The Suburbs are So Dead
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 06.12.07
Jim Kunstler would say it is because of Peak Oil, that suburban homeowners won't be able to afford to heat or cool their houses or commute to work; We have said that it is because of global warming, that low density construction uses too many resources and creates too much CO2 when nobody can walk anywhere; Perhaps demographer David Foot, author of Boom, Bust and Echo, 10 years ago was right all along, that demographics are everything and just watch those baby boomers. The suburbs are going to die of old age.
According to the New York Times, the suburbs are no longer full of the sounds of playing children. “Suburbs, which previously were considered youthful and family-friendly parts of America, will, as more seniors age in place, become a fast-graying part of our national landscape,” said William H. Frey, a Brookings demographer.
Dr. Frey said the extraordinary growth in the number of Americans from 55 to 64 will fuel a “senior tsunami” beginning in less than four years when the first baby boomers turn 65.
Now the young hipsters want to live in cities, and the wealthy boomers want to live in condos. The suburbs are growing poorer and older. Of course when they get older and less mobile, there will be no transit out there, they cannot walk anywhere, the social services are not as well developed as in more dense areas, and there is no tax base to support them. Most of their income from pensions will go to property taxes, which will not be nearly enough to support the services needed.
Says the Times: The new demographics of aging present unique opportunities and challenges, both for the elderly and for their neighbors. While New York, Washington, Boston, San Francisco and Chicago, among others, may appeal to aging suburbanites, smaller cities and metropolitan areas are also marketing themselves as magnets for urban professionals ages 65 to 74, or “suppies,” many of whom are still working and who tend to be healthier and wealthier than other older people.
Dr. Frey said the increasing share of the elderly in the suburbs will place new demands on housing, health care, transportation and social services. ::New York Times
I think they got this wrong.
Suburbs around dense cities with older populations today are in good shape. See some European suburbs for examples.
Maybe this will revive the small town, from which most suburbs sprang. The downtown in the suburb/former small town where I grew up in is nothing but crappy knick-knack shops, which are tax shelters for rich professionals, the only people who can afford to take the risk/loss. Maybe we'll get some real retailers back, some services, some farmers markets, some people who will deliver to the housebound.
Someone needs to get it through to the city planners who are only zoning residential in the suburbs
"The suburbs are going to die of old age. According to the New York Times, the suburbs are no longer full of the sounds of playing children."
I wonder if anyone at the New York Times actually visited any suburbs in their research. Of the ~60 houses on my suburban street, at least 5 that I know of contain newborn children, the majority of them contain older school-age children, and the oldest resident just moved to a retirement village "in town". Yes, as the population ages, so will the suburbs, but also so will every other part of our country. A shift of medians one way or another for a period of time does not mean it will continue to the point of extinction.
The problem with the logic of this post is that the young hipsters eventually grow up and move to the suburbs to raise their children in a single family house with a yard to play in. All of the suburbs that I've lived in continue to grow from an influx of young couples and families.
There may be some truth to this post if one looks only around New York City and other larger urban areas whose suburbs are old neighborhoods that are being abandoned by everyone that can afford it, but suburbs in the rest of the contry continue to grow.
Rob,
To what suburb/small town are you referring?
It is hard to find real estate in New York City that is cheaper than the burbs, especially considering what you get. For 300k you can buy a studio in Brooklyn if your lucky, but in some of the less posh suburbs you can actually get a small house.
Rob,
Just curious. About which suburb/former small town are you referring?
I live in an old vistorian suburb of New York on the NEC train line. Fairly evenly distributed, defiantly not dying. But it is set up more as a town, and less as sprawl.
Heartland,
I'm talking about the less-affluent but still very nice suburbs around Edison, NJ, or out beyond Dover, NJ. Old housing stock, often small, winterized summer cabins, but a nice part of the world. Check it out!
More and more I read with a gain of salt anything from the NY Times. Plenty of Children in the Chicago suburb I live in. I wonder does his study take into account the runup in housing prices in the last decade or so. That has prevented some young couples from buying houses in the burbs and forced them to live in condos (usually closer or in the city) or rent. I'm willing to bet that after a few years of flat or even lowering prices the demographic will change as younger families can now afford houses.
That being said the suburbs as they are today are unsustainable. I miss the small town I grew up in, we could walk or bike anywhere we needed to a short period of time. I wonder can the small town rise again?
My feeling is that the wax and wane of cities and suburbs is a boom/bust cycle that depends on a number of factors like economics (cost of housing in the city versus cost in the 'burbs), energy prices (cost of gas to drive away from your house versus walking around for free or heating a large, free-standing suburban home versus heating a compact urban row home), family composition and size (the nuclear family isn't doing so well), and the life cycle itself (although most Americans average five years and not a lifetime in a house now so the effect of this factor may decrease for a time).
Many American inner-ring suburbs have been facing difficulty for nearly a decade with increased poverty and declining population. Urban cores faced the same problems for 3 or 4 decades. If oil runs out and no abundant and easily harnessed alternative is developed, then maybe the 'burbs are dead. Most likely in 40 years, the Brookings Institute research will show urban demographics slipping while the 'burbs are improving.
A lot of people from rural areas will tell you that their small towns are dead. The stores closed, the jobs left, the kids moved away, buildings were boarded up or demolished.
I live in Vancouver, and the suburbs definitely aren't dying. People can't afford to buy a house/condo in the city anymore- especially young families. So it's out to the suburbs!
I haven't seen a single suburban neighborhood in the Balto-Wash area where this article would apply. Tons of kids where I live even though the closest town is 5 miles away. (a true old-time small town that doesn't allow fast food joints, no plague of gift shops and real business at its heart)
As the older people move away younger couples move in and start their family...
Oh, and by the way, the whole "the suburbs are dying, everyone must move into a city by 2010" theme is getting really, really old. I am a strong environmentalist but this is one premise that I don't agree with at all. The cities are anything but self-sustaining or healthy. I moved into the country so my kids could discover nature and not breathe diesel fumes all day.
Consider for a moment where condos are built, and what happens to the people who once lived in the historic neighborhoods that are ripped apart because of urban gentrification. Where do they go?
Previously inner city low income, minority residents are being pushed into the suburbs by lower property values and of course government vouchers.
Yes, once again, the white upper middle class can push around whom ever they want and continue to destroy communities.
Redefine.
Death of the white middle class suburbs.
Death of low income minority neighborhoods.
Birth of a whole new level of alienation and class segregation.
Kunstler says that in the energy scarce future the McMansions in the far flung asteroid belts of suburbia will be occupied by multiple families with crops growing in the front yard and livestock corralled in the back yard.