Tag Archives: suburbs

English sociologist says “suburbs not so boring”

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A sociology lecturer in England argues that suburbs are more complex than many think:

A sociology lecturer has delved into life on the Kingsynmpton estate, the racial make up of Kingston and TV show The Good Life as part of a new book about suburbia.

Kingston University’s Rupa Huq’s book, On The Edge, says that those who fondly imagine the suburbs as the preserve of maiden aunts on bicycles, archetypal Englishness –or places of stifling conformism are wide of the mark.

She said: “I think suburbs are much more complicated and dynamic than we give them credit for.”

My short response: I think Huq’s argument would also work well for American suburbs. While critics argue they are dull and similar, suburban communities are quite varied. But, I’m not sure the image of “maiden aunts on bicycles” would quite apply…

Can Chicago art convince suburban residents that they have a responsibility to help fight violence in the city?

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Chicago Tribune theater critic Chris Jones argues that the Chicago art scene can help convince people in the suburbs that they should help fight violence in the city:

But there’s another common theme gaining steam this winter. Many of these artistic responses to violence are trying to impress upon people that geography does not inoculate a city — a region, a nation — from responsibility. Because the killings have, for the most part, been confined to certain neighborhoods, it has been possible for the rest of Chicago to live, work and go about its business mostly untouched. There is this crisis, a crisis of which Chicagoans increasingly are aware, yet still it often is not seen. Were this violence evenly spread throughout the city’s ZIP codes, then there certainly would not be business as usual. Of that there can be no question.

So in works like “Crime Scene: A Chicago Anthology,” staged by Collaboraction on Milwaukee Avenue and full of compelling insights, the point is made that the killings have been taking place very close to the actual artistic venue. Indeed, in art exhibits and performance lobbies across Chicago, you can often see so many maps and charts, it feels like you are in a police incident room. It’s not far from here, these pieces keep reminding us. You could ride a bike there in 20 minutes. If you’re driving home, you’re probably going farther. This is a crucial element of raising awareness.

Many of these works, such as “It Shoudda Been Me,” created for the eta Creative Arts Foundation by the University of Chicago’s Dr. Doriane Miller, one of the first in Chicago to understand that fictionalizing violent scenarios makes it easier for those who live them to talk about them, have been created to tour. Officials from the Chicago Park District were at Collaboraction on Monday, checking out the piece as possible programming for neighborhood parks. Clearly, there is a need for such programming in the neighborhoods where this level of violence is a daily reality. Especially this summer, when nerves will on edge all over Chicago, the amount of that programming will need to increase. It’s one way to keep kids off the streets.

But I kept wondering about the places beyond the boundaries of the Chicago Park District, beyond the hipster neighborhoods like Wicker Park. What about Wheaton or Winnetka? Are the stories behind the violence in Chicago understood there in the way that the city’s stunning cultural assets are understood?

This is a fascinating argument: can art bridge the gap between city violence and suburbanites who have the luxury of watching the problems of Chicago from a distance? Jones hints at the broad gulf between suburbs and city and even between the wealthier areas of Chicago and the areas experiencing more violence and difficulty. Urban sociologists have been discussing these for decades. The Chicago School classic The Gold Coast and the Slum noted the cultural gaps between the wealthy and poor on the near north side in the 1920s even though the two groups lived in close proximity. Work in the last 50 years has emphasized how suburban growth has contributed to the problems of the inner city by removing social capital, resources (in the form of jobs, money spent on highways rather than mass transit, tax revenues, etc.), and middle-class norms and values. People in the suburbs may lament the violence in Chicago but how willing are they to act against it or contribute to actions that might help or sacrifice some of their own life?

The trick seems to be to get the suburbanites not just to experience the art or the true stories of violence. Rather, Jones wants the suburbanites to act in response to what they see in art or the news. This is a much tougher nut to crack.

How can Lake County, Illinois be #9 on the list of “America’s Most Miserable Cities”?

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Forbes just put out their 2013 list of “America’s Most Miserable Cities.” Out of the top 20, there is one that is not like the others: Lake County, Illinois at #9. Here is the short description of why Lake County made the list:

The Chicago suburb is one of the richest counties in the U.S., as measured by per capita income. But home prices are down 29% over the past 5 years. Other drawbacks: long commutes and lousy weather.

There are numerous problems with this:

1. Calling an entire county a suburb is strange. Lake County is made up of dozens of suburbs which are quite varied. For example, look at quick overviews of Deerfield versus Grayslake versus Waukegan. Lumping them all together is silly and is one of the traps many people make when looking at the suburbs: they are not all the same kind of places.

2. How does a county end up on this list when the rest of the top 20 are cities? In terms of categories, a suburban county is not in the same category as a city. While there might be some identity in saying one is from “Lake County,” it is nowhere close to being a singular city.

3. Just glancing at this description and the top 20 cities on the list, I have to wonder how Lake County could even make the list. According to this list, Lake County is the 56th wealthiest county in the United States with a median household income of $74,266. Here is a bit more on the methodology:

We looked at the 200 largest metropolitan statistical areas and divisions in the U.S. to determine America’s Most Miserable Cities. The minimum population to be eligible was 259,000. We ranked each area on 9 factors, including average unemployment rate between 2010 and 2012; median commute times to work for 2011 based on U.S. Census data; violent crimes per capita from the FBI’s 2011 Uniform Crime Report.

We included three housing metrics: the change in median home prices between 2009 and 2012; foreclosure rates in 2012, as compiled by RealtyTrac; and property tax rates based on median real estate taxes paid and median home values in 2011 per the U.S. Census. We factored in income tax rates and the weather in each metro on factors relating to temperature, precipitation and humidity. The data metrics are weighted equally in the final scoring.

We tweaked the methodology in this year’s list in response to feedback from readers, dropping our rankings of both pro sports team success and political corruption, since both were based on regional, rather than city-specific data. We also added a new measure—net migration—which we see as a clear gauge of whether or not residents feel a community is worth living in.

If this methodology puts Lake County at #9, Forbes may want to revisit their criteria.

“Creating Hipsturbia in the Suburbs”

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What happens when hipsters move to the suburbs? The New York Times takes a look at a few New York City suburbs where hipsters have moved:

You no longer have to take the L train to experience this slice of cosmopolitan bohemia. Instead, you’ll find it along the Metro-North Railroad, roughly 25 miles north of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, in the suburb of Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y.

Here, beside the gray-suited salarymen and four-door minivans, it is no longer unusual to see a heritage-clad novelist type with ironic mutton chops sipping shade-grown coffee at the patisserie, or hear 30-somethings in statement sneakers discuss their latest film project as they wait for the 9:06 to Grand Central.

As formerly boho environs of Brooklyn become unattainable due to creeping Manhattanization and seven-figure real estate prices, creative professionals of child-rearing age — the type of alt-culture-allegiant urbanites who once considered themselves too cool to ever leave the city — are starting to ponder the unthinkable: a move to the suburbs.

But only if they can bring a piece of the borough with them.

To ward off the nagging sense that a move to the suburbs is tantamount to becoming like one’s parents, this urban-zen generation is seeking out palatable alternatives — culturally attuned, sprawl-free New York river towns like Hastings, Dobbs Ferry, Irvington and Tarrytown — and importing the trappings of a twee lifestyle like bearded mixologists, locavore restaurants and antler-laden boutiques.

My quick thoughts:

1. If the future of American suburbs is indeed densification, as a number of experts have suggested, then this is something that was bound to happen. At the same time, it remains to be seen how much hipsters will really change or adapt to these communities.

2. Hipsters may be in the suburbs but I suspect some suburbs are a lot more palatable to them than others. In other words, perhaps they are more likely to move to places with artistic or creative backgrounds, where travel to the big city is relatively easy, and where there is room to create a small community. Additionally, perhaps these suburbs have to be friendly to hipsters – and this might require having a population of relatively educated residents.

3. Perhaps hipsters might even like the suburbs? This might go against their general outlook on life but the hipsters in the article, like many other Americans, can see some of the benefits of the suburban lifestyle. And if hipsters can survive and like parts of suburbs, why not academics?

Is downtown Naperville really unsafe at 10 PM?

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Is downtown Naperville an unsafe place? According to the Naperville chief of police, recent efforts by the department and other interested parties have helped make the downtown safer late at night:

Naperville police Chief Robert Marshall is just five months into his revamped downtown enforcement plan and he and city leaders already are calling it a success…

Beginning in September and running through mid-January, four additional officers were moved downtown between 10 p.m. and 3 a.m. Fridays and Saturdays to focus on disorderly conduct issues, public intoxication and urination, and underage drinking. According to Marshall’s memo, the officers contributed 591 hours of additional police coverage and cost the city nearly $35,000 in overtime costs.

“Last year we had a tragic murder, an armed robbery and two very violent beatings that sent all participants to the hospital,” Marshall said. “As far as violent crimes go, that is a very low number, but our goal is zero. And in the five months since we’ve enacted our plan (in September), that’s exactly what we have.”…

“There is a perception that it’s not safe to come downtown after 10 p.m.,” Pradel said. “Our police are doing their part and we’ve told the business community they are also responsible to make that perception go away.”

I am particularly interested in this quote from Naperville’s mayor who discusses the perception about Naperville’s downtown late at night. This violence could be quite jarring in a community like Naperville that is both quite wealthy and quite safe for a community its size. Who exactly is worried about the downtown at night? Perhaps it is Naperville residents who like the residential nature of the suburb and buy into the small town charm leaders claim Naperville possesses. Perhaps it is possible visitors who will take their money elsewhere. In these sorts of discussions, I haven’t seen any numbers about a downturn in business in Naperville – is this about perceptions or an actual loss of business?

Overall, this seems to come back to an issue I’ve raised before: how can a community like Naperville (and other upscale suburbs face similar issues – see here) both encourage business and cultural activity while also protecting the residential charms of their community? Bars and restaurants can bring in large amounts of money into city coffers. Many communities would love to have the number of restaurants and visitors that Naperville attracts. Yet, this can also bring trouble, particularly when bars are involved.

For now, Naperville leaders seem happy with their new approach that minimizes violence but keeps the money flowing in. Perceptions and reputations are important as suburbanites can spend their money in plenty of places other than Naperville.

Zappos CEO says office space should be designed like cities

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Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh argues office space would work better if it were organized like cities:

Tony Hsieh talks about his Internet juggernaut Zappos in the same way that urban planners talk about cities. In fact, the language is uncanny. He believes the best ideas – and the best form of productivity – come from “collisions,” from employees caroming ideas off one another in the serendipity of constant casual contact.

This is only achievable through density, with desks pushed close together in the office, or – in the case of Hsieh’s ambitious plans to leverage the new Zappos headquarters to remake downtown Las Vegas – with company employees and community members colliding into each other on the street. For the kind of “collisionable” density he’s looking for in downtown Vegas around his company, he figures the neglected area (not to be confused with the Vegas Strip) needs at least 100 residents per acre…

The typical office has about 200 or 300 square feet of space per employee. When Zappos moves into its new headquarters in the former Las Vegas City Hall in about six months, Hsieh is aiming for something closer to 100 square feet per employee. He’s also planning to decommission a skywalk into the building to force people to enter through (and collide with) the street.

In the context of offices, this kind of density bucks conventional wisdom. Most companies think employees will perform best, or at least be happiest, if as many of them as possible can have their own spacious corner office (with closable door!). This thinking has even influenced the architecture of office towers.

“That’s analogous to people wanting to live in the suburbs and live in a big house,” Hsieh says. “And what they don’t realize is that they end up trading two hours of commute time for more time with friends or relaxing or whatever.”

Interesting comparisons: corner offices are like suburbs. While Hsieh cites research, how come other companies haven’t figured this out yet? I also wonder if this is more about corporate cultures established in more traditional firms versus newer startups or high-tech firms. This reminds of a video I show in my Introduction to Sociology class to illustrate the differences between more bureaucratic structures and more flat, disc-shaped structures. In the clip from Nightline, the design firm IDEO is shown working through designing a new shopping cart. The atmosphere is both less hierarchical in terms of authority and space; people seem to be closer together and common collaborative space is important.

This conversation also lines up with talk on college campuses about interdisciplinary research and collaborative activity. Just how much can redesigned offices and common spaces contribute to this? Are we missing something major by building office buildings more like suburbs than cities?

Argument: rural American voters are being disenfranchised

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A member of the Hoover Institution argues rural Americans are losing their right to self-governance:

With each passing election, rural and small town Americans have ever less influence on their state and national governments and ever declining control over the governance of their own communities. Their lives are increasingly controlled from distant state capitals and from the even more distant Washington, D.C., by politicians with little incentive to pay attention to their country cousins. To some extent, their disenfranchisement is the inevitable result of a century of urbanization and economic centralization. But the erosion of self-governance in rural America is also the result of a generally well intentioned but simplistic understanding of democracy and the associated elimination of institutional protections of local democratic governance.

Two ideas have been central to this effective disenfranchisement of rural America. First, that one person/one vote is an inviolable principle of democratic government under the United States Constitution. Second, that the winners of elections owe allegiance only to those who voted for them, no matter how close the margin of victory…

The reality is that rural communities have experienced a declining influence on state governance ever since reapportionment was first mandated in the 1960s. Many will say that this is as it should be. Rural and small town voters constitute minorities in every state, and minorities are supposed to lose in a democracy. But that is the same argument made against the Electoral College, given the possibility that a candidate who wins the popular vote might lose in the Electoral College, and it is an argument that also would condemn the much greater counter-majoritarian nature of the U.S. Senate.

Different and diverse majorities in each state are combined in the U.S. Senate to pursue national policies that are truly national and not just what will serve the interests of the nine states in which the majority of the nation’s population resides. There is no similar safeguard at the state level for different and diverse majorities in small town and rural communities that happen to constitute the red regions of the blue states—though there once was.

Prior to the 1964 United States Supreme Court decision in Reynolds v. Sims, most state legislatures included one house apportioned on the basis of population and a second chamber apportioned on the basis of counties or other geographical regions. Many of the former had not been reapportioned for decades, leaving growing urban areas with less representation per capita than rural regions. On the basis of the principle of one person/one vote, the Court found that the failure of most states to regularly reapportion their lower houses put them in violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment.

The first thing I thought of when reading this argument was that this is a long-standing tension in American history. Thus, we have mechanisms in national government that are meant to limit some of this. From the beginning, the interests of the more urban North were pitted against the interests of the more rural South. These issues still remain even though the geography has changed since then in several important ways: there are plenty of rural areas in mid-America as well as in the West and we have a broad middle category, actually the most populous space for Americans to live, called the suburbs. Additionally, party lines have shifted.

But, we could take this in another direction and think more creatively about how to select elected officials. Huffman argues the Supreme Court limited the voice of rural voters in states when it went to a system of officials per population rather than by geographical boundaries. What might happen if we went to a system where districts were drawn only within a single geographic group: cities, suburbs, and more rural areas? Huffman seems to be suggesting that the interests of a city-dweller in Chicago or Atlanta may be much similar to each other than representatives across northern Illinois where there districts can cover all three geographic types. Suburban legislators across metropolitan regions or states might have similar interests compared to those who represent other types of geographies.

I just have to ask: would conservatives be arguing for the voters in rural areas if it were primarily Democrats in rural areas as opposed to Republicans?

Data suggests cities, suburbs, and rural areas divided about Obama

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Recent data continues to suggest President Obama has quite different levels of support across cities, suburbs, and exurbs:

But the most important Obama divide to keep your eye on this year is the one between urban, suburban and rural places.

Urban America is still strongly in Mr. Obama’s corner, 66% say they are optimistic or satisfied. That’s down from 2009’s 74%, but not sharply. The suburbs have grown more skeptical with only 48% saying they are in the optimistic/satisfied camp. In 2009, 63% of the people in suburbs were feeling positive about Mr. Obama’s first term. And rural America is particularly gloomy about the next four years, with only 35% saying they are optimistic or satisfied. In 2009, 58% in rural America thought Mr. Obama would do a good job in the White House.

This is not a new split; Joel Kotkin, for example, has argued for years that the suburbs are the current battleground for voters as city dwellers tend to lean Democratic and people in rural areas tend to lean Republican. But the persistence of this divide goes beyond a red state, blue state divide that has been at the center of American political discourse for over a decade. It is not just about states, which matter particularly for Congress and electoral votes. Rather there are large divides even within states that lead to all sorts of more local issues about how resources should be allocated and who should be able to make decisions. President Obama is known for calling for a purple America bringing together red and blue states but perhaps he needs to call for an America that bridges the big divides between cities, suburbs, and rural areas.

Choose teardown “mansionization” over sprawl in suburbs

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Anthony Flint argues that communities should see the positive aspects of teardown McMansions:

Yes, some embodied energy is wasted in a teardown. But the new homes are universally more energy-efficient, and can be made with recycled materials and other green construction methods. What families want is a little bit more room. A recent survey by the National Association of Homebuilders found that most homeowners want something in the area of 2,500 square feet – close to the average size for single-family homes, which has been creeping up steadily over the decades.Sometimes the extra space is for multigenerational housing, a certain trend in the years ahead. The homebuilder Lennar recently touted homes with granny flats and in-law apartments – the kind of flexible housing New urbanism has been advocating for 20 years or so.

There is surely another trend of “right-sizing” and smaller homes and even micro apartments, for empty nesters and singles. But that’s the thing about the housing markets – one size doesn’t fit all. If some homeowners want more size, they’ll find a way to get it. They key factor in the teardown phenomenon is location.

The same NAHB survey found that while a bigger house was desirable, families didn’t want that house to be isolated out in the far-flung exurbs, miles from anywhere. They want to be able to walk to school or to a park, maybe even to a store to get a half-gallon of milk, or at least not spend quite so much time driving all around to disparate destinations.

And so we come back to teardowns and mansionization. Another way to describe the phenomenon is “infill redevelopment.” Builders are essentially re-using an established parcel in an already developed neighborhood. That’s a far greener step than building a true McMansion out in the cornfields. It’s the essence of smart growth – build in the places already built up, and leave the greenfields of the periphery alone.

One argument for teardowns is the rights of individual property owners to take advantage of a market that will pay them more money. However, this argument tends to pit the interests of the neighborhood or community versus those of the individual. In contrast, this argument is much more community oriented. Flint argues that the alternative is not between an individual and their neighbors but rather between suburban sprawl or infill development. These new large homes may not be ideal and communities could provide guidelines for how big they should be and/or how they should match existing homes and styles yet they are better than new subdivisions.

Flint is hinting at another issue that many suburban communities will face in the coming decades: just how dense should desirable suburban areas become? While teardown arguments seem to mostly be about neighborhoods and retaining a certain kind of character, the bigger issue is whether suburbs should be packing in more houses or even building up. This will be a problem for two kinds of suburbs: those who have little or no open land remaining (and this ranges from inner-ring suburbs to ones 20-30 miles out from big cities who have run out of space in more recent years) and those that could attract lots of new residents. Naperville is a good example as it has a downtown and amenities that would likely attract people and it has reached its limits on the south and west after several decades of rapid growth. Indeed, Naperville has received proposals in the past for high-rise condominiums (and turned them down) and the latest Water Street development proposal suggests expanding the denser downtown.

In the end, these suburbs will have to decide if they want denser development. If they hope to grow in population or develop more mixed-use areas (for example, through transit oriented development around transportation nodes), this might require teardowns and denser development.

Argument: boost America’s foreign policy by promoting walkable communities at home

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Patrick Doherty argues that promoting and developing walkable urbanism at home can boost American foreign policy abroad:

This is the lesson, Doherty says, we should take from that era: “The real key to American strategic success in the 20th century – both during World War II and the Cold War – was not the military stuff. The key was that we understood how to let our economic engine do the heavy lifting.”

It’s clear today, though, that suburbia can no longer do this for us. The children of baby boomers are less interested in living their parents’ lifestyle. And baby boomers themselves are increasingly rejecting it, wary of a choice between isolated houses and nursing homes. If anything, the development model of suburbia now seems to be weakening our economy instead of propping it up. Without eternal new development, the infrastructure costs of existing subdivisions are becoming clearer. And as demand shifts back toward urban centers, we’re left with a dramatic oversupply of another era’s housing (which we continued to build long after the Cold War ended).

So what replaces suburbia as the engine of our economy?

“There’s no good growth story,” Doherty says. Or, at least, that’s how many investors and CFOs feel. But he believes an answer does exist among findings we’ve covered before from real estate theorist Christopher Leinberger: it’s in the rising demand for walkable urbanism.

The connection between foreign policy and suburban development is a fascinating one: economic strength, driven in the past by suburban growth and possibly in the future by walkable development, leads to a stronger foreign policy posture. But, this summary doesn’t connect the dots enough for me. Is there enough demand to make a big switch from suburbs to walkable urbanism? Where will the money come from – as the article notes, the suburbs were subsidized with federal dollars so will walkable urbanism receive similar funding? Given the demand and the money, would all of this be enough to drive the American economy in a new direction? It sounds like Doherty would argue walkable urbanism provides some bonuses compared to other kinds of development (can reduce dependence on oil, it is greener, etc.) but wouldn’t any big trend in development help the American economy and foreign policy?

I’m thinking this could also be an updated critique of the American suburbs: not only are they bad for residents but they hurt American foreign policy. Going further, if we continue with suburban development, America will decline relative to other countries.