broadest active voting constituencies are, and they will rightly vote for policy that serves their interests. Indeed, if gas skyrockets and mortgage markets continue to implode, we will all merely continue to publicly subsidize the ever increasing costs for ever diminishing returns.

Still, notice the municipal political slugfests that erupt in every city when we talk about subsidizing urbanizing mass transit...there is a disconnect when we start considering how skewed the subsidies are in favor of maintaining sprawl-based lifestyles. Mass transit systems must some operate within some density threshold to be profitable or they are declared unviable, yet no one questions the endless money sinks in our highway departments.  At the very least, it is time to level the playing field and point out who are creating the real monetary burdens and who are carrying them. Publicly funded mass transit is a bargain compared to the costs

involved in maintaining everyone's underused patch of crabgrass framing their driveways.

Speaking of crabgrass...omigosh, we have even scratched the surface of potable water cost, water policy, and increasing scarcity. Forget oil...the new liquid gold is in water rights ownership and water rights management, and in unsustainable Sprawlsville, we are draining every last viable fresh water source and pouring that liquid gold wastefully right into the ground.

Even today, transportation funding priorities in America are upside down: new construtcion gets the greatest number of funds, while public transportation and alternative modes get the least.quote>

It gets even better.  I'll use the Texas Department of Transportation as an example:

It was foreseen that Texas cities would require highway systems of increasing extents tied in large part to the population and growth of those cities, and due to limited annual resources projects naturally would be prioritized based on the projected necessities.  The projections for prioritization go decades in advance.  However, to encourage cost-savings for land acquisition, localities that donated land for highway construction could increase the prioritization of their projects.  Large landowners knew that for the sacrifice of a little right-of-way, they coud artificially jump the priority list to bring themselves highway accessibility sooner and open their remaining parcels for rapid development.  In some proactive locales, the highways were coming not only before the capacity was projected, but before there was ever any suburban development.  The needed capacity was not bringing the highway, instead, it was the highway spurring the need.  By the 1960s, a tiny city like San Antonio boasted the most extensive Eisenhower-era interstate highway system in the nation, far beyond its own impressive military needs.  Today, it is three rings undergirding classic sunbelt sprawl...actually rather boring in its textbook perfect spoke and wheel layout.

[Haljackey 17,332]

Originally posted by: nofunk

So, why did sprawl become such a problem in North American cities?  It has to do with the fact that the government wasn't prepared for huge amounts of low density growth.  At the end of WWII, most cities were smaller and denser compared to today.  The municipal government only had control of the city proper not much more.quote>

 

The government wasn't prepared for it? The government helped bring it about! After the war the Federal government offered mortgage subsidies to soliders returning home, started the Interstate program, and forced local governments to implement single-use zoning. Even today, transportation funding priorities in America are upside down: new construtcion gets the greatest number of funds, while public transportation and alternative modes get the least.quote>

I know for a fact this is what happened to Canadian cities, and I'm sure some American cities faced this as well.  Still, its interesting for you note that and I appreciate the constructive criticism.  Wasn't the US Interstate highway system built for military purposes at first?  It wasn't until the government realized the commercial potential they offered that they made the switch to public access.  But that's another topic all in itself.

Suburbia is not a bad thing...quote>

Suburbia is not a bad thing, but uncontrolled sprawl is.

[nofunk 1,933]

haljackey: I'm sorry I assumed you were referring to the US! I know nothing about Canadian development.

In the beginning I'm sure that Federal, state and local governments in the US had no idea that the consequences of their policy decisions would be sprawl. But today the effects are well known, and many local governments still do all they can to encourage development in their jurisdictions. That's the only reason I was so quick to put the blame on government.

Regarding the Interstate system: after World War II, President Eisenhower was so impressed by the German autobahns that he decided America needed something similar. The motives were strategic--the Interstate system would allow for quick troop movements if the US were ever invaded--but they were also commercial. (They were always intended to be used by the public.)

Originally the system was intended for high-speed travel between cities; freeways were never meant to actually enter them. Only when they proved themselves to be economic boons did major cities start clamoring to have freeway systems expand into their downtowns. Of course urban renewal and "blight removal" were other reasons for freeway expansion in cities, but that's another story entirely!

[spa 970]

Oh we have sprawl in Canada too. Calgary is probably one of the least sustainable cities in North America. Calgary aside though, like most everything, Canadians fall somewhere between the different models of the US and Europe. Canadian cities tend to be a lot denser than their American counterparts and they weren't as badly damaged during the dark ages of the 1960s-1970s. I read a book about planning in Toronto, The Shape of the City - John Sewell, a while back and the foreword was by Jane Jacobs. In Jacobs opinion (I think she's pretty bang on) the different experiences between Canadian and American cities comes from 4 major sources.

1. Canadian banks didn't redline whole neighbourhoods like what happened in the US. With US banks refusing to lend money to certain neighbourhoods, no one could buy or do basic repairs. No wonder those poor inner city neighbourhoods soon fell apart!
2. Canada has been spared the legacy of slavery and segregation so there was a whole lot less racial strife and no "white flight" to the suburbs.
3. There was no national highway program in Canada apart from the Trans-Canada Highway. Provincial and municipal highway programs were much more easily stopped; Spadina Expressway in Toronto, Harbour Drive in Halifax, all of them in Vancouver (Vancouver has to be the only major city without a highway cutting through it). In the US, the powerful federal government rammed things through.
4. Urban renewal arrived late to Canada. With the disasterous examples just across the border, the federal agency's schemes didn't get very far and met well-organized resistence. Although pretty much every Canadian city has at least one or two examples of old neighbourhoods being demolished and replaced by projects, they tended to be smaller and fewer.

[Tarkus 6,932]

I don't think suburbia is really going anywhere.  Really, all types of commercial and (especially) residential development, at least here in the US, and here in Oregon particularly, are getting hit.

I think a case in point is the newly-constructed South Waterfront (SoWa) district in Portland, Oregon, just south of the Ross Island Bridge.  It's got a bunch of condo towers, the Portland Streetcar was extended down to it, and an aerial tram was built up to the Oregon Health Sciences University (OHSU) campus.  And it's an epic failure, even with hundreds of millions of dollars of city subsidies to the developers.  Thousands of units sit empty.  The place is pretty much dead.

Originally posted by: haljackey Land owners sold huge areas to developers and kicked the farmers out, getting enough from it to retire on.  quote>

I don't know how farming arrangements work up in Ontario, but at least here in Oregon, just about all the farmers are land owners here.  We've got an urban-growth boundary system here, and whenever the boundary expands to include some farmland, that farmland becomes super-valuable and the farmers make loads of money selling it off. 

And nowadays, because of density mandates from Metro (the regional tri-county planning body, which used to be a regional tri-county hazardous waste disposal service until 1992 ), those farms often get converted to what I call "high-density sprawl". 

-Alex (Tarkus)

[Haljackey 17,332]

Originally posted by: Tarkus

Originally posted by: haljackey Land owners sold huge areas to developers and kicked the farmers out, getting enough from it to retire on.  quote>

I don't know how farming arrangements work up in Ontario, but at least here in Oregon, just about all the farmers are land owners here.  We've got an urban-growth boundary system here, and whenever the boundary expands to include some farmland, that farmland becomes super-valuable and the farmers make loads of money selling it off. 

quote>

Well, this was back in the 1950's .  I'm sure that nowadays things have changed to a process similar to what you use in the USA, but I'm sure there are still some differences.

The problem that led to Toronto's massive sprawl is that when the Ministry of Transportation built the first highway in the region (the 401 if people know where that is) so far away from the city that many citizens complained.  Development then spread out of the city to take advantage of the highway as a commuting route rather than a bypass, and the tiny 4 lane highway became clogged with traffic.  The government then widened a huge portion of the highway directly from 4 to 12 lanes, hoping it would curb traffic congestion, but within a few years even that became clogged.  Nowadays the highway spans more than 18 lanes in some sections, and even has a toll bypass constructed north of it, but it is still jammed thanks to runaway sprawl in the region.

Sorry for making this discussion focused around Toronto, but it's a great example.  It's still a growing city, and is expected to surpass a population of 5 million by 2025.  (The city itself.)

Actually, there are 20 cities in the world predicted to surpass 5 million by 2025, and Toronto is the only one in the developed world.  The other 19 are in developing nations that face sprawling slums, not your typical suburbia.  It will be interesting to see how they handle their increase in population with nowhere to put them.  If you demolish slums for development, those who live in the slums have to go somewhere else.

Its also interesting to note that in 2007, the world became more urban than rural for the first time in human history.  (More than 50% of the world's population live in urban areas.)  This is a huge change in demographics.

[Motina 77]

Originally posted by: haljackey

Originally posted by: GreekMan

I like sprawl and i hope that it dosen't go out of style....

quote>

Well, I don't.  Sprawl is founded on completely unsustainable principles, and oh yes we are going to feel the consequences for a very long time.quote>

Sprawl was not founded on anything. What city planners and stupid farmers did was what the classified as sprawl. I am sure the old fashion sprawl was more sustainable the one resulting from the automobile, and various other conveniences. Corporate model developed in many western states is the cause. Wastefulness became affordable.. well money wise. Fiat money is so worthless, and the G20 and the IMF are planning to make it even more cheaper to keep us happy sheep. Oh our house prices are going back up! Oh, but so is everything else. That should quickly pay off those debts. Oh no, the debts are getting bigger!

Sprawl is not the problem.

[Motina 77]

Originally posted by: haljackey

The government has created a "greenbelt" around the urban area in an attempt to limit urban expansion and promote high density growth, but so far it hasn't worked that well.quote>

Hehe..you know what it did do? It sold the idea of ever increasing real-estate. The housing bubble. Blocking off land for certain types of development will drive up prices of both parcels. The U.S. probably used the green belts also, and was most likely cities like Phoenix, with that climate.

[Motina 77]

Originally posted by: spa

I read a book about planning in Toronto, The Shape of the City - John Sewellquote>

I read that book, and used it for various projects outside my thesis, of course to all tie into my thesis. Can't believe that one house remain.. motina is thinking of the single house at the corner of Bloor and Parliment, on Howard. Toronto used so very unfree-market techniques, but that how most of those projects worked.. Never has it changed since Napolean III with Paris.

[City2TheMax 3]

Here's my 2 cents on the topic

As we've obviously seen, history goes through stages. At first Americans lived spread out with a majority of farms centered in smaller communities. Then with the industrial revolution came heavy urbanization with apartments and the like. After WWII we entered the suburban area, which Americans today live in.

Now America was able to suburbanize because of the vast amount of land available in the US. And I think that in the future this will still be taken advantage of, but not in the form of typical suburbanization.

What I would hope to see is a new stage, with a return to localization. Let's keep our single family homes, but move jobs closer. It would be great to combine the ideals of urban environments - shops that one can walk to; mass transit; etc - with the suburban style of expansion and single family homes.

Someday, when the economy picks up suburbs will hopefully come back to life with children playing in the cul-de-sacs, and BBQs grilling. The only difference this time is that you won't have to drive every across town to get to places you need to get. And for already established suburbs, just utilize more mass transit. Bring trains back to life! They work superbly in Europe.

I don't know all the economics behind all these ideas, but I am hoping that a move toward localization will once again bring both the "American Dream" and effective progress together, hand in hand.

[GreekMan 246]

wow i am astounded that everyone is jumping on the thread. One day I am going to read everyone's comments beacuse they are ALL interesting

now, sprawl has it's good and bad stuff. I think sprawl looks cool from the air when you see something like Chicago or LA, but I think there should be mass transit type of neiborhoods where transit is hevely relied on.See this is why our cities are congested because the city has spread out and freeway's are nessary to get around. I like how some cities have greenbelt's like ottawa. The city has lots of tall towers in it's core and the greenbelt prevents sprawl. ther problem is that the sprawl jumped over the greenbelt and into Kanata and Orleans

[hamsterTK 93]

To add to my previous comment, I think the effects of this recession will be similiar to what happened to Houston and Dallas in the 80's.

Basically when my parents were young, from the 60's to the 70's these cities grew at a break-neck pace. For Houston it was oil wealth, Dallas it was big banks. Neither were very diverse economically at this point. A lot of the development was somewhat financially unsustainable. Then there was a recession.In the early 80's a lot of the more speculative development, largely suburbs and suburban apartment and office parks really got slammed. Particularly notorious are the ghetto apartment complexes of SW Houston and N. Dallas, which originally were built for yuppies and "swingers" but became defacto public housing projects when to fill vacancies section-8 and welfare housing went in. Afterwards, in the 1990's, in my childhood, things picked up and grew more than ever, but with a more diversified base. Development leapfrogged over the failed areas on the fringe, Sugarland hopping past Sharpstown, and The Woodlands mushrooming miles north of Greenspoint to be the new N. edge city.

The same thing will happen to Charlotte and Las Vegas. Some of these really screwed up suburbs where every other house is foreclosed will lose value, but become a place to live for working class people. In the long run things will come back, just perhaps newer and better. Maybe along with a shift and diversification in the economy and politics will be a shift in planning and a shift in social ideology, creating more connected neighborhoods, more mixed-use nodes within suburbs, etc.

I think a case in point is the newly-constructed South Waterfront (SoWa) district in Portland, Oregon, quote>

Yeah, I always wondered about that place. Seems almost "overplanned" if such a thing is possible. Never mind even the architecture of glass high-rises seems to convey a very cold and sterile feeling.

[Follarch 326]

I'd love to live in a city/town that is built in the style where you could walk anywhere, not needing a car. Most European cities are built in that style which im quite envious of. (do you know how LONG a walk it is to the nearest grocery store from my house is??) If things were built closer together, then lesser and lesser cars wouldn't need to be built, polution would be down, health would be up from the exercise and the community would be closer together emotionally cause if you walking down the street contrary to driving, people would be able to chat and say hi to each other more often on their walk to the store or on their way to the park or work.

We could learn a thing or two from those European styles when cars were nonexistent.

I do have personal experience about half made suburbs. A new one is going up right down the road from my house called Cascadia in Washington, damn things sprouting like a weed though. Last time i checked it was just a patch of cleared forest, not theyve paved the roads, put up the (really fancy) sign with the name on it and there's even a friggen round-a-bout! The elementary schools even going up as i speak, with four more on the way as well as a middle and highschool, shopping and was it 6500 housing units planned? Geez. And you'd think this wouldn't be going on with the horrible economy.

[rommelgain 2]

I think some of you are missing a very important point regarding suburbia- human psychology. There are lots of folks, especially in NA, that do not wish to live on top of one another or ride a crowded bus/train everywhere they go. It's a matter of what one's priorities are- walking to shops/stores/work or having more privacy and space. Due to land prices, most cannot afford to have this in the urban core so they move as far out as the have to to achieve their ideals, weighing that with how far they have to commute and what that will cost them. Even with gasoline at $6 per gallon, it will still be remarkably cheaper per square foot/acre to live further out and commute. The reason there was a percieved 'flight' back into the city is that lots of folks based their dwellings on a budget that did not include super high fuel cost. Locally many complained but very few packed up and moved in to the city, however many newcomers opted for dense urban areas over the suburbs to a greater extent than before.

Mass transit is great in New York, London, Tokyo and other huge, dense areas. For 95%+ NA cities, it is nothing more than subsidized transportation for those who can't afford a car. Buses take entirely too long to get you where you are going and are unreliable. Trains are limited to certain hub areas. For anyone that can afford it, there is no reason why you would subject yourself to the torture of mass transit. Most of our cities are simply not designed for mass transit. The density does not exist over the entire span of the city to make it efficient. Not to mention many americans find that their vehicle during a commute is the only time they get away from everything and have some alone time. Sad, I know, but true for many.

At any rate, from a fuel cost standpoint that will be moot in a handful of years as our personal vehicles become several times over more efficient. The real question is whether our new social rennaissance (ironically brought on by isolation at home with a computer chatting away with everyone...) will continue to help spur denser development. I think it may as people broaden their horizons/interests and find socializing on and off the net to be a larger interest. People want to work less and spend less time with the rigors of getting to and from work and everything else. Other priorities are changing as well, families are getting smaller and i think there may be a trend toward 'downsizing' in general, some of it due to recession and some due to a new consciousness of excess and a greater focus on individual needs/wants/desires. We can call it new urban selfishness lol. 

[hamsterTK 93]

I don't think anyone is saying outward growth in some form will ever stop so much as debating what form it will take. Personally I sit in the middle on this. I don't know if I believe there will be some kind of peak-oil scenario that ends driving, but then again I really connect with the sentiment that Archean made that it would be nice to live somewhere where things are built around you, a human with two feet.

I think these days all but the biggest east coast cities are decentralized with jobs and people mostly in suburbs, and that individuals choose to live in the urban sections as much for the money and commute as for the lifestyle. Similar to people who move to rural areas far beyond the city.

Other priorities are changing as well, families are getting smaller and i think there may be a trend toward 'downsizing' in general, some of it due to recession and some due to a new consciousness of excess and a greater focus on individual needs/wants/desires. We can call it new urban selfishness lol. quote>

Seems like that's a fairly old concern from at least the 70s.

In the context of the economics of traditional, old cities, then yes, but I don't see why with future trends that cities and other places can't be more livable for families.

[Raysfan16 5]

Originally posted by: GreekMan

wow i am astounded that everyone is jumping on the thread. One day I am going to read everyone's comments beacuse they are ALL interesting

now, sprawl has it's good and bad stuff. I think sprawl looks cool from the air when you see something like Chicago or LA, but I think there should be mass transit type of neiborhoods where transit is hevely relied on.See this is why our cities are congested because the city has spread out and freeway's are nessary to get around. I like how some cities have greenbelt's like ottawa. The city has lots of tall towers in it's core and the greenbelt prevents sprawl. ther problem is that the sprawl jumped over the greenbelt and into Kanata and Orleansquote>

Greekman, I am disappointed in you. You haven't read your dose of Loretto Valley, huh?

Suburbia does look cool from above. But what happens as a result of that is:

-Smog from thousands upon thousands of cars taking the commute every day

-Heavily congested roads

-Encouraging traffic to go to the main roads, where all of the big businesses are, therefore funneling all of the town's money into a mega-corporation that most likely won't give back to the community

-Increasing America's dependence on gasoline and cars. The American car companies (You want money to stay in your own country, not leave, right?) are faltering, and gasoline comes from a fossil fuel, which as we all know is a bad idea if one wants to consider long-term solutions.

-Urban 'planners' wanted to make suburbia because of the thought that if you spread it out, maybe the car traffic would spread out too. But, just like the cities, they STILL HAVE NOT found out that one main road, after over sixty years, STILL does not have the capability to hold traffic going in the same direction. For proof of my point, see Haljackey's post about Toronto's 3 bajillion lane highway not working anyway just a couple posts above.

-Racial separation. I am not trying to offend anyone. This is just the truth, no matter how much I would like it to change. White filght is one of the main reasons for people in the 1960's and 1970's to go to the suburbs in America.

-One of the most important things that is often overlooked by the sprawl-friendly people is what was there. Nature. Farms. Swamps. The outskirts of Tampa, where I live, were meant to be for alligators and water moccasins. But now, their only resort is the drainage ponds, which are convieniently located on opposite sides of my house, no more than 20 yards away on either side. The farms that thave made America strong are dwindling rapidly just for the purpose of making monotonous neighborhoods that could look cool from above on Google Earth, but CERTAINLY do not have much of anything going for them.

-And by the way, you know how hard it is to undo suburbia? You just can't unpave paradise. I feel sorry for the animals that just needed food, water, and shelter to be happy, instead of us who needed fossil fuel burning, CO2 emissions, racial separation, and gridlock to be happy, while wasting acre upon acre of land to feel happy.

For more info of stuff that I didn't even cover, visit this.

http://www.emagazine.com/view/?3641

For a real-life example of the damaging effects of Suburbia, click here

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89231809

Those two links were just what I mostly based info off of, and some extra stuff for you guys to look at. I just think this is horrible to me.

Sorry, wildlife.