Tag Archives: suburban critiques

Quick Review: The End of the Suburbs

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I recently read The End of the Suburbs, written by Fortune journalist Leigh Gallagher. On one hand, the book does a nice job describing some recent trends involving, but, on the other hand, the book is mistitled and I think she misses some key points about suburbs.

1. If I could title the book, I would name it something like “The End of the Sprawling Suburbs” or perhaps “The End of Sprawl.” Neither title is as sexy but she is not arguing that the American suburbs will disappear, rather that demographics and other factors are shifting toward cities. There is a big difference between ending suburbs and seeing them “grow up,” as one cited expert puts it.

2. Some of the key trends she highlights: the costs of driving (the whole oil industry, maintenance/gas/insurance/stress for owners, paying for roads/infrastructure), a changing family structure with more single-person and no-children households, changes among millennials and baby boomers who may be looking to get out of the suburbs in large numbers, a push toward New Urbanism in new suburban developments to increase density and strengthen community, and builders and developers, like Toll Brothers, are looking to build denser and more urban developments with more mixed-uses and smaller houses.

3. But, here are some big areas that I think Gallagher misses:

a. While she highlights the benefits of New Urbanism, does this lead to more affordable housing? In fact, the need for more affordable housing is rarely mentioned. As certain areas become more popular, such as urban neighborhoods that attract the creative class, this raises prices and pushes certain people out.

b. The main focus in the book is on big cities in the Northeast and Midwest. While she mentions some Sunbelt cities, like Las Vegas and Los Angeles, there is a lot more to explore here. There are particular patterns in Northern cities compared to newer, more sprawling Sunbelt cities. And in a book talking about the end of sprawl, how could she not mention Portland’s fight against urban sprawl in the last few decades?

c. It is an intriguing idea that cities and suburbs are starting to blend together. But, some of the examples are strange. For example, she talk about how there is increased poverty in the suburbs, which then could make cities more attractive again. There are still some major differences between the two sets of places, particularly the cultural mindsets as well as the settlement patterns.

d. She highlights thriving urban cores – but what about the rest of big cities? While Manhattan and Chicago’s Loop might be doing all right, what about the poorer parts of those cities? The recent mayoral race in NYC involved this issue and many have complained in Chicago that most of the neighborhoods experience little government help. In other words, these thriving urban and suburban developments often benefit the wealthier in society who can take advantage of them.

e. It isn’t until the last chapter that she highlights some defenders of sprawl – people like Joel Kotkin or Robert Bruegmann – but doesn’t spend much time with their ideas. Indeed, the book reads as if these trends are all inevitably moving toward cities and defenders of suburbs would argue critics of suburbs have been making these arguments for decades.

4. Two questions inspired by the book:

a. Just how much should the American economy rely on the housing industry? Gallagher suggests housing is a sign of a good economy based in other areas rather than one of the leading industries. Sprawl can lead to boom times for the construction and housing industries but it can also face tough times. Perhaps our efforts would be better spent trying to build up other industries.

b. Is the century of sprawl in America (roughly 1910 to today – there were suburbs before this but their mass development based around cars and mass housing really began in the 1920s) an aberration in our history or is it a deeper mentality and period? Gallagher suggests we are at the end of an era but others could argue the suburbs are deeply culturally engrained in American life and have a longer past and future.

Overall, this is an interesting read summarizing some important trends but I also think Gallagher misses some major suburban trends.

The End of the Suburbs – again?

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The author of a new book titled The End of the Suburbs suggests the American suburbs will change in response to several threats:

Q: So which demons are breathing down suburbia’s neck?

A: There’s a lot. To begin with, the nuclear family, which filled our suburban houses, is no longer the norm — marriage and birthrates are steadily declining, while the number of single-person households is growing rapidly. If the demand for good schools and family-friendly lifestyles has historically been the main selling point of suburban life, those things aren’t going to matter so much in the future.

Another thing is that Americans are just sick of driving. They’re sick of commuting. The number of miles driven per year is in decline. And the cost of gasoline has meant that homes on the suburban fringe are not such a bargain.

At the same time, cities, in general, are making a comeback, especially among young adults and even among families with children.

Q: Among the factors you write about in the book, which one is the biggest influence?

A: One of the things that’s the most potent of all of these factors is the demographic situation — the birthrate is falling, the marriage rate is falling, the nuclear family is rapidly becoming a minority household type in this country — 70 percent of households won’t have any children in them by 2025. When you look at those figures and the way our population is changing so dramatically, it hits home — we have built all these houses for a type of household that isn’t going to exist anymore.

But on the question of what happens to the suburbs, the author then goes on to suggest they won’t completely disappear as they will still appeal to a segment of the market.

A few things to note:

1. Critics have suggested the end of the suburbs for decades now. That doesn’t necessarily mean they won’t decline or disappear in the future; it just means plenty of people have made this prediction.

2. Perhaps the most important thing for the future of the suburbs is whether the adaptations to these threats take place within the suburbs or in cities. For example, there is already a push to more density within suburbs that might approximate more urban conditions without having to actually be in cities. These denser pockets would limit driving and also possibly provide different kinds of housing.

3. Her suggestion about the changing household composition is intriguing: see this earlier post about Going Solo in the suburbs.

Author argues the singular American suburban dream is splintering into multiple dreams

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In the new book The End of the Suburbs, Leigh Gallagher argues the suburban dream is changing:

That gets to what you say at the very end: the American dream won’t be singular anymore. There will be different dreams.

And they will be dreams. They won’t be houses. They won’t be buildings. Somewhere along the way the American Dream morphed from being a dream, an opportunity, to being a house. That’s no longer the case for a lot of people…

The future you outline are these “urban burbs”-style developments where people don’t have to drive more than a mile or two and they can reach other urban burbs by transit. How close are we to that on a broad scale?

We’re far away from being these network of nodes where everybody is hooked up to everyone else by public transit and we all read three hours more a day. We’re far from that. But the important thing is, people are recognizing that we can’t just keep doing what we’ve been doing. It’s not satisfying people. And it’s no longer meeting the market demand. Home-builders only react when they think the market wants something. And they’re starting to react.

One could argue that even at the peak of mass suburbanization, sometime between the late 1940s and mid 1960s, there have always been some different visions of suburbia. The common image is similar to what happened in the Levittowns: mostly white city dwellers fleeing the city and seeking out more private spaces in the suburbs. But, even then there were pockets of different kinds of suburbs, whether they were more industrial suburbs, suburbs with mostly African-American residents (see Places of Their Own by Andrew Wiese), and working-class suburbs (see My Blue Heaven by Becky Nicolaides).

Thus, this may an issue of the dominant trends in building and development (more urban suburban places) but it is also about the dominant image or narrative of the suburbs, particularly that of critics, falling apart. If suburbs become more dense on the whole, does it make them more palatable to everyone? How dense do they need to be before they are viewed as something very different?

Argument: many Chicago suburbs have boring mottos

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The Daily Herald suggests a number of Chicago suburbs have dull mottos that don’t say much about the communities:

Town mottos are like nicknames in that the best ones, such as “City of Big Shoulders” for Chicago, are bestowed by others and not self-proclaimed, such as “Urbus en Horto” (“City in a Garden”) for Chicago. At least there is a story behind Des Plaines’ destiny. Most suburbs adopt bland, easily forgotten mottos that tout development or vague hopes for the future, such as Schaumburg’s “Progress Through Thoughtful Planning,” Bloomingdale’s “Growth With Pride,” or Bolingbrook’s “A Place to Grow.”

Wauconda’s “Water. Spirit. Wonder.” is unique but might sound a little cold compared to neighboring Island Lake, which is “A Community of Friendly People” who settled there instead of in Huntley, “The Friendly Village with Country Charm.”

Hanover Park opts for “One Village — One Future.” It doesn’t say much, but no one can argue with the math. No one should quibble about Elgin’s “The City in the Suburbs.” But Naperville’s “Great Service — All the Time,” also a favorite motto of pizzerias, might fuel discussions. One Wikipedia entry falsely touts Libertyville’s motto as the impressive “Fortitudine Vincimus,” Latin for “By Endurance We Conquer,” which basically means “We Will Win By Hanging Around Until Everybody Else Quits.” But Libertyville never used that motto and currently sports only the phrase “Spirit of Independence” on its red-white-and-blue logo…

Lombard, “The Lilac Village,” still boasts a motto that brings to mind something pretty and fragrant. Roselle hosts a rose parade and includes roses in its village seal, but it uses the motto “Tradition Meets Tomorrow,” which is pretty similar to the “Where Tradition and Vision Meet” motto of Batavia. (Given Batavia’s link to the high-energy physics of Fermilab, it might consider the motto “Village of Density.”)

These mottos sound like classic talk from city boosters: they tend to contain grand visions about the future without getting into too many specifics or highlight a small part of the community’s character. I think they are primarily about trying to impress businesses, trying to attract them to relocate in a place that is thriving and will continue to thrive.

Unfortunately, when all the mottos sound similar, they all don’t mean a whole lot. How does a business really differentiate between communities based on their mottos? The biggest issue for a suburb might be having a motto that is significantly different. This might lead people to ask why that community is so out of line.

Critics of suburbs might see these mottos as more evidence of the homogeneity or blandness of suburbs. Many communities seem to be striving after the same things. Yet, we know that suburbs are actually quite different, whether that is due to different functions (like comparing a bedroom suburb and an edge city) or different histories (date of founding, specific historical circumstances) or a unique set of self-perception (like suburbs that view themselves as extra friendly or full of volunteers). So perhaps more suburbs should work to differentiate themselves in their mottos, move away from bland American notions of progress, and more explicitly highlight their more unique features.

The BBC on why many think the suburbs are boring

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A sociologist suggests British suburbs are not quite as boring as some might think:

Unlike the usual presumption of suburbs as quiet, featureless places “where nothing ever happens”, recent years have seen dramatic happenings in suburbs, not least the riots of 2011 in places like Ealing and Croydon in London.

In many ways the 21st Century suburb faces some thoroughly modern problems. There is crumbling infrastructure, with hollowed out High Streets. There is pressure on public services prompted by population increases, as witnessed in the annual scramble for school places…

But far from being cultural deserts, suburbs have been a fertile breeding ground for artistic movements. It is from the nation’s Acacia Avenues that almost all post-war pop has emerged, even if its artists would rather make out that they hailed from high-rise hell and so be more “edgy”…

Suburbia has shifted to become a place of dynamism housing ethnically mixed populations, as illustrated by the 2011 Census figures, in contrast to the assumptions of uniformity.

This description could also fit some of the changes in American suburbs in recent decades. Inner-ring suburbs, adjacent to big cities, face big city problems. A number of suburbs are looking for revenue due to cuts in federal and state aid. Suburbs are often marked by single-family homes. More suburbs are seeking out cultural and entertainment opportunities, at least to provide increased tax revenues. Increasing numbers of non-whites and poorer residents now live in suburbs. In fact, the final paragraph of the op-ed seems to suggest American and British suburbs are not so different:

We should smash the stereotypes of nondescript suburbia and rather than being embarrassed by them, celebrate those places on the edges of our cities that give our nation its essential character.

The essential character of Britain is in its suburbs?

With these changes afoot, it then is interesting to consider why suburbs consider to have this image as boring. As the op-ed says, some of this is due to media portrayals of banal suburban life, whether through television sitcoms or songs by musicians railing against their suburban upbringings. It is also due to academics and other socially influential people arguing against suburbs. When I think about it, I don’t know if I would say these portrayals suggest suburbs are boring; these critiques are often more negative. Boring implies there isn’t much going on but the criticisms of suburbs range from invoking individualism, racism, materialism, classism, and other social ills.

Using suburban homes for film shoots

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The Daily Herald describes what happens when suburban homes are chosen for film shoots:

Directors of Hollywood movies, TV shows, commercials and national print ads regularly use suburban homes as locations for filming and photo shoots. Just a few weeks ago, scenes from the movie “Precious Mettle,” starring Paul Sorvino and Fiona Dourif, were shot at homes in Naperville and Aurora…They will add the photos to their online database and show them to prospective directors. Because they have thousands of homes in their database, the odds of being chosen are slim. But you never know what a director is looking for, and there’s growing demand for suburban-styled homes, said longtime location scout Oryna Schiffman, based in Elmhurst.

“Since the recession started, I’ve been getting less and less requests for your typical North Shore mansions. They say, ‘I want real people who live in real houses,'” said Schiffman, who accepts photos at oryna@me.com. “You never know what they’re going to ask for next.”…

However, there is a downside to offering up your home. Filming and photo shoots can disrupt your routine, your sleep, and possibly your neighborhood. Movie crews, especially, tend to completely take over an area with trailers and equipment. Homeowners usually get short notice about the shoots and need to hastily sign off on the legal paperwork.

While most film crews are respectful of people’s property (and often contractually obligated to return it to its original condition), paint sometimes gets chipped and things get broken or banged up. That’s why it’s important to get things in writing before the filming begins.

Of course, the article starts with a story of a family who was paid $12,000 for giving up their home for six days for a print advertisement shoot. There may be quite a few suburbanites who would relish such an opportunity.

The quote that directors are looking for “real homes” is interesting. The suggestion here is that with tighter economic times, people want to see more normal homes while during more economic prosperous times people like seeing bigger homes. When they arrive at a home, how much do they take the home as is or they change it up to suit their filming needs? Plus, how often is the tone of the commercial, TV show, film, or advertisement that the suburban home needs improving or there is something to critique? On one hand, there are a lot of critics of suburban tract homes but they are apparently useful for marketing and some artistic purposes.

Holding a McMansion mortgage limits your American freedom and liberty

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Here is another argument why you should not own a McMansion: it limits your ability to be a free American.

Want to sever from your body an arm and a leg in the name of the American Dream? It’s certainly at odds with what the dream is supposed to be about. If the idioms ‘freedom’ and ‘liberty’ still reign supreme in the minds of Americans, a mortgage on a single family McMansion is losing its shine.

The lifestyle manufactured by the burbs lacks the luster it once held. Working incessantly to maintain payments on your suburban box and pay for gas to drive EVERYWHERE is less desirable for those who have the luxury of choice in today’s America…

I recently visited a very well planned subdivision. It had a small row of shops, a park, lots of trees and wonderfully manicured lawns as far as the eye could see. It felt false. It felt like the neighborhood committee was the Joneses that enforced the keeping up. In older neighborhoods there are intermittent shops, bars, community halls, schools and houses of all shapes and sizes. Some neighbors are house-proud and commit themselves to a fine garden and home. Others have bottomed out station wagon in their front yard. The lots are different sizes. The houses have assorted kitsch, architectural details. There are old people who have lived there since the Great Depression.

It’s time for an organic refit of those suburbs that reek of bland mass-market ideals. They come from a time that was most certainly thrown overboard in the 2009 housing crisis. Surely, the frugality that was thrust upon us can manifest itself in creativity!

I interpret this argument as an updated version of a decades-old suburban critique. First, the old part of this critique which was quite common in the 1950s. Living in the suburbs stifles your creativity and ability to innovate. This is because all of the houses look the same, everyone has to drive, the zoning only allows for one use at a time, and conformity is encouraged. In this view, you can’t really be an individual in the suburbs because the environment pushes everyone to be the same.

The updated part of this argument is that owning a single-family home may not be worth the cost. For the last 100 years or so, the United States in both policy and culture has pushed homeownership and its ties to individualism and being part of the middle-class. But, taking on a big mortgage limits your options. Indeed, even conservatives like Dave Ramsey might agree with this critique as there has been an increase in advice to avoid taking on unnecessary debt.

In the end, I suspect this argument hinges on what you consider American freedom to be. Is it the “right” to get ahead and purchase a nice home in the suburbs where you can raise a family? Or is it the “right” to be an individual outside of the mass market and mass society and enjoy and contribute to vibrant communities?

American suburbs continue to grow

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A Bloomberg analysis of recently released Census data shows suburbs continue to grow:

After a five-year slump spurred by the collapse of the U.S. housing bubble, record gasoline prices and deepening poverty, the nation’s largest suburbs showed increasing signs of life in 2012. More than half of the 20 municipalities with the fastest-growing populations between 2010 and 2012 were suburbs, according to U.S. census data compiled by Bloomberg.

That means growing suburban communities will continue to get their share of the approximately $400 billion in funds the federal government annually spends based on population data provided by the Census Bureau. It also points to the durability of the suburban experiment, begun six decades ago on Long Island, New York, even after millions of home foreclosures, greater numbers of single-person households and delays by young adults in starting families.

“Suburbia has become so deeply embedded in the cultural DNA of our nation that it is nearly impossible for us to organize our life on the landscape otherwise,” James Howard Kunstler, author of “The Geography of Nowhere,” a 1994 history of suburbia, said in an e-mail. “We’re just too deep into it to change.”…

“In fast-growing regions, there are signs of suburban revival,” said William Frey, senior demographer at the Washington-based Brookings Institution. “Las Vegas is an example where the suburbs are leading the way back — though well below the heyday of the past.”…

John Logan, a Brown University sociologist, said suburbs remain attractive because “concerns about school quality and crime levels still affect cities more.”

This is an article with an interesting narrative. It begins with the idea that people who thought suburbs would decline were mistaken: they continue to grow. Then, it goes into the idea of the “suburban experiment.” I haven’t seen it quite phrased this way before and it suggests America’s suburbs are unique – and they generally are compared to most countries around the world. But, the term experiment also suggests it could still fail down the road as conditions change. Yet, the context of the article is that even after an economic crisis where gas became more expensive, Americans started driving less, and housing starts dropped quite a bit, the suburbs are still growing. James Howard Kunstler, a well-known critic of suburbs and featured in the film Radiant City, seems resigned to the idea that suburbs are the default in the United States. Does this suggest the social experiment is over? There are also some other odd bits thrown in including a short comparison to population changes in big cities, the idea that suburbs will also get federal funding, the number of poor residents in the suburbs is increasing, and higher rates of growth in the suburbs is linked to growth in the American economy as a whole.

In the end, I’m not sure about how people will respond to this article: the suburbs are growing despite critics and economic issues in the United States…and we should be happy? Disappointed? Intrigued by this great American experiment?

You can indeed paint McMansions and the suburbs

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One columnist is taken aback when someone is able to paint the suburbs:

Some while back, I sniped that, while landscapes of the kind that made the New Hope School of Impressionist Painting so influential continue to be painted in the absence of the actual scenery, the McMansions that knocked farmland off the map seem not to have inspired anyone.

I was wrong. For several years, pastel artist Michael Wommack of Langhorne has been exploring the suburban grid, affectionately in the case of Levittown, where he grew up, and with more of an edge when it comes to pretentious developments in the former hinterlands.

Wommack’s “A False Sense of Security,” among works on view at Pennswood Village through May 12, was inspired by a cul-de-sac in a pricey neighborhood the artist drove past one day…

He calls his tract-house studies “The Suburbia Series.” “People who know Levittown call it ‘The Levittown Series,’ ” he says.

This might confound suburban critics who often argue that suburbs have little redeeming value. Art dealing with the suburbs, whether it is in novels, on the big screen, or on canvas should then be devoted to the hidden dark sides of suburbia. But, suburbs, like other locations, are made up of people trying to make sense of the world, however misguided their efforts might be. For someone who grew up in one of the Levittowns, it sounds like a perfect subject to me.

It would then be interesting to see how people respond to such paintings. Would critics take non-critical depictions of the suburbs seriously? Would exactly would purchase paintings depicting Levittown-like communities?

“The average Australian is a suburban Frankenstein”?

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One columnist is not pleased with the idea of the average Australian in the suburbs:

Earlier this month the Bureau of Statistics, apparently hoping to deter Wayne Swan from cutting its allocation in the May budget, made a grab for publicity with a report on the characteristics of “the average Australian”. In the process it broke its own rules.

The ABS applied mathematical magic to data from the 2011 census and sent the media off in search of a blonde brown-eyed 37 year old woman with two photogenic children aged nine and six, two cars and a mortgage of $1800 a month on her three bedroom home. Edna Everage’s granddaughter was born here (like her parents), describes herself as Christian, weighs 71.1 kg, and works as a sales assistant…

Start packing your bags. The ABS decision to build a suburban Frankenstein for the sake of a publicity boost risks returning us to the point in recent history when certain people were labelled “unAustralian” if their language or behavior did not match the world view of Alan Jones, John Laws, Neil Mitchell or Andrew Bolt.

The ABS has played into the hands of those titans of talkback who like to keep the message simple. They’re not interested in this qualifier the ABS included at the end of the report to salve its conscience: “While many people will share a number of characteristics in common with this ‘average’ Australian, out of nearly 22 million people counted in Australia on Census night, no single person met all these criteria. While the description of the average Australian may sound quite typical, the fact that no-one meets all these criteria shows that the notion of the ‘average’ masks considerable (and growing) diversity in Australia.”

The columnist may indeed be correct that the best way to do this would have been to use medians, rather than averages. But, the bigger issue here seems to be the idea that there is a “suburban mold” that Australians need to fit into. Not everyone likes this image as the suburbs are often associated with homogeneous populations, consumption and behaviors to keep up with the Joneses, and middle-class conservatism. Regardless of what the statistics say or whether a majority of Australians (or Americans) live in the suburbs, these suburban critiques will likely continue.