Tag Archives: suburbs

The “suburban depression”

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The ongoing economic crisis has hit a lot of sectors of American society. Some new data suggests the economic crisis has particularly hit the suburbs, the proverbial “land of milk and honey” in American life:

There has not been so large a portion of Americans in poverty since 1993. But this time the growth in poverty is different, hitting whites and suburbia harder than it did during the early 1990s slump…

The suburban poverty rate is 11.8 percent, a level not seen since 1967…

A key factor in the rise in suburban poverty may be the fact that the housing market has played such a central role in the economic slump.

Many suburbs have seen a vast amount of wealth erased by declining housing markets and mortgage foreclosures, resulting in a great deal of economic dislocation. Since white Americans are more likely to own homes than African Americans, this could also explain why whites have fared worse than they did in the 1990s while African Americans have fared better.

The interpretation here is that with homes losing a significant portion of their value, an investment vehicle that many suburbanites had relied on has proven to be a hindrance instead. I would want to see more data: how does the growth of the poverty rate in the suburbs compare to cities and rural areas? If you look at the Census 2010 figures, the poverty rate for central cities is 19.7% (14.8% for metropolitan regions) and it is 16.5% outside of metropolitan areas. While falling housing prices may be part of the problem, what about jobs – are a higher percentage of lost jobs suburban jobs? I haven’t seen anyone write about this jobs link.

This data also affects two other larger ideas narratives about suburbs:

1. Life in the suburbs is not supposed to get worse; rather, it is supposed to always get better. Have we simply reached the point where the standard of living and incomes simply can’t rise much more?

2. There is evidence from recent years that more poor people live in the suburbs than in cities. While the percentages of poor people are lower in the suburbs, the absolute numbers are higher. This is part of a growing trend: the suburbs aren’t just (and never totally were) where wealthy whites can live.

Comprehending the office and retail space in an edge city

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After explaining the concept of an edge city to my American Suburbanization class, a discussion arose about how much space these places really have. When defining the edge city, Joel Garreau had these as two criteria (out of five total): “has five million square feet or more of leasable office space” and “has 600,000 square feet or more of leasable retail space.” This is a lot of space, as much as a smaller big city, but can still be hard to understand.

For example, there is much more commercial and retail space in the exemplar of the edge city: Tysons Corner, Virginia.

Around 2007 Tysons Corner had 25,599,065 square feet (2,378,231.0 m2) of office space, 1,072,874 square feet (99,673.3 m2) of industrial/flex space, 4,054,096 square feet (376,637.8 m2) of retail space, and 2,551,579 square feet (237,049.4 m2) of hotel space. Therefore Tysons Corner has a grand total of 33,278,014 square feet (3,091,628.7 m2) of commercial space.

How do we put this in more manageable terms?

1. Garreau compares this suburban space to the office and retail space in existing cities. The 5 million square feet of office space “is more than downtown Memphis.” While we may have traditionally associated this much office and retail space only with the downtowns of big cities, now concentrations of this space can be found right in the middle of the suburbs. This is unusual because suburbs are often portrayed as bedroom suburbs, places like people live and sleep but have to work elsewhere.

2. Compare this space to large buildings. The Willis (Sears) Tower in Chicago has 4.56 million square feet of space, 3.81 million rentable. So an edge city would have at least slightly more space this notable office building though perhaps it is difficult to visualize this space since it is a skyscraper and each floor seems smaller. An ever bigger building, The Pentagon, has 6.5 million square feet, more than the lower threshold for an edge city. Therefore, Tysons Corner has nearly 4 Pentagons of office space. Comparing this edge city space to shopping malls, Woodfield Mall in Schaumburg, Illinois (an edge city itself) has 2.7 million square feet while the Mall of America has a total of 4.2 million square feet.

3. We could measure edge cities in terms of square miles or acres and then compare to bigger cities. Square miles make some sense: Tysons Corner is 4.9 square miles while Memphis, a city Garreau says has downtown space similar to that of an edge city, is 302.3 square miles (on land). Acres are a little harder to interpret: a common suburban house lot is an eighth of an acre, a square mile has 640 acres (hence the dividing of the American frontier into 160 and 640 acre plots), and an acre has roughly 43,500 square feet. Then, an edge city with 5 million square feet of office space has about 115 acres of office space. Perhaps acres are best left to farmers.

In the end, I think Garreau made the right comparison to demonstrate the office and retail space within an edge city: we have some ideas about the size of downtowns of smaller big cities and the image of this amount of space existing in the suburbs is jarring.

The Atlantic declares “The Beginning of the End for Suburban America”

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While this is not the only recent claim that the suburban era in America is coming to an end, this piece still has a bold headline and claim:

In the years following World War II, the United States experienced an unprecedented consumption boom. Anything you could measure was growing. A Rhode Island-sized chunk of land was bulldozed to make new suburbs every single year for decades. America rounded into its present-day shape.

Along the way, there were three inexorable trends at the base of the societal pyramid. First, we plowed more energy into our homes each and every year. We cooled and heated our houses more (sometimes wastefully, sometimes not), brought in more and more appliances, added televisions and computers and phones. Per capita electricity shot up from about 4,000 kilowatt-hours per US resident to over 13,000 kilowatt-hours by the 2000s. Second, we needed more electricity because our houses got huge. The median home size shot up from about 1,500 square feet in the early 1970s to more than 2,200 square feet in the mid-200s. Third, we drove more and more miles every year to get around and between our sprawled-out cities. Back in 1960, Americans drove 0.72 trillion miles. By 2000, that number had reached 2.75 trillion miles. In 2007, vehicle miles traveled hit 3.02 trillion…

Taken together, the end of growth in residential electricity consumption and vehicle miles traveled form a momentous signal. The United States we all grew up with is changing, or rather, it’s changed and the numbers are beginning to reflect that. The growth in housing size, electricity demand and miles traveled were the hallmarks of the suburban/exurban era. They were the statistics of sprawl — but also of economic growth. Now that their relentless upward march has stopped, what happens? We need a new model for American prosperity that doesn’t require ever greater injections of fossil energy. That’s a generational challenge that hasn’t been captured by the pro- or anti-green jobs rhetoric here in Washington.

Two quick thoughts come to mind:

1. I wonder if these are symptoms regarding sprawl and don’t really tell the full story of what is happening. None of these factors alone makes sprawl happen. Many would argue that certain government policies, stretching back to the New Deal and decisions made to spend government money on interstates and roads and make mortgages more affordable. Such policies are still in place: more money is spent on roads than mass transit, there is much talk about how to boost home sales and write off mortgage debt, and how to lower the price of gasoline. Could these figures cited in this article simply be reactions to certain market factors and not reflect deeper cultural and political shifts?

2. We’ve heard this story about the end of sprawl before. I was reminded of this when my American Suburbanization class recently finished Kenneth Jackson’s 1987 classic Crabgrass Frontier. In the final chapter, Jackson also suggests that American suburban growth will eventually slow, probably due to energy problems. This article in The Atlantic and Jackson are not the only people predicting this: many more have said that the suburbs are unsustainable and eventually Americans will have to pursue other development forms. But harkening back to my first point, whatever crisis may arise still has to be big enough to overcome an established cultural and political ideology that supports suburbs. In terms of miles driven, what if electric cars make driving cheaper (or, “Is a Car Battery Subsidy Just a Sprawl Subsidy?”)? What if new technology can ensure that McMansions are energy efficient? Who wants to be the first politician to tell voters that the suburban dream of a single-family home on at least a little yard in a good neighborhood is no longer attainable? What if the economy picks up again and homes get larger again?

In the end, how do we know that this is really the point where we have turned a corner and the American suburbs are now on the decline? Could the future suburbs be more dense, a la New Urbanist developments, and more energy efficient while retaining their key suburban traits? These three statistics do suggest something has changed – but there is a long way to go before we can write off the American suburbs.

Schaumburg’s rise due to relocation of Pure Oil headquarters in 1958

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Schaumburg may be well-known for Woodfield Mall but the Chicago suburb was helped on the path to becoming an edge city (see Joel Garreau’s 1991 book) when Pure Oil relocated from downtown Chicago to fields near Schaumburg in the late 1950s:

Frandsen knows it all started nearly 15 years earlier with the construction of the Pure Oil building on the opposite side of Golf Road — the same building that’s now Roosevelt University’s Schaumburg campus…

Though a corporation’s move from the city to the suburbs is a scenario that’s been repeated many times since, one difficulty at the time was establishing a fair and true price for land that had previously been purely agricultural, Frandsen said.

Along with the company’s move came its employees’ relocation to the suburbs as well. Frandsen and his growing family moved to Arlington Heights, one of the nearest residential areas to the office site which was then in unincorporated Palatine Township.

Unlike today, when the one-story building crouches behind a taller strip mall to the south and IKEA to the north, Pure Oil’s headquarters sat like an island among the fields that continued to be leased to farmers.

It is critical to remember that the post-World War II suburbanization boom in the United States wasn’t just about people moving to the suburbs: many businesses relocated as well. Businesses moved for a variety of reasons including being closer to employees, finding cheaper land and lower taxes, wanting to have more “campus-like” developments, and being closer to the homes of executives.

If Pure Oil really did help kickstart the corporate boom in Schaumburg, this story doesn’t sound too different than that of Naperville where the opening of a Bell Labs facility in the mid 1960s along the relatively new East-West Tollway led to a number of other firms also locating nearby. Both Pure Oil and Bell Labs were originally outside of municipal boundaries and were eventually brought into city limits through annexation. Both Schaumburg and Naperville were already communities prior to the coming of these firms and the arrival of new kinds of businesses pushed community leaders to pursue new opportunities. This shift toward office space and white-collar jobs transformed both suburbs.

Too many farmer’s markets in the US?

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This piece in the New York Times suggests that there may now be too many farmer’s markets. I wonder if this is the case because too many communities want them to boost economic development:

Farmers in pockets of the country say the number of farmers’ markets has outstripped demand, a consequence of a clamor for markets that are closer to customers and communities that want multiple markets.

Some farmers say small new markets have lured away loyal customers and cut into profits. Other farmers say they must add markets to their weekly rotation to earn the same money they did a few years ago, reducing their time in the field and adding employee hours…

Nationwide, the number of farmers’ markets has jumped to 7,175 as of Aug. 5; of those, 1,043 were established this year, according to the federal Agriculture Department. In 2005, there were 4,093 markets across the country.

While the main argument here seems to involve supply and demand, I’ll throw out another possible factor. More and more communities (or city neighborhoods) desire farmer’s markets because they are relatively easy ways to attract residents and visitors to a community. Because they usually don’t require buildings (with good weather being a helpful feature), can easily be moved around, can make use of unused or underutilized parking lots (a common suburban issue), and can offer some goods that are more difficult to find elsewhere, farmer’s markets can be a “quick fix.” This has developed as a popular strategy in nearby suburbs where such markets bring in people to an older downtown that might not typically come otherwise. Before such markets became popular, these could help a certain community apart from others. If we think about it in reverse, perhaps it is not only communities or neighborhoods that drive this trend: residents could desire a farmer’s market not only for convenience but for status.

It is not uncommon for communities to adopt similar economic strategies but this sounds like one where not everyone may be able to win. Any chance that some national regulatory board or group might develop to help space out farmer’s markets?

h/t Instapundit

American politicians push small town values in a suburban country

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America is a suburban nation: more than 50% live in the suburbs, roughly 30% live in cities, and about 20% live in small towns or rural communities. Despite these demographics, this article suggests that politicians still frequently draw on the idea of small town values:

American politics may live in the cities and suburbs — but it dreams in small towns.

More than a century after the American people migrated from the farms to the cities and then to the suburbs, the image of small-town America endures as the birthplace of solid character and sound values. In the gauzy image of politics, as in popular culture dating back more than a century, small-town America is a place where the people go to church, work hard and help one another in ways unknown in the cities and suburbs of America…

Still, politicians love to wrap themselves in the sentimental image.

“The people still have the same spirit in Waterloo that Iowans have always come to exemplify. We work hard. We don’t spend more money than what we take in,” Bachmann said in Waterloo, where she was born.

Perry wears his childhood in Paint Creek, Texas, as a badge of honor. “Doesn’t have a zip code. It’s too small to be called a town,” he said during a recent visit to Waterloo. “What I learned growing up on the farm was a way of life that was centered on hard work, and on faith and on thrift.”

Obama can’t claim a childhood in a small town — he was born in Honolulu. But he, too, reveled in small-town values during his recent Midwest bus tour.

So while Americans may no longer live in small towns, they want to hold on to particular characteristics such as hard work, community, and religious values. These are symbolic values, perhaps even more so than actual actions that people carry out. (There is often a disconnect between what people say they believe and what they actually do.) And, of course, people may want to hold on to these values but they don’t necessarily want to live in the places where these values arose.

This reminds me of a theory I have had about the popularity of American suburbs: they are a uniquely American adaptation that combines some of city and rural life. This is about perceptions. On the rural side, suburbs still offer lawns, single-family homes, good schools, safety, and community life. On the city side, suburbs have easier access to the city, more cultural amenities, more jobs, are more open-minded, and more opportunities over all. Suburbs don’t really offer the best of either of these worlds but offer some of both, allowing Americans to straddle these two worlds.

A question: how difficult is it for Americans to elect urban politicians to higher office (particularly compared to more rural candidates), candidates who would portray themselves solely as a city dweller and act like city dwellers? Perhaps Barack Obama is the closest we have come to this but because of political realities has primarily tried to appeal to working and middle-class suburbanites who may just swing the election.

US government thinking of renting foreclosed homes

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Different people have different opinions about what to do with the glut of foreclosures: perhaps convert them into multi-family units, bulldoze them, or donate them. It appears the federal government might try another route: renting them.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency said Wednesday it is seeking input from investors on how to rent roughly 250,000 homes owned by government-controlled mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the Federal Housing Administration. All of the homes are foreclosures…

Converting the homes into rentals may reduce “credit losses and help stabilize neighborhoods and home values,” said Edward DeMarco, acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees Fannie and Freddie.

Homes in foreclosure sell at a 20 percent discount on average, which can hurt prices of surrounding homes.

It also might meet the growing demand for rentals. Since the housing meltdown, nearly 3 million households have become renters. At least 3 million more are expected by 2015, according to census data analyzed by Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies and The Associated Press.

This sounds like it could turn into a large program with a lot of moving pieces. Would these homes essentially be converted into temporary public housing?

If done well, this could help deal with a rental problem. Even before the economic crisis, a number of metropolitan areas suffered from issues of affordable housing: there simply were not enough cheaper and good units available. Additionally, there was often a mismatch between where these homes were located and where jobs were located. Could renting these foreclosures be a viable solution?

How many communities would be interested in supporting a program like this? I could imagine some interesting battles within better-off suburbs. On one hand, as the article mentions, foreclosures tend to drag down home values. On the other hand, having the federal government actively involved as a landlord in more neighborhoods would make a lot of people nervous.

Wheaton’s Ale Fest: a conservative image and helping the downtown

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Wheaton has been a politically and religiously conservative community from its early day. Therefore, Ale Fest, a festival that might be considered normal for other suburban communities, still draws attention:

And while an ale fest might not be news in other communities, it raises eyebrows in Wheaton, which has a large evangelical Christian population and prohibited the sale of alcoholic beverages from 1887 until 1985.

Wheaton Ale Fest, which will take place on Front Street from 1 to 5 p.m. on Saturday, will feature more than 100 styles of beers from craft brewers around the nation. The event, which is being hosted by the Wheaton Park District in conjunction with the Downtown Wheaton Association and the Wheaton Chamber of Commerce to bring more visitors to downtown Wheaton’s shops and restaurants, also will allow visitors to vote for their favorite Illinois craft beer…

Looking back, Wheaton Mayor Mike Gresk called the gradual loosening of alcohol restrictions – and the community’s acceptance of them – “typical of Wheaton,” which was not a community that wanted “to go into this too fast.”

“If you look at our history, this is quite a stunning change from what we did 30 years ago, but there are residents who have moved here since 1985 for whom the whole idea of the city’s past prohibition would be news,” Gresk said. “As a city, we’ve had a very gradual and measured response, and the city has eased itself and its population into this mindset. We police it very closely and watch to make sure there are no underage sales.”

Gresk noted that while “some longtime residents might raise an eyebrow” at the notion of an ale fest, he believes the event is a great way to showcase Wheaton’s many businesses.

Two points come to mind:

1. Wheaton’s image is long-standing and has staying power. Even though liquor sales have been allowed for over 25 years, some people still think of Wheaton as dry. While not all suburbs have such a consistent character over time, Wheaton does. This could be good and bad: some people like consistency (what you see is what you will get) while others might want more to do and more to happen (compare downtown Wheaton to downtown Naperville).

2. The push to allow liquor sales in the mid 1980s and the reason for having Ale Fest today sound about the same: alcohol sales can help bring people into town and boost tax revenue. In the mid 1980s, the argument was made that restaurants would not be interested in locating in downtown Wheaton if they could sell liquor. Today, Mayor Gresk also says the festival is “basically good for our downtown.” The festival may not exactly fit with Wheaton’s image but many suburbs are looking for ways to improve their business climate, boost tax revenues, and bring more people into their downtown.

Jump in usage of food stamps in the Chicago suburbs

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The effects of the American economic crisis are also being felt in the suburbs. In the Chicago area, usage of food stamps has increased dramatically since 2006:

Since 2006, the state’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly called food stamps and administered via Link cards, has seen a rise in the number of people in the program in an average month by 46 percent in Cook County, 133 percent in DuPage County, 84 percent in Lake County, 96 percent in Kane County, 168 percent in McHenry County and 74 percent in Will County.

“It’s easy to assume hunger is an urban problem,” said Lake, whose food bank serves 13 counties. “But the fact of the matter is, hunger is everywhere.”

In the suburbs, the increase in food stamps use could be the result of previously middle-income families getting caught by a tough break, said Jennifer Yonan, a vice president of the United Way of Lake County…

To qualify for food stamps, a household has to meet certain income requirements. A family of four, for example, must have a gross monthly income of less than $2,389 to qualify.

The suburbs were once considered the bastion of the wealthy but this is changing as more suburbs encounter issues that were once thought to be big city problems.

The 133% rise in DuPage County is particularly interesting. In recent decades, DuPage County was transformed from more of a bedroom county, meaning that workers lived in DuPage but commuted elsewhere for work, to a job center. In figures from the early 2000s, DuPage County had more jobs than eligible workers, meaning that the county needed outside workers to fill all of its jobs. If you look at the unemployment rate for DuPage County (not seasonally adjusted), the rate was as low as 2.7% in October 2006, as high as 9.4% in January 2010, and is now at 8.6%.

It would be interesting to see more exact data to figure who exactly has started using food stamps since 2006.

This rise in food stamp usage is a similar phenomenon to reports about the black middle class or the increase in foreclosures: when an economic crisis hits, people living on or near the economic edge will have more difficulty.

What to do when a quiet suburb may have too many downtown bars

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Suburbs want their downtowns to be full of businesses, particularly restaurants, because they enhance the community’s tax base and provide a more vibrant atmosphere. But what happens when a suburb has too many downtown bars? Here is the situation in St. Charles, Illinois:

Simpson wants to open a business called the Alibi Bar & Grill at 12 N. Third St. Aldermen told Simpson on Monday that they welcome the “grill” part of his plan, but they aren’t big fans of the “bar” part. Simpson’s plan envisions a “restaurant-style sports bar that will serve American-style food, cocktails, beer and appetizers.” He plans on having live entertainment at the establishment as well. He’s even agreed to close his doors at midnight on Friday and Saturday nights just to win a more favorable view of his liquor license application. But aldermen on the city council’s government operations committee weren’t sold.

“I really don’t think St. Charles needs more bars,” Alderman Cliff Carrignan said…

[St. Charles resident] Amundson lives in the downtown area and said the family-centered community he moved to has evolved into a weekend destination for young people on drinking binges…

Amundson’s comments spurred the rest of the conversation about how many taverns is too many in the city. Staff estimated there are between 50 and 60 restaurants in the city that have liquor licenses. Alderman Jim Martin has long crusaded against city’s tavern density.

St. Charles is a relatively wealthy and quiet yet growing community. While having new business is good, the issue of bars clashes with the community’s character: there is a line between being “family-friendly,” which I think many suburbs would wish to be known as, and having a vibrant restaurant scene, which I think many suburbs would also want. This is the same sort of issue that was brought up in Naperville late last year with a request from Show-Me’s to open a restaurant.

A community could deal with this in a few ways but there are two primary methods of control: zoning and liquor licenses. Certain uses, like tattoo parlors, are often not allowed, but suburbs can go even further to restrict the opening of new banks (Wheaton in more recent years). Restaurants are quite desirable for small downtowns as they can bring in people from outside the community and patrons might also spend money elsewhere in the downtown. At its best, a downtown might create a downtown entertainment district that includes food and entertainment (music, movies, theater, etc.). It sounds like those who are opposed to more bars in St. Charles are not opposed to more restaurants so perhaps the businessman will simply have to drop his request for a liquor license (though this would likely impact his opinion of the profitability of his venture).

More broadly, it sounds like St. Charles needs to make some decisions about what exactly they want in their downtown. Either path, toward families or food and entertainment, could work out but addressing the issue on a case-by-case basis will quickly get frustrating.