Tag Archives: suburbs

French suburbs moving away from mainstream French culture

Posted on by

The American suburbs are pretty unique compared to suburbs in other countries. For example, a new study shows that residents in French suburbs are moving away from mainstream French culture:

Local communities in France’s immigrant suburbs increasingly organize themselves on Islamic lines rather than following the values of the secular republic, according to a major new sociological study.

Respected political scientist Gilles Kepel, a specialist in the Muslim world, led a team of researchers in a year-long project in Clichy-sous-Bois and Montfermeil, two Paris suburbs that exploded in riots in 2005.

The resulting study ? “Suburbs of the Republic” ? found that religious institutions and practices are increasingly displacing those of the state and the French Republic, which has a strong secular tradition.

Families from the districts, which are mainly populated by immigrants from north and west Africa and their descendants, regularly attend mosque, fast during Ramadan and boycott school meals that are not “halal.”

American culture is dominated by suburban themes and values while this study suggests the suburbs of France are the alienated portion of society. The study also looked into why the alienation is present, particularly following the 2005 riots:

While the resentment in the poor suburbs has social roots, essentially the residents’ virtual exclusion from a tight jobs market, the rioters expressed frustration in a vocabulary “borrowed from Islam’s semantic register.”

Islamic values are replacing those of a republic which failed to deliver on its promise of “equality”, and the residents of the suburbs increasingly do not see themselves as French, the researchers said.

American culture has some similar issues: we talk about equal opportunities, which is something different than “equality” in the French sense – compare “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” to “liberty, equality, fraternity.” Of course, this doesn’t exactly happen: the American system is set up so that certain groups have fewer opportunities over time. The disconnect between official rhetoric and the actual situation on the ground tends to lead to problems at some point.

So which country will effectively tackle these issues first: the French dealing with immigrants in the suburbs or the United States with poor inner-city neighborhoods? Does either country have the political will to truly tackle the root problems rather than simply treating the symptoms?

Are the suburbs truly American?

Posted on by

The suburbs are a key part of American life: a majority of Americans live in them and they are part of the American Dream. So can we really ask whether they are truly American?

In his review of American Horror Story, which premieres tonight on FX, Slate’s TV critic Troy Patterson writes that the show’s “title carries more weight than its content can bear.” He then quotes a book review by Joyce Carol Oates of Curtis Sittenfeld’s American Wife:

Is there a distinctly American experience? The American, by Henry James; An American Tragedy, by Theodore Dreiser; The Quiet American, by Graham Greene; The Ugly American, by William Lederer and Eugene Burdick; Philip Roth’s American Pastoral; and Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho—each suggests, in its very title, a mythic dimension in which fictitious characters are intended to represent national types or predilections…. ‘American’ is an identity fraught with ambiguity, as in those allegorical parables by Hawthorne in which ‘good’ and ‘evil’ are mysteriously conjoined.

But wait: Are only Americans “fraught with ambiguity”? Oates lets these titles—and, especially, the many, many lesser books she might have mentioned—off the hook too easily. Too many books—and movies, and now TV shows—use the word “American” in their titles as a cheap shortcut to gravitas and sociological importance…

Besides bullying us with their national import, these titles often reinforce the fairly exaggerated ideas we tend to have about the uniqueness of this country. There are many things particular to and remarkable about the United States, but let’s not get carried away. Capitalism is not uniquely American (sorry, American Psycho). Suburbs are not uniquely American (sorry, American Beauty—the movie, I mean; and yes, plastic bags float in the wind in other countries, too).

This seems related to American exceptionalism: we like to think we have done everything in the best way. Perhaps we have the best capitalistic system. (A lot of people might argue with this these days.) But to pick on the suburbs here seems misguided: are there really other countries in the world that can match the American suburbs? A few countries have suburbs like ours such as Australia and Canada. Most other developed nations have limited suburban developments and sometimes they are the inverse of American suburbs where the wealthier live closer to the center of the cities and the poor live more on the edges. But Australia and Canada have relatively few people compared to the United States and I’m not sure they have the same suburban culture that pervades their national identity.

Perhaps we are particularly jingoistic in our naming but the American suburbs do seem to be uniquely American.

Are the suburbs a Ponzi scheme?

Posted on by

While Republican presidential contender Rick Perry drew a lot of attention by saying Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, how about viewing suburbs as a Ponzi scheme?

Indeed, my friend Charles Marohn and his colleagues at the Minnesota-based nonprofit Strong Towns have made a very compelling case that suburban sprawl is basically a Ponzi scheme, in which municipalities expand infrastructure hoping to attract new taxpayers that can pay off the mounting costs associated with the last infrastructure expansion, over and over. Especially as maintenance costs increase, there is never enough to pay the bill, because we are building in such expensive, inefficient ways.

This week, Strong Towns has released a substantial new report analyzing data and arguing that we must change our development approach if we wish to end the current economic crisis. In particular, we must emphasize obtaining a higher rate of financial return from existing infrastructure investments, focusing on traditional neighborhoods where large public investments in infrastructure are currently being underutilized…

In particular, in the report and an accompanying press release, Strong Towns calls on local officials to change course and shed the “dead ideas” of the suburban era, including these:

That local governments can grow without considering the public’s return on investment. Being blind to the financial productivity of our places has led to inefficient use of public infrastructure investments and allowed local governments to assume overwhelming, long-term financial obligations for maintaining infrastructure.
That local budget problems can be solved by creating more growth. More growth in the same unproductive pattern will only increase our economic problems. What is needed is an approach that improves our use of existing infrastructure investments.
That attracting a large employer is the key to local economic prosperity. In an age of globalization, this strategy may provide short-term gains for some local governments, but it is ultimately a race to the financial bottom.
That property owners can develop their property as they see fit while at the same time obligating the public to maintain the new infrastructure. This type of indirect subsidy creates enormous long-term financial obligations for taxpayers, increasing local taxes and reducing local competitiveness.

This is not an unusual argument made by those opposed to sprawl: sprawl is paid for by continuous growth. For example, a growing suburb can finance the services needed for new developments in part by the fees paid by developers constructing new developments. When that new development stops, either because of an economic crisis or because the community has run out of land (reaching build-out) or the community is not attracting development, the cash flow associated with new development stops. Then, local communities are confronted with static or shrinking budgets and the rising costs associated with aging infrastructure. In the end, someone is going to have to pay for this relatively cheap living.

By calling the suburbs a Ponzi scheme, the implication is that it will all implode at some point. I’m not sure about that; people have been arguing this for years (gas will become too expensive, there won’t be enough land, home prices will get out of reach, etc.) and it hasn’t happened yet. Since the suburbs have been partly subsidized by the federal government from the start, there are other sources of money beyond local municipalities (though an economic crisis shrinks everyone’s ability to pay). It would be interesting to see what happens if all state and federal money dries up for suburban interests – then what happens to the necessary infrastructure such as Federal interstates? We haven’t seen true contraction of cities or metropolitan regions just yet though it may be coming in harder hit areas like Detroit, Cleveland, and Youngstown.

However, the need for better longer-term planning is needed in many suburbs. If the era of growth is over or at least has slowed, then suburbs need to look at how this will affect development within their boundaries and their budgets. Assuming that there will always be positive growth is foolish even though there is not much room in the American cultural ideal of the suburbs to admit that they won’t simply keep growing and growing as more and more Americans express their innate desires for the suburban single-family home. Planning for a different, more limited suburban future is not exactly the same as planning for a doomed suburban future.

Australian hipsters eschew suburbs, McMansions while immigrants seek after them

Posted on by

An Australian author argues that hipsters favor the authentic and gritty over suburbs and McMansions while immigrants hold different views:

In movies and TV shows, kids now talk wistfully of getting out of the ‘burbs and heading to funky town, the exact opposite of our grandparents, who drove the other way in search of an extra bedroom, a lawn and somewhere to barbecue the chops.

The aforementioned Great Australian Dream is apparently a nightmare for many hipsters; as laughably daggy as John Williamson singing about plum trees, ”a clothesline out the back, verandah out the front and an old rocking chair”…

Writing recently in Canada’s Toronto Standard, Navneet Alang observes, ”it’s a profoundly privileged, Western idea to want to forsake sterility for the ‘real and gritty’…

Their visions are probably pretty similar to those of our grandparents – a lawn and a nice, big, neat, bland house – because, as Alang writes, ”Once you’ve lived in a developing nation, sterile can feel good. Uncluttered is good. Cars are good.”

The author goes on to suggest that perhaps these young Australians simply think the grass is greener on the other side: after growing up in suburbs, these young people are now looking to urban life. Several thoughts about this:

1. It would be interesting to see survey data about what immigrants imagine America to be before they arrive or even during their early months in the United States. Does it look like suburbia? Is their goal from the beginning to make it to the suburbs?

2. The sterility of the suburbs, often held in contrast to the authenticity, richness, and contrasts of the big city, is an old argument. Just listen to Malvina Reynolds’ song “Little Boxes” for an overview. (Interestingly, more people probably know this song now because it is the theme song for a trendy/novel current TV show: Weeds.) I would guess that many suburban residents, particularly those older than hipster age, actually prefer the suburbs over the city because of this sterility: the city may be more interesting but this interesting could also include negative outcomes.

3. Could we see the rise of hipster suburbs or at least hipster enclaves within suburbs? For example, inner-ring suburbs would be perfect places for hipster types: denser and cheaper housing in neighborhoods that have been around a century or more. There are a number of neighborhoods in these suburbs ripe for gentrification (though there could be disadvantages to this). Also, newer New Urbanist developments or neighborhoods might offer the authenticity hipsters seek.

President Obama and Republicans fighting over the votes of the “monied burbs”

Posted on by

President Obama’s campaign is looking to target voters in the “monied burbs” as part of their broader election strategy:

In his 2008 victory, Mr. Obama broke through among several important voter groups. Exit polls showed that he carried suburbanites, college graduates and those earning more than $200,000.

Mr. Obama won handily in areas that the research organization Patchwork Nation calls “Monied ’Burbs.” Residents of these high-income suburbs, which add up to roughly a quarter of the United States population, tend to be less religious and more tolerant of homosexuality and abortion rights, said Dante Chinni, Patchwork Nation’s director.

They narrowly backed Republicans in the 2010 House elections. Their disappointment over the economy cloud Mr. Obama’s 2012 re-election prospects.

But their distance from the Republican right on social issues gives Mr. Obama a tool for fighting back…

Republicans have their own strong economic arguments for upscale suburbanites, including Mr. Obama’s proposals to raise taxes on households earning more than $250,000. Those will echo Democrats’ 2004 warnings to working-class voters — that social issues obscured how Mr. Bush had hurt their pocketbooks.

The idea of the “monied burbs” was covered in more detail in Our Patchwork Nation. The description in this particular NYT article sounds suspiciously like David Brook’s Bobos, educated suburbanites who are attracted by the suburb’s good schools, single-family homes, and emphasis on family but are more liberal on a number of social issues.

I wonder if we could go so far as to suggest that the suburbs will decide the 2012 elections: will the independent voters in “monied burbs” and inner-ring suburbs vote for President Obama or a Republican challenger? We have some evidence (also here) that these voters helped decide the most recent elections. Does this mean we will have an uptick in rhetoric about the American Dream and homeownership?

British architects say British homes are too small

Posted on by

While new American homes have gotten slightly smaller in the last few years and a number of commentators see this as a good thing, the Royal Institute of British Architects says British homes are too small:

The RIBA, which looked at 3,418 three-bedroom homes across 71 sites in England, said the squeeze is depriving thousands of families of space needed for children to do homework, for adults to relax and for guests to stay.

The findings were based on building regulations introduced in London in July which set the minimum space benchmark of 96 sq metres (1,033 sq ft) for an average three-bed home…

But research found the average floor area of new homes is 88 sq metres (947 sq ft). And the most common size is 74 sq metres (797 sq ft)…

In 2009, a report by the Government’s former design watchdog, the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, found new homes in Britain were the smallest in Europe.

It revealed homes in Greece and Denmark had almost twice the floor space of UK homes.

The argument here is that these “cramped houses” are “depriving households of the space they need to live comfortably and cohesively.” This is an interesting argument: the smaller house is harming residents, affecting their comfort (physical) and cohesion (social). Can there really be a case made that these homes are causing long-term harm to residents and families? If so, it is the homes themselves causing the trouble or the expectations about how much space the family should have and for whatever reason, can’t have?

Could there be some financial self-interest here on the part of these architects? Does the small average size of British homes necessarily mean that citizens openly desire bigger homes and are not getting their wish?

Are these smaller homes part of a larger effort to reduce the effects of suburbs and sprawl?

Was the popularity of the Kennedy mystique a rejection of 1950s American suburbs?

Posted on by

The Kennedy mystique has been well established in American culture: John F. and Jackie Kennedy swept into the White House, bringing in the television age, the space age, and jumpstarting the 1960s. But I hadn’t connected this mystique to what critics saw as the bland American suburbs of the 1950s:

In the normal course of the apparat’s work, elevating the Kennedys requires the denigration of the Eisenhowers, the 1950s, and the supposed dullness of the country that the Kennedys rescued us from—“our country of suburbs and Ozzie and Harriet, poodle skirts and one kind of cheese,” as Diane Sawyer oddly put it, while the screen showed a golden brick of Velveeta. Jackie by contrast wore clothes by designers who would have gone into a dead faint at the sight of a poodle skirt. When the Kennedys moved in, added the court historian Michael Beschloss, “we had a White House that looked like a bad convention hotel.” The Kennedys brought French cuisine to the White House, Diane Sawyer added. “No more Eisenhower cheese sauce and cole slaw. .??.??. In our middle-class nation, it wasn’t easy for us to fathom this first lady.” Jackie herself is heard complaining about the marks that Ike’s golf shoes left in the flooring. Dwight Eisenhower, lumbering ox.

This view of the suburbs fits well with a set of suburban critiques that began in the 1950s: the suburbs were bland, about conformity, and were populated by people who couldn’t really act like those nice suburban families on TV and who had popular tastes. In comparison to the Eisenhowers and Ozzie and Harriet on TV, the Kennedys were the cultural elite, the fashionable who had refined tastes and opinions. This same argument can be heard today and still pits two sets of people against each other: the urban intellectuals versus the middle class suburbanites, progressives versus conservatives, fashionable and novel versus bland and predictable, novel versus boring, upscale shoppers versus Walmart (or maybe Target on the slightly higher end) patrons. Perhaps it all goes back to those arguments in the early years of America when Thomas Jefferson advocated for a more rural America and Alexander Hamilton pushed for the capital to be in New York City.

Poor in the suburbs: a growing plurality in the United States

Posted on by

After a headline earlier this week about a “suburban depression,” more data shows the suburbs contain a growing plurality of the poor in the United States:

Significantly, the 2000s also marked a turning point in the geography of American poverty. The 2010 data confirm that poor populations continued their decade-long shift toward suburban areas. From 2000 to 2010, the number of poor people in major-metro suburbs grew 53 percent (5.3 million people), compared to 23 percent in cities (2.4 million people). By 2010, suburbs were home to one-third of the nation’s poor population—outranking cities (27.5 percent), small metro areas (20.5 percent), and non-metropolitan communities (18.7 percent)…

The magnitude and pace of growth in the suburban poor population over the past decade caught many communities unprepared and ill-equipped to deal with the growing need. In many suburbs, the safety net is patchy and stretched thin to begin with. The suburban social services infrastructure is not as developed or robust as in urban centers with a longer track record of addressing the challenges of poverty, nor is it as funded. And as governments continue to tighten their belts and philanthropic resources dwindle, safety net service providers are increasingly asked to do much more with significantly less.

There is also an interesting map showing the differing rates of growth in the suburban poor population across major metropolitan regions in the United States.

What’s the long-term solution to this? From what politicians seem to be suggesting, middle-class suburbanites need help keeping/buying a home, middle-class tax breaks, and good jobs. How exactly can the typical suburban communities provide services in this era of economic crisis? I wonder how much politicians and suburban communities are willing to truly deal with this or whether the ones that can afford to (or think they will afford to) will act like the issue doesn’t really exist and can’t be allowed to threaten the image of prosperous suburbs.

“Zoning bigots” holding Americans back from how they really want to live?

Posted on by

It is not too often that one sees opinion pieces about the current state of zoning in America. But here is some provocative commentary (“zoning bigots”?) based on zoning in the Los Angeles area:

You could make a decent case that the campaign to harass and remove property owners is no less bigoted than Mayor Mahool’s quarantine proposal. Although blacks, whites, and Latinos have all been targeted for nuisance abatement raids, these folks share one characteristic: They don’t meet the standards of respectability set by the political class and large urban landowners. In some cases the county’s lifestyle demands shade into bias on religious grounds. Oscar Castaneda, a mechanic and Seventh Day Adventist minister who was ordered to tear down his entire property, lives in the high desert because his faith impels him to a rural, self-sufficient life.

Los Angeles zoning practice is bigoted in other ways that are often overt. A city (not county) ordinance preventing residents from keeping more than one rooster on a property is clearly aimed at Latino homeowners. A maze of restrictions on convenience stores and fast food joints applies in South L.A. but not in tonier areas. During the jihad against “McMansions” a few years ago, the popular term for large properties was “Persian Palaces”—a swipe at L.A.’s Iranian-American community.

“There’s definitely an attempt to squeeze out of Angelenos the very things that make them Angelenos and not New Yorkers or Bostonians,” says Chapman University urban theorist Joel Kotkin. “There are two forces at work: One is the effort to re-engineer people into wards of the state. The other is urban land interests who want to force people to live in ways they don’t want to live.”

Or to live somewhere else. Many of the Antelope Valley homeowners we spoke with for a recent reason.tv report have given up the struggle and are planning to leave California. What Antonovich (who refused requests for an interview) has in mind for their vacated properties is not clear. Educated guesses include a plan for massive wind-power generation and a scheme to turn the half-horse town of Palmdale into a high-density, smart-growth hub for the California high-speed rail project. If you know Palmdale you know that the notion of turning it into a hipster paradise would be funny—except that this pipe dream is destroying the lives of real people. They’re just not the right sort of people.

A few thoughts while trying to sort out this argument:

1. Good point: zoning can be a tool used by the powerful (politicians, those with money, etc.) to control development. The political economy model in urban sociology is based on this idea: the elite are able to push development that helps make them money.

2. Odd point: this argument about “bigoted zoning” is somewhat different from a more common argument about “exclusionary zoning.” This argument is predicated on the idea that zoning takes away the rights of all individuals, regardless of race/ethnicity or social class. It is simply a tool of the upper classes, interestingly, a Marxist type argument. Exclusionary zoning, the subject of a number of court cases, argues that zoning takes place to exclude certain groups of people, typically minorities and the lower class from suburbs. So all individuals who are not the upper class are being discriminated against in this Marxist/populist argument?

3. Somewhat intriguing argument: these zoning guidelines limit people from doing what they really want to do, like buy McMansions and raise chickens. In this line of thinking, Americans all want the suburban lifestyle where their home is their castle and they have a little bit of land to play around with. The government is a bogeyman, trying to force people into denser developments (like nice New Urbanist developments or high-rises downtown?) and generally trying to squelch suburban life.

This argument misses some of why the suburbs even exist in the United States today. On one hand, there is some cultural impetus to this all: from the beginning, Americans have had debates about urban vs. rural life, the Thomas Jefferson’s who wanted “gentlemen farmers” versus the Alexander Hamilton’s who wanted to live in thriving cities. Americans like open space and retained the British emphasis on property rights. This cultural spirit is still with us today: we love cars and our big homes.

However, this was all made possible and encouraged by some other factors. To start, developing technologies, from the railroad to the electric streetcar to the automobile, opened up areas for development. More importantly, developers and businessmen saw these transportation lines and the adjacent land as opportunities so they sold homes and land to make money. Then, particularly between the 1930s and 1960s, the government made a concerted push to promote the suburban lifestyle, privileging highway construction and longer-term mortgages that helped make the suburban dream possible. Without this profit seeking and government support, would the suburbs have still happened? Perhaps. But not likely to the scale we know now.

To argue now that generally government is opposed to the suburban life is silly. Most of the policies, even during this time of economic crisis, have been about maintaining the suburban middle-class lifestyle: limiting their tax burden, helping them keep their homes, ensuring a quality education and a college degree, etc. Yes, this current administration has suggested some new ideas like high-speed rail but this isn’t a total assault on the suburbs. Indeed, it would be tough for any party right now to assault the suburbs too strongly: they probably can’t win without suburban voters, particularly independents.

4. Flip this around: what might happen if there is no zoning? Does this really empower individual land owners? Zoning helps ensure that certain uses are not next to other uses. For example, zoning for a suburban subdivision typically means that a single-family home will not end up next to a coal power plant. Or a school next to a sewage treatment plant. Yes, zoning can be draconian and it can be used by people in power but it can also be used well.

There are cities that have less or no zoning. Houston is a classic example in urban sociology and as one might suspect, its development patterns look a bit different than other major cities.

Is no zoning really the answer? While homeowners might not like some of the plans in the Los Angeles region, doesn’t it also protect them at other times? In a world with no zoning, wouldn’t the more powerful actors almost always win out over the average homeowner? How would homeowners protect themselves from other homeowners?

One way to retain zoning but turn it toward different ends would be for citizens to get themselves on zoning boards and then starting voting how they like. Zoning boards may not be flashy and it can be difficult to get on them, particularly in places where it is about political connections, but this would be the place to start fighting back if one was inclined to do so.

Suburgatory nears first show; will it offer anything new?

Posted on by

Yesterday, I ran into a full-page promotional ad for Suburgatory, a new ABC sitcom which first airs on September 28. Here is the ad (image from DisneyDreaming.com):

Suburgatory Full Page Advertisement

Watch the trailer here and also read ABC’s description of the show (these are separate paragraphs but I think they are meant to be two different descriptions):

Single father George only wants the best for his 16-year-old daughter, Tessa. So when he finds a box of condoms on her nightstand, he moves them out of their apartment in New York City to a house in the suburbs. But all Tessa sees is the horror of over-manicured lawns and plastic Franken-moms. Being in the ‘burbs can be hell, but it also may just bring Tessa and George closer than they’ve ever been.

Tessa (Jane Levy) and George (Jeremy Sisto) have been on their own ever since Tessa’s mom pulled a “Kramer vs. Kramer” before she was even potty trained. So far, George has done a pretty good job of raising Tessa without a maternal figure in their lives, but suddenly he’s feeling a little out of his league. So it’s goodbye New York City and hello suburbs. At first Tessa is horrified by the big-haired, fake-boobed mothers and their sugar-free Red Bull-chugging kids. But little by little she and her dad begin finding a way to survive on the clean streets of the ‘burbs. Sure, the neighbors might smother you with love while their kids stare daggers at your back, but underneath all that plastic and caffeine, they’re really not half bad. And they do make a tasty pot roast.

As I suggested back in March, this show at least appears that it may cover typical suburban territory: an innocent person moves to a nice-looking neighborhood but finds that the people aren’t what they seem and hijinks or unpleasant events ensue. The suburbs are full of fake people and I’m sure the show will have some commentary about striving for social status, “authentic” living in New York City, and perhaps even takes a shot or two at McMansions and SUVs. Perhaps this show’s twist is that the main characters are a teenage daughter and a single dad but hasn’t this also been tackled by other shows and movies? A new prediction: if it simply updates Desperate Housewives or Revolutionary Road for the teenage set, I don’t think it will last until the end of the first season.

Thinking about this show, it would be interesting to compile a database of television shows that really tackle suburban living. To do this, one would first have to distinguish between shows that take place in the suburbs (say Boy Meets World – not sure why this popped into my mind) versus ones that revolve around suburban themes and issues. I’ve thought about doing something similar for popular music songs in order to look for patterns. In both hypothetical databases, I suspect I would find a generally critical (or perhaps “satirical”) take on suburbs even as Americans have continued to move into these places.

I’ll be tracking the fate of this show and may also have to watch an episode for research purposes…