Will Suburbs Be the Next Slums?

To celebrate the fact that the Atlantic is now letting non-subscribers read their articles, let's talk about "The Next Slum"?

The author, Christopher Leinberger, argues that homebuyers' tastes have changed. They no longer desire huge lawns on deserted cul-de-sacs. Everybody is sick of the Gap in the mall. People want the urban lifestyle. So, all the McMansions that multiplied in the 1980s are turning into slums. Those grand atriums are empty or filled with dodgy renters. Urban areas are improving their schools and offering safer streets. People are moving back to the cities.

I'm one of those who prefers an urban lifestyle. We've got a foot of snow out here right now, but we're going into the city tonight for date-night even if we have to attach a snow plow to the front of the Toyota. When the lack of affordable housing and the quality of schools forced us out to the suburbs, we chose to live in the center of an older suburban neighborhood. It has an urban flavor.

Our house has the high ceilings and fat moldings of a city apartment. Our lawn is very small. We can walk to a Starbucks and a bagel store. We immediately started yuppifying our old house.

This kind of living is also very green. My husband walks to the bus, which takes him to work. We only need one car. Our patch of grass doesn't need much water. Instead of building a new home, we're fixing up a 100 year old home. The old home was built so well that we don't need central air-conditioning.

If you look around the other homes in our downtown area and you'll see a few families like ours -- educated, professionals. But you'll also see many driveways with piles of contracting refuse. Several of the homes have been carved up into illegal sublets. One house is full of illegal Mexicans farming pepper plants on their front lawn. The roof on the porch has collapsed and the town refuses to condemn it.

Our walkable downtown is one of the real perks of living in the town, along with the easy commute into Manhattan. But our town is filled with struggling contractors and seniors who can't afford the high taxes, so they want to increase the ratables in town. They want to kick out Starbucks and put in a drive in Kentucky Fried Chicken.

I thought that we would be pioneers out here. I thought our downtown area would attract all sorts of people like us who were interested in urban-esque living.

I'm not seeing it. The bigger homes are holding their value. There aren't any big changes in our neighborhood. Instead of new urbanism, I'm seeing the same old preference patterns for driving culture and large lawns.

Comments

[Julia]

I see a great deal of wishful thinking in the Atlantic article. The most important part of the decision of where to move is the local school system. A more affluent population of citizens will not lead to better schools, especially if the more affluent citizens are DINKs and empty nesters. Urban districts are built to be unresponsive to parents' concerns. The teachers' union contracts enforce the status quo.

I could see a market for walkable communities outside of the large cities, except for the fact that I can drive through many moribund small town centers today. What people tell someone running a survey, and how they really behave, are not necessarily the same thing.

[Dr. Manhattan]

I also thought that Atlantic piece was nine parts wishful thinking for every one part of evidence. The typical potshots at suburbia gave it away. Joel Kotkin's work generally has the numbers that belie this line of argument.

[TPC]

It's not going to happen in a five-year period. Maybe over a twenty-year period, especially as traffic gets worse farther out.

[Jacknut]

Wait until the kids start school and need a place to play that doesn't involve you getting them somewhere else. That cul-de-sac will start to look pretty good.

[denise]

This all reminds me of the latest Stuff White People Like post...

[Amy P]

A few points:

1. The McMansion as boarding house issue has been discussed a lot at thehousingbubbleblog.com. It's partly the product of high housing prices and the need to cover the mortgage, but as HBB people point out, in many parts of the country, that's what happened to big old houses built around 1900. Neighborhoods do go downhill, especially as tastes change and certain styles fall out of favor.
2. RE: peppers in front yard. What the heck is it with front yards? You aren't supposed to have kids' toys there, you aren't supposed to grow vegetables there, what the heck are they for (other than as a decorative buffer between the street and the house)?
2. Leinberger is correct that big new developments in places like Stockton, CA are doomed. For details, see thehousingbubbleblog.com. (Sorry to keep repeating the URL, but I strongly suspect that Leinberger was inspired by it.)
3. Leinberger is guilty of wishful thinking. I like walkable city living as much as the next person (how I miss you, Squirrel Hill, Pgh!), but many of those projects are probably just as doomed as the McMansions. Along with the craze for 3000 square foot exurban McMansions, there was a related vogue for building "luxury" condos and "lofts" in the craziest places for the craziest prices.
4. Laura, please don't over-improve that house! It sounds like your neighborhood may be in transition, and not in a good way.

[Russell Arben Fox]

Like everyone, I have to agree that the article was more wishful thinking than anything else. Not that I don't wish his wishful thinking would be fulfilled, at least in most of the particulars! For the moment though, it's not so much an urban lifestyle that I think I and most young families want, as a lifestyle and location that gives us the time and opportunity to pursue what urbanity offers. That means living in a "built-in" neighborhood (is that the phrase I'm looking for? something about building small suburbs within, rather than without, the larger metropolitan area), a pseudo-suburb with small enough yards that you can be packed into a fairly small space, a space not that far away from schools, restaurants, and all the rest. We don't have that, exactly, but we're not doing too bad.

[MH]

I'll also miss Squirrel Hill if I leave. However, picking the right street in Aspinwall or Mt. Lebanon (the nicer of the older inner-ring suburbs) would get me most of the benefits of Squirrel Hill but with slightly lower taxes, much better schools, and (this is the big one) responsive local government. Anybody who did as bad of a job in one of those suburbs as Pittsburgh's officials are doing would likely lose the next election.

[Wendy]

I know I'm on a Levittown kick, apparently, but I grew up in a Levitt house. :) Levitt houses were built around Village Greens (remember those days hanging out at the Village Green? Billy Joel was a native Levittowner). The Village Greens had stores, playgrounds, green space, and community pools. They were walking distance for most people.

So suburbs can have community. What happened is that Levitt-type suburbs gave way to "planned unit developments." My husband I used to joke about them in North Carolina--you could drive into them, but you couldn't drive through them. All they were were houses and yards--nothing community-oriented. The failure of suburbs is a failure of planners/developers.

By the way, I was shocked to learn that several houses on my parents' block (in a Levitt-built community) have been transformed into multiple apartments. One house has 5 families living in it, according to my mom. My sister has a similar situation on her block. The average cost of a house in Nassau County is about $450K. No one can afford the houses on their own, without renters.

[Elizabeth]

There are definitely suburban slums outside of DC, but it's not the "McMansions" but the cheaply built townhouses way out in Woodbridge and beyond, that were still selling for $400k two years ago. Lots of foreclosures, lots of gang activities (in part because the parents have such long commutes.)

[trishka]

i think the factor that is going to most effect this phenomenon is going to be gas prices. it may not happen next year, maybe in five years, but twenty years from now we will very likely be living in a very different way than we are right now.

the question is: do we plan our communities for that likelihood? or do we plan for life now?

that is something i struggle with professionally all the time.

[denise]

However, picking the right street in Aspinwall or Mt. Lebanon (the nicer of the older inner-ring suburbs) would get me most of the benefits of Squirrel Hill but with slightly lower taxes, much better schools, and (this is the big one) responsive local government

But as the recent IB dust-up in USC demonstrated, "responsive local government" can mean guided by whimsy. There's a fine line between responsive and unstable.

[MH]

Denise,

The fact that it was a dust-up indicates how much better things are in USC. Think about all of the controversy in the Pittsburgh Public Schools lately (Schendely High, new teacher contract, teachers getting the right to live outside of the district). Now, name one school board member who wasn't the endorsed Democratic candidate in the race (or even one who faced the threat of having a non-delusional opponent).

[jen]

I personally think tomorrow's slums are just whatever was built in a rush in the last 10 years -- regardless of location. I see my sister-in-law's house, not even ten years old, with windows falling out .... I see the trendy "urban lifestyle" condos a block away from me, built in 2004 and already evidencing water damage. Housing stock of that poor quality is not going to draw a stable owner, ever. I don't care if it's built around a cutesy square, within walking distance of the store, whatever -- if it's falling apart, it's headed towards slum-dom.

[Julia]

I've noticed careful, forward-thinking seniors, usually widows, buying shares in senior housing developments. These developments usually have graduated levels of independent living, up to nursing home care. The whole "walkable community for seniors" theme is fine for those seniors who could appear in a pharmaceutical ad. It's not so great after your first fall.

I was also taken aback by the sentence, "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." Uh, NIMBYs? Zoning laws? Levels and layers of permits and hassle? Environmental impact statements? Court challenges? Road networks which were never built with today's traffic in mind, let alone the increased traffic of denser development.

I agree that it would make sense to rebuild densely built areas, but I just can't see it happening in the real world. Most builders are pragmatists, not idealists, and they want to make a large profit. It's easier to convert farms to poorly planned developments, than to rebuild existing towns.

[Laura GP]

Laura, I know I'm getting off point again, but do you know for a fact that the Mexicans living down the street are undocumented?

[Grace]

In southern CA, we are already seeing the large suburban tract homes filled with 20+ farmworkers. I don't know about their immigration status, but they speak Spanish and not English. The problem is most acute at the suburban/agricultural interface--places like Oxnard.

I live in an urban infill townhouse in an older suburb of LA. One 800 sf house thrown up during WWII was razed to build 2 2000 sf townhouses, each with a 2 car garage.

We lived the new urbanist lifestyle with one car and took the bus or rode our bikes. But we are the exception. Looking at our block, I see that our neighbors in the townhouses own 3 cars on average. Our back neighbors, with whom we share the lot and our parking own 4-5 cars at any given time. When I became disabled, we bought a second car. Finding parking for it amid our neighbors' cars has been challenging.