The Next Slum?
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 02.27.08
Every time we quote James Howard Kunstler, we get comments like " He's a man who loves to rant and hyperventilate with grisly scenarios. Unfortunately none of what he predicts ever comes to pass." Unfortunately, when it comes to the economy and the real estate meltdown, he nailed it years ago, suggesting that the entire economy was composed of giving cheap credit to build houses and stores full of stuff made to fill the houses. Now Christopher Leinberger picks up the story in the Atlantic.
At Windy Ridge, a recently built starter-home development seven miles northwest of Charlotte, North Carolina, 81 of the community’s 132 small, vinyl-sided houses were in foreclosure as of late last year. Vandals have kicked in doors and stripped the copper wire from vacant houses; drug users and homeless people have furtively moved in. In December, after a stray bullet blasted through her son’s bedroom and into her own, Laurie Talbot, who’d moved to Windy Ridge from New York in 2005, told The Charlotte Observer, “I thought I’d bought a home in Pleasantville. I never imagined in my wildest dreams that stuff like this would happen.”
It is an important article, describing how the suburbs came to be after World War II, how the cities emptied in the sixties and seventies, (remember the great John Carpenter movie Escape From New York? That was the vision of the future then.) and how now, people are moving back.
"Pent-up demand for urban living is evident in housing prices. Twenty years ago, urban housing was a bargain in most central cities. Today, it carries an enormous price premium. Per square foot, urban residential neighborhood space goes for 40 percent to 200 percent more than traditional suburban space in areas as diverse as New York City; Portland, Oregon; Seattle; and Washington, D.C."
Leinberger suggests that suburban houses will not survive as well as older, urban structures did.
"This future is not likely to wear well on suburban housing. Many of the inner-city neighborhoods that began their decline in the 1960s consisted of sturdily built, turn-of-the-century row houses, tough enough to withstand being broken up into apartments, and requiring relatively little upkeep. By comparison, modern suburban houses, even high-end McMansions, are cheaply built. Hollow doors and wallboard are less durable than solid-oak doors and lath-and-plaster walls. The plywood floors that lurk under wood veneers or carpeting tend to break up and warp as the glue that holds the wood together dries out; asphalt-shingle roofs typically need replacing after 10 years. Many recently built houses take what structural integrity they have from drywall—their thin wooden frames are too flimsy to hold the houses up."
Leinberger concludes that in 25 years American cities will look very different from the way they look now, with vibrant urban cores surrounded by suburbs where the houses have been broken into flats and where the poor crowd multiple families into former McMansions.
"About 25 years ago, Escape From New York perfectly captured the zeitgeist of its moment. Two or three decades from now, the next Kurt Russell may find his breakout role in Escape From the Suburban Fringe." ::Atlantic
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100% correct.New houses are cheaply built junk filled with cheaply built crap!The housing meltdown is a necessary correction and now people will have to buy what they can afford to live in with out fake Wall street loans.The size will have to shrink and the energy efficency will have to go up!Just imagine a high quality passive solar home 1700 square foot with 4 corners and a regular straight roof line,no fake architectural rooflines and pop outs and pop ins.I can build this really cheap!And if built with the right materials it will last many hundreds of years.Because most suburban areas have all the infrastructure and water for irrigation systems in place and many have train service and existing right of ways, tear down the junk homes and then you have a good place to grow food.Most of them are built on farm land anyway.
In what universe are those houses in the photo 'small' ?
Great read. My wife and I fell for the cookie-cutter subdivision 5 years ago. It was the first house we bought and it was hard to resist. They were big, and brand new, and you could pick out your carpet. After living there for 5 years we finally decided that this was not the neighborhood or life style we wanted to raise our kids in. We just sold the place and took a huge loss unfortunately, but now we just bought a much smaller house in a downtown area. Now we're able to walk everywhere and I bike to work. Never been happier!!!
In what universe does Kunstler get sole credit for predicting the real estate crash "years ago"? People from all sides of the political aisle have been predicting this for years. Maybe this has something to do with the cyclical nature of booms and busts. Alter, you never cease to amaze me with your fascination with all things JHK.
In Aurora, Co, recent immigrants already fill McMansions with 3-4 families. Spreading the mortgage and utility payments over several breadwinners makes them affordable to blue-collar or 'no-collar' workers. The neighbors are usually less than pleased when they park at least one car for every driver, though.
has anyone ever tested whether or not the housing market bust affects suburban/exurban homes more than urban ones? Besides from NY, SF, LA, Portland, DC and Seattle, is real estate actually that much more expensive in cities vs. suburbs?
What a bunch of elitist drivel. The suburbs are not going to turn into slums any time soon. Where are people going to live? Obviously from this article only the rich will be able to afford to live in their half million 800 sqare foot NYC co-ops. The reason urban real estate is so expensive has more to do with lack of supply as much as demand. Houses in the suburbs are not cheaply built they are affordably built. Who can afford solid wood doors? How many more forest would be felled to have solid wood doors, not to mention going back to wood lathe under plaster construction. Since when does a shingle roof only last 10 years? Since when is wall board a structural part of a house, not in my house. Sure there are examples of sub divisions that are failing. That is not a new story and has been happening for decades for any number of reason(poor planning, loss of financing, corrupt builders, appraisers and realtors). Perhaps the suburbs will become slums but if they do it will because the entire middle class has collapsed. An America made of two classes the ultra rich and the abject poor is the only scenario where this author's predictions may come true. If that happens God help us all.
I'm not a huge fan of Kunstler, but I urge everyone to listen to his two part talk on the "end of oil" on the ecoschock podcast (you can find it on itunes). Its good stuff. the only thing that really bothers me is he fails to address (like nearly all mainstream environmentalists) capitalism's inherent insustainability. when we base life on an economic system in which the natural world is a resource to be exploited, and dictate that businesses must "grow or die" to survive-- what did we think would happen? go to college and take some economics classes, most likely you'll hear no mention of the ecological limits of the earth. the problem with being green is people aren't willing to actually change their lifestyles as first world consumers, they just buy some new light bulbs and sleep soundly at night. I'm tired of hearing about environmental disasters and ecosystems on the brink of collapse, and not hearing anyone addressing the underlying problems.
Joe Jackson: "Where are people going to live?" -- people do live in slums, its called everywhere else in the world
"An America made of two classes the ultra rich and the abject poor is the only scenario where this author's predictions may come true" -- uhhhh, that seems pretty accurate
if my ideas sound too radical, write them down, put them in a safe place, and read them again in ten years.
25 years from now? Read Ray Kurzweil's "The Singularity is Near" from a dramatically different, and real convincing view, of where we are heading.
@brandon: Good parries. In fact, you already hear about the widening gulf between the rich and the poor in America, and the dissolution of the middle class.
@Joe Jackson: I do understand your reaction against elitism--you are speaking from the rational, hard-working point of view of the American middle-class. But that middle-class can only grow so much before it collapses. That is what you are hinting at when you state that solid wood doors and plaster-and-lath construction are no longer sustainable. We don't have enough wood to support the burgeoning class of home-owners, so we use sawdust and wood scraps to make particle board and plywood. It's more affordable that way. But there are simply too many people aspiring to that middle-class ideal of home-ownership, and it is going to take a massive social reset (like a financial crisis) to shift people back downward, upward, sideways, or wherever.
@Chris Hurst: I only see one problem with demolishing suburban houses and reclaiming farmland (a scenario I have daydreamed about frequently). All too often, the topsoil is removed and the subsoil compacted before a subdivision is built. Site grading basically makes land worthless for farming. Here in Georgia, all the rich organic matter at the surface is scraped off and trucked away, leaving a bloody red landscape of solid clay. The landscapers often lay sod down directly on this clay, or put in little shrubs which quickly dry up and die. It would take decades to rehabilitate the poor soils that probably exist under the majority of the nation's suburban housing. We'd probably do better to turn them into organic garbage dumps (no metal, no toxic waste, just food and biodegradeable waste) for a while, to reintroduce organic matter to the topsoil.
This theory would be true if it weren't for the sheer number of people that will demand housing everywhere in the future. Yes, current residential construction is garbage (it's a little better where I am in South Florida because of building codes designed to better withstand hurricanes), but with the bling-bling, look-at-me culture that is fostered in today's USA, I highly doubt McMansions will fall out of use. They may devalue, but that will only make them attainable to a slightly lower income bracket. And in those cases, I wouldn't doubt that multiple families might live in big houses, but I can't wait for all the news about the messes created by those arrangements...and the collections of 20 cars parked in the front yard.
There's two things that bother me. House are all mostly hooked up to the same pipe (natural gas). I've lived in a house that's change the heat source three times and now whats next. I also wonder about all that glue and how well it well hold over time. Nails do hold a lot better in plywood and wood than chip board.
New Traditional Neighborhoods where you can walk to work and the store and New Urbanism are responses to what is wrong with the suburbs. The premise for the suburb is the reliance on the car for almost ever basic need. Frank Lloyd Wright promoted this vision with the Broadacre City. I don't think he would have endoresed the souless production in todays subdivisions. Wright connected to the land and inignited the imagination.
The "as much house as I get" mentality needs to be dealt with. Homes that are "right-sized" instead of "super-sized." The bigest is not always the best. Blindly looking at the square footage on the appraisal sheet to determine value is just wrong headed. Artistic merit and harmony with the environment don't show up in the cash column. Art is a good analogy. Do we want a big barn for our money? OR a New Regionalism-sublime interpetation of an agricultural shed. Modernism-you can have your barn as long as it has a flat roof is white and large pieces of glass to blur the sense of the outside with the inside. Post-modern-a witty application of exaggerated classical orders. In other words a house with a point of view has soul that it gets from being created. It is a live when every part of the house is lived in.
Joe Jackson, you state,"How many more forest would be felled to have solid wood doors, not to mention going back to wood lathe under plaster construction"
You have an excellent point, and have nailed what I think is the main problem. The desire to go back to high quality living, as well as organic agriculture, energy efficient autos etc. is very laudable, but not affordable for many.
It is made difficult because of the "niche" nature in which these things are marketed and priced.
Solid (or more solid) flooring could more easily be had if poorer people could work together and salvage old sturdy wood (such as pooling resources and going to a salvage yard). But will they begin to do this at this late date? For those who can and do, great!
Likewise, if the media and the auto manufacturers quit putting so much attention on the exotic, high performance $50,000+ dream cars "of the future" (as the science magazines and television shows do), and instead focused on the need for energy efficient pickups and small cars etc., then maybe people would more inclined to listen. As it is, even a wealthy multi-millionaire like myself can't buy a hybrid pickup or 4-wheel drive -- because none are available. If I wanted to be more "playboy"-like, yes I could buy a Tesla Roadster -- but I happen to live on a tree-plantation and would prefer the use a 4-wheel drive plug-in hybrid pickup to get through the woods. But try telling that to Detroit or Europe. All they care about is "sexiness" and the glorious "future," not the here and now, or the traditional needs of small businessmen and families. And so those parties are forced to wait and wait and wait.
Yes, things are changing here in the USA . . . but sooooo slowly. If the rulers (and those foolish enough to support them) ever do wake up, it will be so anti-climatic I don't think I will feel much -- if any -- real joy.
I think lots of sustainability issues could be solved If less people came to treehugger to talk (argue) about their first world problems. Shorter comments would also help, you'll use less time and energy that way. lol.
You what. I think more wood should be used on houses not less. It should be certified so we are not using more than we are producing in our forests. Old grow forest should be protected and we need to set aside new areas for the next generation of old growth forests.
Trees are the largest solar collectors. Trees are renewable sources that provide shelter and energy. Using high-quality wood stove that put off less CO2 than the decaying tree is the way to go.
Mainting a strong demand for wood will provide incentives for the lumber industry to actually plant more forests. This greens America without the tax payer paying for it. Cement Fiber although more stable than wood is mined. Mining has created many of the Super Fund sites. I think most cement is mined in a much different method but still can be disruptive and an eye sore. I still think cement is an irreplacable building material. My Dad produced a very-high early strength cement used in USG's durarock and designed concrete mixes with 20,000 psi + compresive strength for Portland Cement and CTL. So I do value cement and concrete.