K
Kickin' Ass and Takin' Names
Guest
Strange days are upon the residents of many a suburban cul-de-sac.
Once-tidy yards have become overgrown, as the houses they front have
gone vacant. Signs of physical and social disorder are spreading.
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."
In the Franklin Reserve neighborhood of Elk Grove, California, south
of Sacramento, the houses are nicer than those at Windy Ridge--many
once sold for well over $500,000--but the phenomenon is the same. At
the height of the boom, 10,000 new homes were built there in just four
years. Now many are empty; renters of dubious character occupy others.
Graffiti, broken windows, and other markers of decay have multiplied.
Susan McDonald, president of the local residents' association and an
executive at a local bank, told the Associated Press, "There's been
gang activity. Things have really been changing, the last few years."
In the first half of last year, residential burglaries rose by 35
percent and robberies by 58 percent in suburban Lee County, Florida,
where one in four houses stands empty. Charlotte's crime rates have
stayed flat overall in recent years--but from 2003 to 2006, in the 10
suburbs of the city that have experienced the highest foreclosure
rates, crime rose 33 percent. Civic organizations in some suburbs have
begun to mow the lawns around empty houses to keep up the appearance
of stability. Police departments are mapping foreclosures in an effort
to identify emerging criminal hot spots.
The decline of places like Windy Ridge and Franklin Reserve is usually
attributed to the subprime-mortgage crisis, with its wave of
foreclosures. And the crisis has indeed catalyzed or intensified
social problems in many communities. But the story of vacant suburban
homes and declining suburban neighborhoods did not begin with the
crisis, and will not end with it. A structural change is under way in
the housing market--a major shift in the way many Americans want to
live and work. It has shaped the current downturn, steering some of
the worst problems away from the cities and toward the suburban
fringes. And its effects will be felt more strongly, and more broadly,
as the years pass. Its ultimate impact on the suburbs, and the cities,
will be profound.
Arthur C. Nelson, director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia
Tech, has looked carefully at trends in American demographics,
construction, house prices, and consumer preferences. In 2006, using
recent consumer research, housing supply data, and population growth
rates, he modeled future demand for various types of housing. The
results were bracing: Nelson forecasts a likely surplus of 22 million
large-lot homes (houses built on a sixth of an acre or more) by 2025--
that's roughly 40 percent of the large-lot homes in existence today.
For 60 years, Americans have pushed steadily into the suburbs,
transforming the landscape and (until recently) leaving cities behind.
But today the pendulum is swinging back toward urban living, and there
are many reasons to believe this swing will continue. As it does, many
low-density suburbs and McMansion subdivisions, including some that
are lovely and affluent today, may become what inner cities became in
the 1960s and '70s--slums characterized by poverty, crime, and decay.
The suburban dream began, arguably, at the New York World's Fair of
1939 and '40. "Highways and Horizons," better known as "Futurama," was
overwhelmingly the fair's most popular exhibit; perhaps 10 percent of
the American population saw it. At the heart of the exhibit was a
scale model, covering an area about the size of a football field, that
showed what American cities and towns might look like in 1960.
Visitors watched matchbox-sized cars zip down wide highways. Gone were
the crowded tenements of the time; 1960s Americans would live in stand-
alone houses with spacious yards and attached garages. The exhibit
would not impress us today, but at the time, it inspired wonder. E. B.
White wrote in Harper's, "A ride on the Futurama ... induces
approximately the same emotional response as a trip through the
Cathedral of St. John the Divine ... I didn't want to wake up."
The suburban transformation that began in 1946, as GIs returned home,
took almost half a century to complete, as first people, then retail,
then jobs moved out of cities and into new subdivisions, malls, and
office parks. As families decamped for the suburbs, they left behind
out-of-fashion real estate, a poorer residential base, and rising
crime. Once-thriving central-city retail districts were killed off by
the combination of regional suburban malls and the 1960s riots. By the
end of the 1970s, people seeking safety and good schools generally had
little alternative but to move to the suburbs. In 1981, Escape From
New York, starring Kurt Russell, depicted a near future in which
Manhattan had been abandoned, fenced off, and turned into an
unsupervised penitentiary.
Cities, of course, have made a long climb back since then. Just nine
years after Russell escaped from the wreck of New York, Seinfeld--
followed by Friends, then Sex and the City--began advertising the
city's renewed urban allure to Gen-Xers and Millennials. Many
Americans, meanwhile, became disillusioned with the sprawl and stupor
that sometimes characterize suburban life. These days, when Hollywood
wants to portray soullessness, despair, or moral decay, it often looks
to the suburbs--as The Sopranos and Desperate Housewives attest--for
inspiration.
In the past decade, as cities have gentrified, the suburbs have
continued to grow at a breakneck pace. Atlanta's sprawl has extended
nearly to Chattanooga; Fort Worth and Dallas have merged; and Los
Angeles has swung a leg over the 10,000-foot San Gabriel Mountains
into the Mojave Desert. Some experts expect conventional suburbs to
continue to sprawl ever outward. Yet today, American metropolitan
residential patterns and cultural preferences are mirror opposites of
those in the 1940s. Most Americans now live in single-family suburban
houses that are segregated from work, shopping, and entertainment; but
it is urban life, almost exclusively, that is culturally associated
with excitement, freedom, and diverse daily life. And as in the 1940s,
the real-estate market has begun to react.
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.
It's crucial to note that these premiums have arisen not only in
central cities, but also in suburban towns that have walkable urban
centers offering a mix of residential and commercial development. For
instance, luxury single-family homes in suburban Westchester County,
just north of New York City, sell for $375 a square foot. A luxury
condo in downtown White Plains, the county's biggest suburban city,
can cost you $750 a square foot. This same pattern can be seen in the
suburbs of Detroit, or outside Seattle. People are being drawn to the
convenience and culture of walkable urban neighborhoods across the
country--even when those neighborhoods are small.
Builders and developers tend to notice big price imbalances, and they
are working to accommodate demand for urban living. New lofts and
condo complexes have popped up all over many big cities. Suburban
towns built in the 19th and early 20th centuries, featuring downtown
street grids at their core, have seen a good deal of "in-filling" in
recent years as well, with new condos and town houses, and renovated
small-lot homes just outside their downtowns. And while urban
construction may slow for a time because of the present housing bust,
it will surely continue. Sprawling, large-lot suburbs become less
attractive as they become more densely built, but urban areas--
especially those well served by public transit--become more appealing
as they are filled in and built up. Crowded sidewalks tend to be safe
and lively, and bigger crowds can support more shops, restaurants, art
galleries.
But developers are also starting to find ways to bring the city to
newer suburbs--and provide an alternative to conventional, car-based
suburban life. "Lifestyle centers"--walkable developments that create
an urban feel, even when built in previously undeveloped places--are
becoming popular with some builders. They feature narrow streets and
small storefronts that come up to the sidewalk, mixed in with housing
and office space. Parking is mostly hidden underground or in the
interior of faux city blocks.
The granddaddy of all lifestyle centers is the Reston Town Center,
located between Virginia's Dulles International Airport and
Washington, D.C. Since it opened in 1990, it has become the "downtown"
for western Fairfax and eastern Loudoun counties; a place for the kids
to see Santa and for teenagers to ice skate. People living in the town
can stroll from the movie theater to restaurants and then back home. A
2006 study by the Brookings Institution showed that Reston's
apartments, condominiums, and office and retail space were all
commanding about a 50 percent rent or price premium over the typically
suburban houses, office parks, and strip malls nearby.
Housing at Belmar, the new "downtown" in Lakewood, Colorado, a middle-
income inner suburb of Denver, commands a 60 percent premium per
square foot over the single-family homes in the neighborhoods around
it. The development covers about 20 small blocks in all. What's most
noteworthy is its history: it was built on the site of a razed mall.
Building lifestyle centers is far more complex than building McMansion
developments (or malls). These new, faux-urban centers have many
moving parts, and they need to achieve critical mass quickly to
attract buyers and retailers. As a result, during the 1990s, lifestyle
centers spread slowly. But real-estate developers are gaining more
experience with this sort of building, and it is proliferating. Very
few, if any, regional malls are being built these days--lifestyle
centers are going up instead.
In most metropolitan areas, only 5 to 10 percent of the housing stock
is located in walkable urban places (including places like downtown
White Plains and Belmar). Yet recent consumer research by Jonathan
Levine of the University of Michigan and Lawrence Frank of the
University of British Columbia suggests that roughly one in three
homeowners would prefer to live in these types of places. In one
study, for instance, Levine and his colleagues asked more than 1,600
mostly suburban residents of the Atlanta and Boston metro areas to
hypothetically trade off typical suburban amenities (such as large
living spaces) against typical urban ones (like living within walking
distance of retail districts). All in all, they found that only about
a third of the people surveyed solidly preferred traditional suburban
lifestyles, featuring large houses and lots of driving. Another third,
roughly, had mixed feelings. The final third wanted to live in mixed-
use, walkable urban areas--but most had no way to do so at an
affordable price. Over time, as urban and faux-urban building
continues, that will change.
Demographic changes in the United States also are working against
conventional suburban growth, and are likely to further weaken
preferences for car-based suburban living. When the Baby Boomers were
young, families with children made up more than half of all
households; by 2000, they were only a third of households; and by
2025, they will be closer to a quarter. Young people are starting
families later than earlier generations did, and having fewer
children. The Boomers themselves are becoming empty-nesters, and many
have voiced a preference for urban living. By 2025, the U.S. will
contain about as many single-person households as families with
children.
Because the population is growing, families with children will still
grow in absolute number--according to U.S. Census data, there will be
about 4 million more households with children in 2025 than there were
in 2000. But more than 10 million new single-family homes have already
been built since 2000, most of them in the suburbs.
If gasoline and heating costs continue to rise, conventional suburban
living may not be much of a bargain in the future. And as more
Americans, particularly affluent Americans, move into urban
communities, families may find that some of the suburbs' other big
advantages--better schools and safer communities--have eroded. Schooling
and safety are likely to improve in urban areas, as those areas
continue to gentrify; they may worsen in many suburbs if the tax base--
often highly dependent on house values and new development--
deteriorates. Many of the fringe counties in the Washington, D.C.,
metropolitan area, for instance, are projecting big budget deficits in
2008. Only Washington itself is expecting a large surplus. Fifteen
years ago, this budget situation was reversed.
The U.S. grows its total stock of housing and commercial space by, at
most, 3 percent each year, so the imbalance between the supply of
urban living options and the demand for them is not going to disappear
overnight. But over the next 20 years, developers will likely produce
many, many millions of new and newly renovated town houses, condos,
and small-lot houses in and around both new and traditional
downtowns.
As conventional suburban lifestyles fall out of fashion and walkable
urban alternatives proliferate, what will happen to obsolete large-lot
houses? One might imagine culs-de-sac being converted to faux Main
Streets, or McMansion developments being bulldozed and reforested or
turned into parks. But these sorts of transformations are likely to be
rare. Suburbia's many small parcels of land, held by different owners
with different motivations, make the purchase of whole neighborhoods
almost unheard-of. Condemnation of single-family housing for "higher
and better use" is politically difficult, and in most states it has
become almost legally impossible in recent years. In any case, the
infrastructure supporting large-lot suburban residential areas--roads,
sewer and water lines--cannot support the dense development that
urbanization would require, and is not easy to upgrade. Once large-
lot, suburban residential landscapes are built, they are hard to
unbuild.
The experience of cities during the 1950s through the '80s suggests
that the fate of many single-family homes on the metropolitan fringes
will be resale, at rock-bottom prices, to lower-income families--and in
all likelihood, eventual conversion to apartments.
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.
As the residents of inner-city neighborhoods did before them, suburban
homeowners will surely try to prevent the division of neighborhood
houses into rental units, which would herald the arrival of the poor.
And many will likely succeed, for a time. But eventually, the owners
of these fringe houses will have to sell to someone, and they're not
likely to find many buyers; offers from would-be landlords will start
to look better, and neighborhood restrictions will relax. Stopping a
fundamental market shift by legislation or regulation is generally
impossible.
Of course, not all suburbs will suffer this fate. Those that are
affluent and relatively close to central cities--especially those along
rail lines--are likely to remain in high demand. Some, especially those
that offer a thriving, walkable urban core, may find that even the
large-lot, residential-only neighborhoods around that core increase in
value. Single-family homes next to the downtowns of Redmond,
Washington; Evanston, Illinois; and Birmingham, Michigan, for example,
are likely to hold their values just fine.
On the other hand, many inner suburbs that are on the wrong side of
town, and poorly served by public transport, are already suffering
what looks like inexorable decline. Low-income people, displaced from
gentrifying inner cities, have moved in, and longtime residents,
seeking more space and nicer neighborhoods, have moved out.
But much of the future decline is likely to occur on the fringes, in
towns far away from the central city, not served by rail transit, and
lacking any real core. In other words, some of the worst problems are
likely to be seen in some of the country's more recently developed
areas--and not only those inhabited by subprime-mortgage borrowers.
Many of these areas will become magnets for poverty, crime, and social
dysfunction.
Despite this glum forecast for many swaths of suburbia, we should not
lose sight of the bigger picture--the shift that's under way toward
walkable urban living is a healthy development. In the most literal
sense, it may lead to better personal health and a slimmer population.
The environment, of course, will also benefit: if New York City were
its own state, it would be the most energy-efficient state in the
union; most Manhattanites not only walk or take public transit to get
around, they unintentionally share heat with their upstairs
neighbors.
Perhaps most important, the shift to walkable urban environments will
give more people what they seem to want. I doubt the swing toward
urban living will ever proceed as far as the swing toward the suburbs
did in the 20th century; many people will still prefer the bigger
houses and car-based lifestyles of conventional suburbs. But there
will almost certainly be more of a balance between walkable and
drivable communities--allowing people in most areas a wider variety of
choices.
By the estimate of Virginia Tech's Arthur Nelson, as much as half of
all real-estate development on the ground in 2025 will not have
existed in 2000. It's exciting to imagine what the country will look
like then. Building and residential migration seem to progress slowly
from year to year, yet then one day, in retrospect, the landscape
seems to have been transformed in the blink of an eye. Unfortunately,
the next transformation, like the ones before it, will leave some
places diminished. 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.
The URL for this page is http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200803/subprime.
Once-tidy yards have become overgrown, as the houses they front have
gone vacant. Signs of physical and social disorder are spreading.
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."
In the Franklin Reserve neighborhood of Elk Grove, California, south
of Sacramento, the houses are nicer than those at Windy Ridge--many
once sold for well over $500,000--but the phenomenon is the same. At
the height of the boom, 10,000 new homes were built there in just four
years. Now many are empty; renters of dubious character occupy others.
Graffiti, broken windows, and other markers of decay have multiplied.
Susan McDonald, president of the local residents' association and an
executive at a local bank, told the Associated Press, "There's been
gang activity. Things have really been changing, the last few years."
In the first half of last year, residential burglaries rose by 35
percent and robberies by 58 percent in suburban Lee County, Florida,
where one in four houses stands empty. Charlotte's crime rates have
stayed flat overall in recent years--but from 2003 to 2006, in the 10
suburbs of the city that have experienced the highest foreclosure
rates, crime rose 33 percent. Civic organizations in some suburbs have
begun to mow the lawns around empty houses to keep up the appearance
of stability. Police departments are mapping foreclosures in an effort
to identify emerging criminal hot spots.
The decline of places like Windy Ridge and Franklin Reserve is usually
attributed to the subprime-mortgage crisis, with its wave of
foreclosures. And the crisis has indeed catalyzed or intensified
social problems in many communities. But the story of vacant suburban
homes and declining suburban neighborhoods did not begin with the
crisis, and will not end with it. A structural change is under way in
the housing market--a major shift in the way many Americans want to
live and work. It has shaped the current downturn, steering some of
the worst problems away from the cities and toward the suburban
fringes. And its effects will be felt more strongly, and more broadly,
as the years pass. Its ultimate impact on the suburbs, and the cities,
will be profound.
Arthur C. Nelson, director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia
Tech, has looked carefully at trends in American demographics,
construction, house prices, and consumer preferences. In 2006, using
recent consumer research, housing supply data, and population growth
rates, he modeled future demand for various types of housing. The
results were bracing: Nelson forecasts a likely surplus of 22 million
large-lot homes (houses built on a sixth of an acre or more) by 2025--
that's roughly 40 percent of the large-lot homes in existence today.
For 60 years, Americans have pushed steadily into the suburbs,
transforming the landscape and (until recently) leaving cities behind.
But today the pendulum is swinging back toward urban living, and there
are many reasons to believe this swing will continue. As it does, many
low-density suburbs and McMansion subdivisions, including some that
are lovely and affluent today, may become what inner cities became in
the 1960s and '70s--slums characterized by poverty, crime, and decay.
The suburban dream began, arguably, at the New York World's Fair of
1939 and '40. "Highways and Horizons," better known as "Futurama," was
overwhelmingly the fair's most popular exhibit; perhaps 10 percent of
the American population saw it. At the heart of the exhibit was a
scale model, covering an area about the size of a football field, that
showed what American cities and towns might look like in 1960.
Visitors watched matchbox-sized cars zip down wide highways. Gone were
the crowded tenements of the time; 1960s Americans would live in stand-
alone houses with spacious yards and attached garages. The exhibit
would not impress us today, but at the time, it inspired wonder. E. B.
White wrote in Harper's, "A ride on the Futurama ... induces
approximately the same emotional response as a trip through the
Cathedral of St. John the Divine ... I didn't want to wake up."
The suburban transformation that began in 1946, as GIs returned home,
took almost half a century to complete, as first people, then retail,
then jobs moved out of cities and into new subdivisions, malls, and
office parks. As families decamped for the suburbs, they left behind
out-of-fashion real estate, a poorer residential base, and rising
crime. Once-thriving central-city retail districts were killed off by
the combination of regional suburban malls and the 1960s riots. By the
end of the 1970s, people seeking safety and good schools generally had
little alternative but to move to the suburbs. In 1981, Escape From
New York, starring Kurt Russell, depicted a near future in which
Manhattan had been abandoned, fenced off, and turned into an
unsupervised penitentiary.
Cities, of course, have made a long climb back since then. Just nine
years after Russell escaped from the wreck of New York, Seinfeld--
followed by Friends, then Sex and the City--began advertising the
city's renewed urban allure to Gen-Xers and Millennials. Many
Americans, meanwhile, became disillusioned with the sprawl and stupor
that sometimes characterize suburban life. These days, when Hollywood
wants to portray soullessness, despair, or moral decay, it often looks
to the suburbs--as The Sopranos and Desperate Housewives attest--for
inspiration.
In the past decade, as cities have gentrified, the suburbs have
continued to grow at a breakneck pace. Atlanta's sprawl has extended
nearly to Chattanooga; Fort Worth and Dallas have merged; and Los
Angeles has swung a leg over the 10,000-foot San Gabriel Mountains
into the Mojave Desert. Some experts expect conventional suburbs to
continue to sprawl ever outward. Yet today, American metropolitan
residential patterns and cultural preferences are mirror opposites of
those in the 1940s. Most Americans now live in single-family suburban
houses that are segregated from work, shopping, and entertainment; but
it is urban life, almost exclusively, that is culturally associated
with excitement, freedom, and diverse daily life. And as in the 1940s,
the real-estate market has begun to react.
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.
It's crucial to note that these premiums have arisen not only in
central cities, but also in suburban towns that have walkable urban
centers offering a mix of residential and commercial development. For
instance, luxury single-family homes in suburban Westchester County,
just north of New York City, sell for $375 a square foot. A luxury
condo in downtown White Plains, the county's biggest suburban city,
can cost you $750 a square foot. This same pattern can be seen in the
suburbs of Detroit, or outside Seattle. People are being drawn to the
convenience and culture of walkable urban neighborhoods across the
country--even when those neighborhoods are small.
Builders and developers tend to notice big price imbalances, and they
are working to accommodate demand for urban living. New lofts and
condo complexes have popped up all over many big cities. Suburban
towns built in the 19th and early 20th centuries, featuring downtown
street grids at their core, have seen a good deal of "in-filling" in
recent years as well, with new condos and town houses, and renovated
small-lot homes just outside their downtowns. And while urban
construction may slow for a time because of the present housing bust,
it will surely continue. Sprawling, large-lot suburbs become less
attractive as they become more densely built, but urban areas--
especially those well served by public transit--become more appealing
as they are filled in and built up. Crowded sidewalks tend to be safe
and lively, and bigger crowds can support more shops, restaurants, art
galleries.
But developers are also starting to find ways to bring the city to
newer suburbs--and provide an alternative to conventional, car-based
suburban life. "Lifestyle centers"--walkable developments that create
an urban feel, even when built in previously undeveloped places--are
becoming popular with some builders. They feature narrow streets and
small storefronts that come up to the sidewalk, mixed in with housing
and office space. Parking is mostly hidden underground or in the
interior of faux city blocks.
The granddaddy of all lifestyle centers is the Reston Town Center,
located between Virginia's Dulles International Airport and
Washington, D.C. Since it opened in 1990, it has become the "downtown"
for western Fairfax and eastern Loudoun counties; a place for the kids
to see Santa and for teenagers to ice skate. People living in the town
can stroll from the movie theater to restaurants and then back home. A
2006 study by the Brookings Institution showed that Reston's
apartments, condominiums, and office and retail space were all
commanding about a 50 percent rent or price premium over the typically
suburban houses, office parks, and strip malls nearby.
Housing at Belmar, the new "downtown" in Lakewood, Colorado, a middle-
income inner suburb of Denver, commands a 60 percent premium per
square foot over the single-family homes in the neighborhoods around
it. The development covers about 20 small blocks in all. What's most
noteworthy is its history: it was built on the site of a razed mall.
Building lifestyle centers is far more complex than building McMansion
developments (or malls). These new, faux-urban centers have many
moving parts, and they need to achieve critical mass quickly to
attract buyers and retailers. As a result, during the 1990s, lifestyle
centers spread slowly. But real-estate developers are gaining more
experience with this sort of building, and it is proliferating. Very
few, if any, regional malls are being built these days--lifestyle
centers are going up instead.
In most metropolitan areas, only 5 to 10 percent of the housing stock
is located in walkable urban places (including places like downtown
White Plains and Belmar). Yet recent consumer research by Jonathan
Levine of the University of Michigan and Lawrence Frank of the
University of British Columbia suggests that roughly one in three
homeowners would prefer to live in these types of places. In one
study, for instance, Levine and his colleagues asked more than 1,600
mostly suburban residents of the Atlanta and Boston metro areas to
hypothetically trade off typical suburban amenities (such as large
living spaces) against typical urban ones (like living within walking
distance of retail districts). All in all, they found that only about
a third of the people surveyed solidly preferred traditional suburban
lifestyles, featuring large houses and lots of driving. Another third,
roughly, had mixed feelings. The final third wanted to live in mixed-
use, walkable urban areas--but most had no way to do so at an
affordable price. Over time, as urban and faux-urban building
continues, that will change.
Demographic changes in the United States also are working against
conventional suburban growth, and are likely to further weaken
preferences for car-based suburban living. When the Baby Boomers were
young, families with children made up more than half of all
households; by 2000, they were only a third of households; and by
2025, they will be closer to a quarter. Young people are starting
families later than earlier generations did, and having fewer
children. The Boomers themselves are becoming empty-nesters, and many
have voiced a preference for urban living. By 2025, the U.S. will
contain about as many single-person households as families with
children.
Because the population is growing, families with children will still
grow in absolute number--according to U.S. Census data, there will be
about 4 million more households with children in 2025 than there were
in 2000. But more than 10 million new single-family homes have already
been built since 2000, most of them in the suburbs.
If gasoline and heating costs continue to rise, conventional suburban
living may not be much of a bargain in the future. And as more
Americans, particularly affluent Americans, move into urban
communities, families may find that some of the suburbs' other big
advantages--better schools and safer communities--have eroded. Schooling
and safety are likely to improve in urban areas, as those areas
continue to gentrify; they may worsen in many suburbs if the tax base--
often highly dependent on house values and new development--
deteriorates. Many of the fringe counties in the Washington, D.C.,
metropolitan area, for instance, are projecting big budget deficits in
2008. Only Washington itself is expecting a large surplus. Fifteen
years ago, this budget situation was reversed.
The U.S. grows its total stock of housing and commercial space by, at
most, 3 percent each year, so the imbalance between the supply of
urban living options and the demand for them is not going to disappear
overnight. But over the next 20 years, developers will likely produce
many, many millions of new and newly renovated town houses, condos,
and small-lot houses in and around both new and traditional
downtowns.
As conventional suburban lifestyles fall out of fashion and walkable
urban alternatives proliferate, what will happen to obsolete large-lot
houses? One might imagine culs-de-sac being converted to faux Main
Streets, or McMansion developments being bulldozed and reforested or
turned into parks. But these sorts of transformations are likely to be
rare. Suburbia's many small parcels of land, held by different owners
with different motivations, make the purchase of whole neighborhoods
almost unheard-of. Condemnation of single-family housing for "higher
and better use" is politically difficult, and in most states it has
become almost legally impossible in recent years. In any case, the
infrastructure supporting large-lot suburban residential areas--roads,
sewer and water lines--cannot support the dense development that
urbanization would require, and is not easy to upgrade. Once large-
lot, suburban residential landscapes are built, they are hard to
unbuild.
The experience of cities during the 1950s through the '80s suggests
that the fate of many single-family homes on the metropolitan fringes
will be resale, at rock-bottom prices, to lower-income families--and in
all likelihood, eventual conversion to apartments.
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.
As the residents of inner-city neighborhoods did before them, suburban
homeowners will surely try to prevent the division of neighborhood
houses into rental units, which would herald the arrival of the poor.
And many will likely succeed, for a time. But eventually, the owners
of these fringe houses will have to sell to someone, and they're not
likely to find many buyers; offers from would-be landlords will start
to look better, and neighborhood restrictions will relax. Stopping a
fundamental market shift by legislation or regulation is generally
impossible.
Of course, not all suburbs will suffer this fate. Those that are
affluent and relatively close to central cities--especially those along
rail lines--are likely to remain in high demand. Some, especially those
that offer a thriving, walkable urban core, may find that even the
large-lot, residential-only neighborhoods around that core increase in
value. Single-family homes next to the downtowns of Redmond,
Washington; Evanston, Illinois; and Birmingham, Michigan, for example,
are likely to hold their values just fine.
On the other hand, many inner suburbs that are on the wrong side of
town, and poorly served by public transport, are already suffering
what looks like inexorable decline. Low-income people, displaced from
gentrifying inner cities, have moved in, and longtime residents,
seeking more space and nicer neighborhoods, have moved out.
But much of the future decline is likely to occur on the fringes, in
towns far away from the central city, not served by rail transit, and
lacking any real core. In other words, some of the worst problems are
likely to be seen in some of the country's more recently developed
areas--and not only those inhabited by subprime-mortgage borrowers.
Many of these areas will become magnets for poverty, crime, and social
dysfunction.
Despite this glum forecast for many swaths of suburbia, we should not
lose sight of the bigger picture--the shift that's under way toward
walkable urban living is a healthy development. In the most literal
sense, it may lead to better personal health and a slimmer population.
The environment, of course, will also benefit: if New York City were
its own state, it would be the most energy-efficient state in the
union; most Manhattanites not only walk or take public transit to get
around, they unintentionally share heat with their upstairs
neighbors.
Perhaps most important, the shift to walkable urban environments will
give more people what they seem to want. I doubt the swing toward
urban living will ever proceed as far as the swing toward the suburbs
did in the 20th century; many people will still prefer the bigger
houses and car-based lifestyles of conventional suburbs. But there
will almost certainly be more of a balance between walkable and
drivable communities--allowing people in most areas a wider variety of
choices.
By the estimate of Virginia Tech's Arthur Nelson, as much as half of
all real-estate development on the ground in 2025 will not have
existed in 2000. It's exciting to imagine what the country will look
like then. Building and residential migration seem to progress slowly
from year to year, yet then one day, in retrospect, the landscape
seems to have been transformed in the blink of an eye. Unfortunately,
the next transformation, like the ones before it, will leave some
places diminished. 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.
The URL for this page is http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200803/subprime.