Is America's Suburban Dream Collapsing?

This is part of a larger unravelling; I'm associated with a non-profit that works with at-risk urban youth. Though, of course, working in distressed cities has its own difficulties, the new challenge we face is the dispersal of our folk across a much wider area in suburbia (same story with social and medical services).

If I may note an external link, I recently wrote an essay that comments on this issue.

I concur - living in Dallas I see a lot of Victorians chopped up for multi-family use - in addition to being scraped and replaced with multi-family buildings.

A lot of my friends are leaving the suburbs we grew up in and joining me downtown (or uptown) and taking advantage of convenient public transport, living close to their offices, and everything else.

I'm all for it. Dense living = green living. I'd rather be able to walk to the library, the farmers market, entertainment, etc - than have a large lawn and a two-car garage. Particularly with gas at $4 a gallon.

So many post-apocolyptic books that I've read have scenarios wherein the educated/upper class - and in some of the more communistic scenarios that's everyone - lives "inside" the city and the rest has been left to return to nature or to become a ghetto right out of some futuristic b-movie. Obviously these are extremes, but the common thread is this: people reverse the sprawl. I'm looking forward to that.

I live in an apartment in a converted downtown 1910ish mansion. It's had other lives as a boarding house (with 8 tiny rooms shoved under the eaves), and less glamorous things in the interim, but now it's a 4 family dwelling, split largely by floors.

I expect something much more "subversive" to happen with the McMansions, due to the floor layouts typically not being conducive to subdivision in this way. You're not going to get 4 families neatly divided into 700-1500 sq ft individual dwellings. Instead you're going to have a lot of common living space - communal living. And not just families that came from a heritage of communal living, but 'neo-hippies' too.

Won't the neighbors be shocked when the changeover starts happening.

One good example is Washington DC and Montgomery county. The poorer sections are farther out (with no METRO connections). The poorer folks who decide to live nearer tend to live in larger groups in multi-family homes or even single-family.

What does this to do exurbia?

I'm not sure living in a cramped tiny apartment with no yard constitutes a greener lifestyle or a better lifestyle. And who wants to raise a kid with no yard or place to ride a bike. I've live in places like NYC and LA - highly polluted despite people being closer to their offices. Unhappy people and unhealthy atmosphere. And the pollution is not going to change as tons of cars will always come to the big city for monetary reasons. In NYC not many own cars that live in Manhattan, but there is no shortage of them coming in from the outside and a million taxis. I'm not sure I'd feel sorry for a family that had to live with some extended family in a 4000 square foot house, some land and nature...That seems warped. I think the long commute only applies to places like San Francisco, so speak for yourself. I live 15 min. from work and live in the country - with 20 acres and yes, a large home. The air is clean, there is no overpopulation or crowding and little crime. And I grow a lot of my own foods. When I lived in a cramped apartment in NYC and LA, I felt I was living in the most unnatural situation that could be.. And having kids or pets in that environment would be cruel. Some of us actually enjoy nature and farming and eating at home. We don't need to go out to eat all the time or get on buses. We have a hybrid car instead. Drive less. I wouldn't look forward to any reversal of the sprawl but maybe a more equal distribution of wealth to a degree if possible or more programs for the poor. I wouldn't be happy to see the poor kicked out of any area for any reason because I am a yuppie and want to be cool in my teeny million dollar apartment and can walk to the nightclub in the center of the city.

What I don't see is what's so nasty about that. Filling up those houses properly is a much more sensible use for them, and the acreage that most of them come with would make a decent farmette.

I am a suburbanite who settled in the urban core in NYC 20 years ago, in a building that had been burned out, and I've seen very sad losses in the traditional Hispanic neighborhood, some due to tighter immigration rules, some due to landlords getting people kicked out, some due to rising prices/ Hispanic families moving to the suburbs. These neighborhoods welcomed me, made me feel welcome, and now are being gentrified (and without rent stabilization I would have to move too).

Affluent suburbanites must remember why they moved to the cities, a change of pace, different cultures/stores/people, and should try to keep their independent businesses alive rather than going to Ikea and Bed/Bath. I didn't move to NY for K-Mart to follow me here.

@Ailsa:
Well the problem is that more people in the suburbs means more cars. So, more people using the houses is not a good thing since the neighborhood is made for a lower density population. Basically, the infrastructure is just not there to support it.

What's so bad is that the poor will be further isolated from the jobs and services from the city center. With high gas prices it will be difficult to commute. With lowering property values in suburban sprawl it will be difficult to fund infrastructure further degrading the lower class condition. With corporations increasing cost of doing business wages won't increase. The suburbs will begin to look similar to shanty towns in developing countries. This shift will draw many of the middle class down with it and there will be increasing economic divides. Scarcity of water could lead to many problems now only seen in developing countries especially with climate change refuges from south america and africa. Positive outcomes (though through possibility of violence) could be radical political change and an end to our current "capitalism" and "globalization" (which cause the destruction of the environment) to more fair economic systems.

Why the continued delusion that cities/density=green? Everything the populous needs has to be transported in from afar. All the waste has to be transported out to afar. What happens when the law of diminishing returns kicks in? What happens when all those po' folk in the burbs and country realize that they can create smaller communities known as "towns" which can be virtually self-sustaining, while the trucks run their tanks dry and the city supply lines collapse.

Naa, forget that. You yuppie DUMBO living nincompoops just continue living the stylie dream. It'll never end of course, 'casue you got some organic tomatoes growing on your roof and you only go to organic wine bars.

This pattern has happened before - not to the suburbs, but to the small towns, the urbanistic ring suburbs that are relatively close to the urban cores. In the 60s and 70s many of these places were subject to people fleeing to the new suburban neighborhoods, and the downtowns crushed by shopping malls. Big traditional homes in these towns were converted into apartments.

I live in one of these ring towns, and we have just about seen the last of these apartment houses converted back into single family residences. Still a few stragglers but the writing is on the wall. This is the next phase of this kind of transformation. Traffic is bad, fuel is expensive, public transportation stops at these ring towns. They will experience rejuvenation as people not willing to move back into the city find out about the benefits of this urban suburban middle ground.

There are probably large demographic trends driving this change, not necessarily rejection of suburban living. Wait until the neo-urban crowd gets to be late-30s and have kids, etc. They'll start to want yards. They'll also discover the hipster cafes and oh-so-not-a-national-chain restaurants they covet are very poor choices to take 2-yr-olds who like to scream and throw food around. That's what your suburban Chili's was invented for.

I don't understand numbers of some green folks are so anti-suburbs. How can I incorporate solar power if I don't own my roof because I live in a condo? I have nowhere to make biofuel without a garage. If I'm renting an apartment I can't re-wire the walls with a low-voltage system. I love my McMansion--I just want it to have the energy footprint of a much smaller house, and drive towards the dream of taking it off the grid one day.

When discussing suburban sprawl big-box retail often comes under fire. What's wrong with acres of free parking? What's wrong with the WalMart Supercenter--saves me a lot of time and gas running around to 4 other stores for commodity items, not to mention the "reef effect" it has grouping other useful stores in pad sites surrounding the store.

Actually I'll suggest that the greener we get the more suburban living becomes feasible and desirable. Not all of us work in the core of downtown. I live in the Dallas burbs and commute 2.5 miles to work. Most everything I need is within a 5 mile radius of home. Living in Dallas there'd be no way I'm walking or riding a bike anywhere during our 3 or 4 months of scorching summer weather anyway. Gimme an electric car w/AC though...

williebio, i don't know what you're talking about. you just sound angry. it's only natural that people are attracted to cities; dynamic relationships, opportunity, interesting encounters are the fluffy reasons, but it simply comes down to human desire to be social. this has been true for thousands of years, except for the blip in our history called the industrial revolution, where we destroyed our urban areas with pollution (air, ground, water). now that we are finally thinking beyond that chaos, the intelligent and the ambitious (and yes the rich) are seeking a return to the urban realm that eluded us for almost 150 years. but rich is only one of three ways to be able to live here. and if some people don't like the city, then that is fine too. the point is, urbanity is logical for humans, and it can exist in a green, clean, way where resources and waste can be controlled within a finite area, not spread across countless suburbs. on that note, conduct a per capita carbon footprint for a city versus a suburb and you will find that the density does wonders for the environment.

will the poorer get displaced from places the richer want to live? yes, it has always been that way, that is survival of the fittest; our nature. are they sentenced to snarled suburban traffic and chopped up mcmansions with communal toilets? absolutely not; we have learned a lot about what works and what doesn't work in suburbia (the rich have been guinea pigs for this for 80 years)....and our social programs are much more responsible than they were when immigrants squeezed into tenemants (although that beat starving in, say, ireland) or blacks and hispanics were left to crumbling urban squalor. defunct big box retail strip malls can be rebuilt to mixed-use communities along transit accessible arteries; town centers can be created where subdivisions intersect; bus service can be extended where low densities and snobby suburban-dream communitites prevented it; and hopefully many of those cheap matchstick frame homes just rot away into the ground and return to forests as these outer communities snuggle up to transit. and yes, you'll even have your self-sustaining towns too.

the future can be equally promising for all classes; it's just not nearly as interesting to read about.

you can argue the need for a lawn when you have kids, and I see all the positives, but public parks are just as good and they've got socialization to boot.

City living isn't ideal, but then what is? Aside from the commenter who lives on 20 acres and is only 15 minutes from the city (where you live to manage that I'd love to know -- here is you want 20 acres you're at the very least an hour from the city - and that with no traffic)

I agree with two statements above: small towns are lovely and I do hope that many a sprawled out suburb comes to the realization that this density - being able to walk to what you need instead of drive, having a sense of community, etc, is idyllic and a goal worth having.

Also - I didn't move into the city for Bed Bath and Beyond to follow me. I'll stick to my co-ops and boutiques, thank you.

Remember the big picture, folks. It is certainly possible for a given individual or small town community to live lightly on the land, but can 6 or 9 billion Earth residents do so given our finite arable land? I don't think so. Urban densities and the efficiencies they provide are our best hope to accommodate the world's teeming masses. If you're not thinking at that scale, you're essentially assuming some kind of apocalyptic event will take us back to a smaller population that the Earth can handle. That is certainly possible, maybe even likely, but do you really want to count on it?

Let's put a little historical perspective to this. Until the post-WWII rise of the automobile suburb, migration patterns have generally been from the hinterland to the city center. Therefore, the reverse migration away from the city center we have experienced in the last 60 years is a brief (in historical terms) deviation from the norm. Several megatrends are happening right before our eyes that are shifting the trends back to the norm: end of the cheap oil era, aging demographics and global warming, to name a few. All of us who have lived during these times have witnessed one of the most unusual migration patterns in human history.

By the way, the shift back to the norm may not be an easy one since we have institutionalized our automobile suburb economy. In fact, some predict that the shift will be down right chaotic.

williebio, i don't know what you're talking about. you just sound angry. it's only natural that poeple are attracted to cities; dynamic relationships, opportunity, interesting encounters are the fluffy reasons, but it simply comes down to human desire to be social. this has been true for thousands of years, except for the blip in our history called the industrial revolution, where we destroyed our urban areas with pollution (air, ground, water). now that we are finally thinking beyond that chaos, the intelligent and the ambitious (and yes the rich) are seeking a return to the urban realm that eluded us for almost 150 years. but rich is only one of three ways to be able to live here. and if some people don't like the city, then that is fine too. the point is, urbanity is logical for humans, and it can exist in a green, clean, way where resources and waste can be controlled within a finite area, not spread across countless suburbs. on that note, conduct a per capita carbon footprint for a city versus a suburb and you will find that the density does wonders for the environment.

will the poorer get displaced from places the richer wnat to live? yes, it has always been that way, that is survival of the fittest; our nature. are they sentenced to snarled suburban traffic and chopped up mcmansions with communal toilets? absolutely not; we have learned a lot about what works and what doesn't work in suburbia (the rich have been guinea pigs for this for 80 years)....and our social programs are much more responsible than they were when immigrants squeezed into tenemants (although that beat starving in, say, ireland) or blacks and hispanics were left to crumbling urban squalor. defunct big box retail strip malls can be rebuilt to mixed-use communities along transit accessible arteries; town centers can be created where subdivisions intersect; bus service can be extended where densities and snobby suburban-dream communitites prevented it; and hopefully many of those cheap matchstick frame homes just rot away into the ground and return to forests as these outer communities snuggle up to transit. and yes, you'll even have your self-sustaining towns too.

the future can be equally promising for all classes; it's just not nearly as interesting to read about.

The whole thing would sort itself out really fast if property tax and zoning were abolished. Suburban locales could be re-tasked with infitinte flexibility to suit a happy, commute-free population, and low income populations would not be forced out by the rising tax tide, and could rather reap the benefits of good custodianship through rising property values.

taxes and regulation: whips and chains. we can't keep pretending these are ever good things that produce good results for human happiness.

I live in a building in manhattan with 550 units. Our building is 61 stories high and takes up about 1/4 of a city block. Just imagine if all of us 550 owners each had our own half acre suburban lot. That's a lot of deforestation.
The great majority of us don't have cars and take public transport (or walk) everywhere we go.
Urban/vertical living is INCREDIBLY green.
I think the least green aspect of my living is having to take an elevator up 50 floors.

I don't think it will be all doom and gloom. I imagine things would just look the way they did before cars higher city populations, as opposed to shrinking city populations and rising metro populations. More people living in the cities, some areas will be rich, some areas will be poor.

i'm curious if there's going to be a relocalization of manufacturing and basic production. that would imply a model where you'd at least need factory oriented sections of any given city, and people to work in them.

frankly, i'd rather live in a hippie hamlet of cheap surburban land with a big yard for growing veggies. anywhere east of dallas, the soil's fertile enough for this to be a decent enough thing. and i think euro countries deal with this to some extent, definitely better than we do, via commuter rail and regular bus routes. so not such a big deal, you know?

d - dallas's rail is extending east and west - by 2012 it'll be fairly comprehensive, particularly when considering the connecting buses.

The farm that husband and I drive out to when we're not just running to the farmer's market is in Terrell and it's beautiful.

What's not beautiful (or even remotely environmentally friendly) is the parceling up of farmlands for the building of tract house subdivisions. I'd much rather see dense living areas (cities or small towns - I know not everyone loves the bustle) and sprawling farmlands any day.

I think that suburban living should come to an end. Why take up more space than necessary? Global warming is directly linked to mankind's ever expanding footprint upon the earth, so why try to take up more space? Why not live in large building?

I can guarantee that living in an apartment building is infinitely better for the world than living in the burbs. For one, most apartments only have one side facing out to the world, this means that only one side of the building needs effective insulation to maintain the temperature of the unit.

Secondly, it concentrates waste. Yes this is a good thing! Who wants garbage trucks (and recycling trucks) getting 2 miles a gallon trucking around the suburbs all day and night trying to collect the waste generated in the burbs, when you can get one stopping collection from an apartment building?

Thirdly, as more people concentrate in urban centres, the concept of vertical farming becomes more and more appealing. Everyone has seen these vertical farm concepts. One tall building supplying enough food to feed 25000 to 40000 people, without the need for pesticides, herbicides, oil based fertilizers, diesel burning farm equipment or or truck burning millions of gallons of fuel just to get the food to the urban centers.

As the population gradually moves inwards, the of living for housing may rise, but the cost for necessities and basics might fall. With an ultra-dense population, there would be fewer commuters driving, which could decrease overall air pollution levels.

And probably the most important issues, and obviously the most controversial. Living in densely populated areas will more than likely reduce average family size. This is a good thing, I don't care who you are, where you're from, what religion you believe in, there are TOO MANY PEOPLE ON EARTH. If we truly want to improve society then we need to focus on learning to make the live on 7 billion people sustainable. The burden of growing world population is crushing the Earth's ability to sustain life. By lowering the birth rate, society can focus on improving the lives of future generation, fewer kids means more money per child to provide healthcare and education. By commiting greater resources to fewer children, those children will grow up to be healthy and more productive. RIght now the downsides to urban living seemto be ever shrinking, so goodbye sprawl, fare thee well.

American planners are wise to look to Canada for a preview - Canada is more urban and apart from having a far greater percentage of heating climate (vs. cooling climate), it is a useful microcosm for US metro futures.

Over 50% of Cdn new housing starts are now found in multi-family construction. Much of it in revitalizing (sometimes gentrifying, I guess) downtowns.

Smaller spaces, less ability to express yourself in home design (no exteriors, limited interior variability) less personal privacy and space, closer proximity to work, urban recreation and services are some of the social/logistic changes.

Like Europe and Asia, N. Americans will get used to denser living.

I am in my late 20's, live in an urban/surburban middle ground (known as a "town") along the Hudson, 20min's away from 42nd Street and Time Square. Not only have I not given up any of the commodities I was used to growing up in NYC (believe me I can be a real snoot) but my quality of life has been supplemented with the best of both worlds. I've got a mix of urban grit, a large diversity of people (ethnic/economic) and twice as many public spaces and transportation. I can get a greasy empanada down the block or if I feel fancy go to the new American grill on the corner (that uses locally grown produce), I can walk or bike everywhere including to Manhattan if I feel like, and most beautiful of all I own my place - which never would have happened staying put in "the city". Even though here many single-fam homes have been converted for multi-family use the people who own those homes are still living there and will never leave which makes a world of a difference. Just recently a Walmart was set to be built in this town of pure 'mom and pops' and many came together including local politicians to stop this monster endeavor, suffice it to say there will be no Walmart. Multi-family homes don't translate into deterioration of the social fabric. In Manhattan I sadly see nothing but these chains and I can no longer recognize the city I called home, it has lost alot of its soul. So while suburbia was never quite the right answer to the way real humans live, there is a middle way, its called a town, and yes there are plenty!

Re the population density = green debate

i might also add that dense urban concentrations of people require a lot of infrastructure. sewage plants, man traffic signals, garbage collection, intense energy production, etc. that is not something distributed living, if done right, would require.
this is a function of the entropy in a close system like a big city. big cities produce more entropy, therefor they need more energy to offset that entropy. distributed living done right doesn't.

When I moved my children from LA to the Boston area, it was estimated that the average LA public school kid had a 70% chance of lung damage from the air pollution. When I lived in the greater NYC area, it was incredibly stressful.

I now live on 5 acres (3 are wild forest, the other 2 organically grown and maintained). My 3 kids have had room to run and learned about nature from the wildlife all around us. We are 5 minutes from commuter rail into Boston for work.

I have read all the previous posts, and it seems that a lot of writers salivating at the end of suburbia are missing an important ingredient - quality of life. If I were 25 again, I might enjoy living in the city, but frankly, what I remember living in the city at 25 is the filth on the streets, the crowding everywhere, the huge income disparities, the crime, the fight for decent wages, etc.

So we organically garden and grow produce, we plant for bees, birds and butterflies, we're vegetarians, we combine our errands when using the car, we walk and bike whenever possible, we capture and re-use our gray water, work close to home, use public transport, etc.

Cities can be miserable places to live.

I'm a neo-hippie and I fully support suburban land reverting to micro-farms, AND I support the idea of communal living. Why not? People whine about more cars, but if you have a group sharing a home, they'd probably also share a (or maybe 2 vehicles,) rathter than having 1 car per household member.

Y'all can HAVE the city!
J-Mo

My solution is to send all liberals to their CHOICE of either Venus or Mars and Communists/Marxists to the Moon.

I never see liberals sacrifice themselves, they only demand that other people sacrifice FOR THEM...