Suburbia RIP?

[MariusBleek 5]

U have to remember why people started leaving city centres in the first place; a lack of well paying jobs. U look at manufacturing cities like Cincinatti, Detroit, Philly etc. Many businesses moved away in the 50s and 60s especially because property prices became too high to locate ur company there without paying taxes that were through the roof. When the jobs moved out of the city and relocated to places with lower taxes, many residents left with them. Now the majority of inner city jobs are informal (getting paid under the table). With small amounts of formal jobs, only a handful of taxes are being payed to the municipal government, making it hard to reinvest capital into the city. And with no job security or benefits from employers, work is never assured. And with more ppl than ever living paycheq-to-paycheq now, it's a risky move to go back to central cities. Of course these examples im giving apply more to North American cities than others, but can still be considered elsewhere too.

So as much as I personally dislike suburbia and its negative aspects, hundreds of millions of people do indeed love it. I cant see suburbia dissappearing anytime soon.

[RedImperator 16]

Originally posted by: MariusBleek

U have to remember why people started leaving city centres in the first place; a lack of well paying jobs. U look at manufacturing cities like Cincinatti, Detroit, Philly etc. Many businesses moved away in the 50s and 60s especially because property prices became too high to locate ur company there without paying taxes that were through the roof.quote>

Except that's not what happened.  People moved out of the cities because 1) after the Depression and the Second World War, the cities were run down from 15 years of deferred maintenence, 2) the Federal government massively subsidized suburban development with subsidized mortgage loans, mortgage tax writeoffs, and the Interstate Highway system, 3) the Federal government actively discouraged investment in the cities through redlining and other practices, and 4) southern blacks had moved into the cities to take war work, and northern whites wanted no part of them (if anyone cares to contest that, he might want to explain why the suburban developments had restrictive covenants which outright barred blacks from purchasing houses there, even if they met every financial qualification). 

Businesses stayed in the cities for several decades afterwards, though there was a steady trickle out to the suburbs from the beginning.  It wasn't until the 80s that you really saw large-scale suburban industrial and office development, partly because the highways built to bring workers into the cities were so overloaded that workers couldn't get to their own jobs.  But far more city jobs were lost to foreign countries, not the suburbs.  Every Rust Belt city except New York was absolutely dependent on manufacturing, and we let our manufacturing sector rot.  That's where all the jobs went.

[MariusBleek 5]

Originally posted by: RedImperator

Originally posted by: MariusBleek

U have to remember why people started leaving city centres in the first place; a lack of well paying jobs. U look at manufacturing cities like Cincinatti, Detroit, Philly etc. Many businesses moved away in the 50s and 60s especially because property prices became too high to locate ur company there without paying taxes that were through the roof.quote>

Except that's not what happened.  People moved out of the cities because 1) after the Depression and the Second World War, the cities were run down from 15 years of deferred maintenence, 2) the Federal government massively subsidized suburban development with subsidized mortgage loans, mortgage tax writeoffs, and the Interstate Highway system, 3) the Federal government actively discouraged investment in the cities through redlining and other practices, and 4) southern blacks had moved into the cities to take war work, and northern whites wanted no part of them (if anyone cares to contest that, he might want to explain why the suburban developments had restrictive covenants which outright barred blacks from purchasing houses there, even if they met every financial qualification). 

Businesses stayed in the cities for several decades afterwards, though there was a steady trickle out to the suburbs from the beginning.  It wasn't until the 80s that you really saw large-scale suburban industrial and office development, partly because the highways built to bring workers into the cities were so overloaded that workers couldn't get to their own jobs.  But far more city jobs were lost to foreign countries, not the suburbs.  Every Rust Belt city except New York was absolutely dependent on manufacturing, and we let our manufacturing sector rot.  That's where all the jobs went.

quote>

Cities were run down after WW2???? WHAT???

Post WW2 was an urban boom period for many cities. Large scale construction projects were undertaken after the war, but they werent necessarily investing in the proper infrastructure. Come on now. Most major cities in the U.S. peaked in terms of population in the 1950s (Detroit, Philly and Cleveland come to mind immediately). Ur right with the introduction of the interstate system it incouraged people to flock to the suburbs with larger families due to the baby boom, and i suppose that after generations of living in safe, sleepy suburbia, people have become accustomed to that sort of life (mainly middle-class whites). I didnt really want to bring race into the topic, but i suppose ur right since everything in the U.S. seems to feed off racial strife.

[Albatross Domain 2]

Many urban areas are slowly coming back from the brink, a Renaissance of sorts in many places

even despite high costs of living... however many large cities are actually bucking the trends in

terms of suburbia. San Antonio-Austin the IH-35 corridor keeps getting larger by the day, but so

are the areas Bexar County (the seat in which San Antonio resides in). We have one of the lowest

unemployment rates in the country, and not just McDonald's type jobs either... Just moving back

to the area, I now have 2 fulltime jobs. Something I couldn't imagine in Indiana.

[RedImperator 16]

Originally posted by: MariusBleekCities were run down after WW2???? WHAT???

Post WW2 was an urban boom period for many cities. Large scale construction projects were undertaken after the war, but they werent necessarily investing in the proper infrastructure. Come on now.quote>

Why do you think they were investing in huge urban renewal projects in the 50s in the first place?  You had cities full of block after block of buildings that saw little or no maintenence between 1929 and 1945.  You had virtually no new buildings built in that same time period.  The entire housing stock of all the big East Coast and Rust Belt cities was at least fifteen years old (and much of it far older; Manhattan's housing stock was turn of the century or earlier; Philadelphia and Boston had eighteenth century houses in use as tenaments).  I don't mean that the cities were run down in the sense that, say, Cleveland is today--they were all functioning, vibrant economic centers.  I mean they were physically run down--the housing stock was old, ill-kept, and inadequate.

I didnt really want to bring race into the topic, but i suppose ur right since everything in the U.S. seems to feed off racial strife.

quote>

Race is inextricably linked to the postwar suburban boom, from white flight to redlining to the Projects.  It's not possibly to honestly discuss the history of suburbia without addressing it.  This makes a lot of people uncomfortable, but I've always felt that if history doesn't make you uncomfortable, you're doing it wrong.

[MariusBleek 5]

Another crucial event was the oil crisis in '73. That really ended heavy manufacturing in North America for good. most jobs became service based, making previously-industrial cities obsolete. That triggered another massive influx into the 'burbs. Just think how far we've come from thinkin that $26 for a barrel of oil was insanely high LOL. Good times.

[morriswalters 16]

Suburbia RIP?

I don't think so.  Suburbs are an expansion mechanism for cities.  The type of expansion is dictated by the transportation options available.  Cities prior to 1900 tended to be denser because among other things it wasn't as easy to move from place to place as it is now. People walked because they had to. There were primitive forms of trolly's and subways but nothing like todays mass transit.  As automobiles became available as a mass market item cities tended to become less dense because people could move faster and further.  Land has always been cheaper on the fringes.  This makes it less expensive to develop there. This process slows down and speeds up due to a lot of factors but it won't stop completely.

Currently in the US car culture rules.  People like cars, like the freedom that cars give you, and won't give them up if they can figure a way not to.  Mass transit doesn't let you look at your neighbor and say, "mine is bigger than yours", and until you can find away around that mass transit is always going to be a second teir player in transportation.  Fact of life people want to have their cake car and eat it to.

[morriswalters 16]

Thought I would add some thoughts to my previous post.  Cities as we know them today are marvels of technology.  They are relatively clean, safe and healthy places to live as compared to cities before 1900.  In the US summer homes were places to escape the horrors of 19th Century cities.  Sanitation was poor, fresh clean water scarce, and they smelled.  Disease ran rampant.  Even the early 20th Century was no picnic.  Coal and wood were used until the 40's as the primary fuel for cooking and heating.  And the air in cities reflected that.  In the winter time it was a hazard to breath.  I was born in the 50's and can still remember seeing a lot of coal furnaces which had been converted to natural gas.  Rivers didn't get a lot of attention until the late 60's or the early 70's.  As a result they were dirty and unsafe as compared to today, which should tell you something.

Todays subdivisions are undergoing similar changes.  Today subdivisions are, here and there, and slowly but surely, turning in to small city developments rather than just housing.  Mixed use developments, clustering developments around commercial and light industrial zones are all things that contribute to this trend.  Maybe these minicities are the future trend.

[dragonsign 8]

The huuuge single family homes suburbs of america is probably going down as fuel prices goes trought the roof.

High density suburbs served by trams/metro rail and buss is the future i guess.

[Kittani 1]

Yeah, suburbia is dead, I only work 16 miles from home and have to ride a motorcycle all winter long because I can't afford the gas a car uses, nor a car that gets the same 60mpg that my motorcycle does. In the end, there will only be two kinds of people on earth. Billionaires in shiny glass towers, and homeless begging for food. Mad max in suburbia? Mad Max everywhere... hope you're shooting skills are spot on.

[Retep Molinari 68]

I think the solution is to start urbanizing suburbs. By this, I mean building some higher density, getting more mass transit, zoning laws to have commercial diversity, and so forth.

[RedImperator 16]

The future is probably going to look like the past, with the single-use zoning car suburb disappearing in favor of arrangements that look an awful lot like a small town. There will probably also be a revival of small to medium size cities, as they'll be able to support certain necessary services (large hospitals, industry, cultural institutions) that small towns can't, without the overwhelming size of big cities. I don't know why, when you tell people, "We'll probably have to give up on suburbia as we know it," their reaction is "I don't want to live in a 40 story apartment building!", when the American imagination is positively JAMMED with idealized images of the prewar small town.

[Garek Maxwell 1]

It may have been already mentioned, but I don't recall seeing it in all the posts. But one of the reasons why suburbia was helped along by the US government was because of the atomic bomb. With most cities so heavily concentrated, there were only a few targets an enemy would have and they could destroy most of the infrastructure and economy. With everything decentralized, then at least a good chunk of the population would survive a bombing of major cities.

Of course, it's no longer the reason why the US government pushes it, I would think. With things so decentralized there are new weapons an enemy could use and still wreak havoc upon the population. Plus,  it didn't exactly take long for Russia to make enough nukes to blow up the world, so spreading people out didn't do much more than provide psychological comfort.

I will give suburbia one thing... It spawned an architectural style so highly prized, so amazingly beautiful, so incredible that no one can deny it's awesomeness. This style is Googie.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Googie_architecture

I don't know why this isn't as celebrated as things like Neo-Classical architecture. It's far superior. I mean, imagine what the Greeks and Romans would have done had they access to nukes and neon! I bet it'd be just as awesome.

[Raysfan16 5]

Wow. That's some points I haven't seen in here.

I highly doubt the atomic bomb was a direct reason for suburbanization. While World War II was important in it, I don't think decentralization would help that much. And psychological comfort wouldn't be that great if that building you drive to 30 minutes away got swallowed up in a mushroom cloud but you're lucky enough to only get radiation poisoning.

The main cause of suburbia is the need (and availability) of relatively cheap housing on relatively cheap land away from the noise and grime of the city.

(Wow! I've never heard of Googie architecture! That's pretty cool, but it only occurs in the older and farther north suburbs. Places like the Subelt don't see buildings like these often, especially because the places where they would be are now run down and replaced with boring auto repair shops and such.)