Tag Archives: suburbs

The Chicago suburbs soon to be home to the country’s biggest truck stop

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I would not expect the biggest truck stop in the United States to be in the Chicago suburbs. But it will soon open:

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Outpost, an Austin, Texas-based company, is transforming 30 acres at 70 Airport Road into a location where 1,000 semi trucks can park in a safe, secure setting, said Trent Cameron, the company’s co-founder and CEO…

When it opens Oct. 1, the number of parking spaces will exceed the 900 available at the Iowa 80 Truckstop in Walcott, Iowa, which bills itself as the world’s largest truck stop, in part because of the restaurants, stores, truck dealership, movie theater, repair shop and other service businesses spread out over its 220 acres, according to its website.

As Cameron noted, there’s a need for more truck parking. A report done by the American Trucking Association found there is one parking space for every 11 trucks on the road and many drivers spend nearly an hour every day trying to find a place where they can stop, resulting in about 12% lost pay annually.

Beyond that, truck drivers waste a lot of fuel searching for parking and often are forced to park in unsafe and unauthorized locations, the association report said.

Suburbs are not often home to truck stops as these tend to be located further outside of big cities. Developers may see land as more profitable for other uses. Companies may want cheaper land and more of it. As noted later in the article, suburban residents often do not like lots of trucks on local streets and as neighbors.

However, local and long-term trucking is essential to everyday life. Suburbanites may not like trucks on their roads but they would not like it if their local grocery store or big box store did not have what they want. For people to receive their deliveries from Internet orders, the goods have to get to warehouses first and then have to make it to their addresses.

Additionally, Chicago is an important trucking and transportation hub, serving both the large metropolitan area and a lot of traffic passing through to other places. Many trucks make their way into and out of the region with many warehouses, retail facilities, and communities.

Will large suburban truck stops become more and more common? Will this push residents and communities to make certain choices about land and locations?

American minivan sales peaked in 2000

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As the era of the McMansion and SUV emerged in the early 2000s, the minivan went into decline:

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Even so, minivan sales have been falling steadily since their peak in 2000, when about 1.3 million were sold in the United States. As of last year, that figure is down by about 80 percent.

What caused this decline? The same article suggests this:

However it evolves, the minivan will still be trammeled by its fundamental purpose. It is useful because it offers benefits for families, and it is uncool because family life is thought to be imprisoning. That logic cannot be overcome by mere design. In the end, the minivan dilemma has more to do with how Americans think than what we drive. Families, or at least vehicles expressly designed for them, turned out to be lamentable. We’d prefer to daydream about fording Yukon streams instead.

I am interested in some of the bigger connections that might be made around this same time (early 2000s). So family life in the suburbs – embodied by the minivan – became uncool? The 2000 Census was the first time 50% of Americans lived in suburbia. By this point, several generations of Americans had experienced or grew up in suburban settings. Is a choice of vehicles really pushing back against family life in the suburbs (even as plenty of Americans continue in these settings)?

Or another way to take the argument above is that individualism wins out over any symbols of family life. The iPhone and SUV somehow broadcast a consistent message of a cool or unique individual – regardless of how many people own the same model – while the minivan is saddled with family life. Did the long-term American yearning to be an individual doom the minivan (despite its peak in 2000)?

A third consideration: is this just a branding question? If so, other products have been revived so why not the minivan? Imagine a famous celebrity endorses the minivan and drives one around. Or a new brand emerges. Or problems arise with SUVs and the minivan is dependable. Or families become cool again. There may be limited interest in trying to revive the minivan but this could provide someone a marketing challenge.

City residents and suburban residents going back and forth between those places

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Hints regarding new driving patterns in metropolitan areas could be found in a Chicago Tribune editorial about downtown traffic during Mexican Independence Day weekend:

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And they didn’t help you get from one neighborhood to another or back home from a night out to the suburbs…

Many businesses rely on suburbanites coming downtown for the weekend to eat or watch an artistic offering as the fall season kicks off.

Chicago is a big city so there are plenty of trips taking place solely within the city. Additionally, many big cities and people within are used to the idea that people from the suburbs travel into the city.

But these two short passages highlight a back and forth between both city and suburb. There are some traveling from city to suburbs, perhaps even for a night out (some suburbs are cool?). Others are traveling into the city to take advantage of particular opportunities offered in the city (or for work).

These newer patterns complicate efforts to address traffic. The predictable rush hours into the city in the morning and out of the city in the afternoon and evening have morphed into more traffic headed in all directions at more times. Traffic can be present around the clock, even without special events or celebrations.

Wildfires approaching homes in sprawling suburbia

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Wildfires threaten communities and homes fairly regularly in the United States. How often are these wildfires in suburban communities? Here is a current example outside of Los Angeles:

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Driven by triple-digit heat, gusting winds and tinder-dry vegetation, the three fires burned at speeds firefighters have never witnessed, scorching over 110,000 acres (44,510 hectares) – an area twice the size of Seattle.

The Bridge Fire, California’s largest current wildfire, swept through communities in the San Gabriel Mountains less than 40 miles (65 km) northeast of central Los Angeles, where people priced out of the city have built homes…

Southeast of Los Angeles, the Airport Fire has destroyed homes in the Elsinore Mountains and injured at least 10 people…

“The Airport Fire remains a significant threat to Orange County and Riverside County communities,” emergency agencies said in a statement.

One way to think about this is that metropolitan areas keep spreading outward. This provides more space for fire to threaten and more interaction with space and land less developed.

A second way to address this is to consider how suburban development – housing, roads, land uses, etc. – can encourage or discourage wildfires starting and spreading. Do yards and the ways homes are built contribute to wildfires? Does the design of American suburbs as we know them help fires spread?

Could this also be addressed in terms of financial trade-offs? Some might move to further-flung suburbs or new subdivisions on the edges because housing prices are cheaper. But how much cheaper is it if there are increased threats of wildfires?

It is one thing for wildfires to be in places with few residents and another if they are regularly occurring in suburbs and close to population centers.

A more diverse suburbia and “liv[ing] together in difference”

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This quote from the end of historian Becky Nicolaides’ new book The New Suburbia: How Diversity Remade Suburban Life in Los Angeles after 1945 is worth noting:

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The new suburbia emerged as a crucial site where people of different backgrounds, races, classes, and identities coexisted as neighbors, where people were trying to figure out how to live together in difference.

Building on decades of ideology, policy, and patterns in social relations, the American suburbs that grew quickly immediately after World War Two were often single-family home communities with white and middle-class and above residents. But as suburbs changed, particularly in more recent decades, they have become a different landscape. They are more diverse in terms of race and ethnicity and social class. They include numerous immigrants. They can contain different kinds of housing. Suburbanites live in a variety of communities distributed across a metropolitan landscape. Los Angeles is a good place to see these changes in action but this has happened in numerous metropolitan areas across the United States. All of this has led to a more complex suburbia.

Given the quote above, I also wonder if suburbs then can end up being places where Americans do “figure out how to live in difference.” Suburban history is full of examples of exclusion by race and social class. Do suburbanites on a whole today work together to address issues they all care about? Are the suburbs as a whole welcoming places? Can local tensions be resolved effectively? What places and/or groups can help bridge differences in suburbs? Or are suburbs a patchwork of exclusion and different kinds of development that holds together under the place category of suburbs?

Seeing a steam locomotive roll through suburbs created by such vehicles

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At least a few suburbs in the Chicago area and outside cities throughout the United States owe their founding to early railroad lines that provided quick access to the bi city and other points beyond. So when a large steam locomotive passed along the same suburban tracks in 2024, at least a few people took note:

With a shiny yellow-and-gray streamlined passenger train in tow, the Union Pacific “Big Boy” No. 4014 steam locomotive rolled through the western suburbs Monday morning to the delight of railroad enthusiasts and casual observers alike.

Roughly two hundred years ago, steam locomotives opened up all kinds of possibilities. One opportunity involved the possibility of larger and further-flung suburbs: a resident outside could travel quickly in and out of the big city. It no longer took a day or more to use horses or a carriage. No more need to travel a long distance over poor roads. Large amounts of freight could be shipped overland from the interior to big cities.

The early railroad lines tended to connect important cities and locations to each other. Along these lines, residents gathered near stations. Lots were developed. Businesses moved there. Churches opened. Houses were built. Communities grew. Regular train service emerged.

Eventually, these railroad lines were dwarfed in importance by cars, trucks, roads, and highways. Many of the lines still exist but more people drive. Much suburban development since World War Two has happened between railroad lines as cars offered access to more land.

Amid the regular clatter of passenger and freight trains through suburbia, an occasional steam locomotive with a loud whistle and billowing smoke provides a reminder of an older era. Yet, that older era helped give rise to the automobile dominated suburbia of today.

Can you have “high-end, custom homes” that are within a few feet of the neighbors?

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A new proposed subdivision in one Chicago suburb will have “custom, high-end homes.” But the image provided suggests these homes will be right next to their neighbors. Do these things go together?

https://www.dailyherald.com/20240903/news/custom-home-developer-asks-lombard-to-annex-site/

A description of “high-end” and “custom” plus looking at the rendering suggests these will be pricey homes. To have this square footage with a garage in a new single-family home build in an older suburb will cost buyers a good amount.

But the homes are so close to each other! Americans like single-family homes in the suburbs but they also like a little space. They like a lawn and an approximation of nature. They like some privacy and an ability to do what they want with their property.

The demand will be there for these homes, yards or not. Housing supply is limited. Some buyers want to pay for less yard space. The new spacious interior with features will outweigh other downsides. If plenty of Americans prefer private interior spaces, these homes will offer that. Like many in the suburbs, people can drive into their garage, close the door, and do their thing inside with little interaction with neighbors or the community.

I also imagine there are a good number of people in the United States who would look at the drawing above and not have any interest due to the lack of space around each house. These are denser suburban homes that do not appeal to everyone.

American communities with population loss and East St. Louis

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I was recently doing some research involving East St. Louis, Illinois, specifically considering the 1917 race massacre as part of a longer history of racialized property in Illinois. While doing this work, I noticed the population of the community. Here are the numbers (from Wikipedia):

As an industrial suburb across the Mississippi River from St. Louis, the community grew from a very small community to over 82,000 residents in 1950. Then came population decreases, leading to a population of under 18,000 today.

In the United States, population growth is good. It signals success and status. East St. Louis had this for the first eighty years or so of its history. But population loss is then bad. It hints that there are problems, that the community is losing status. A number of American cities and communities have experienced this since the middle of the twentieth century, often in the Northeast and Midwest and connected to the loss of manufacturing jobs. Think Detroit or Cleveland or Baltimore.

For a suburb to lose this many people also cuts across a narrative of suburban success. The endlessly growing suburbs does not apply to all communities. In inner-ring suburbs, communities with growing numbers of Black residents, and suburbs facing other concerns, the population could drop over time. Suburbs elsewhere might be growing but not in all suburbs.

How many suburbs have similar stories to East St. Louis and how do these narratives get told alongside the typical stories of suburban growth?

Weird repeat occurrences in the Chicago suburbs: guns in cars at Naperville Topgolf, trucks hitting Long Grove covered bridge

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Follow the news in the Chicago suburbs and it seems two stories come up pretty reliably.

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First, the Topgolf facility in Naperville now has had 22 gun arrests in the last two years:

For the third time in less than two weeks, police have made a firearm-related arrest in the Naperville Topgolf parking lot…

Coffey’s arrest brings the number of firearm-related arrests made outside the Naperville Topgolf since August 2023 to 22…

Officers were in the business’ parking lot in squad cars when one of them observed Coffey exiting a white Mercedes SUV while smoking what they believed to be cannabis, Krakow said. Officers exited their squads and approached on foot. Their investigation into the cannabis led to a search of Coffey’s vehicle.

Police’s search yielded a 9mm handgun that was recovered from a backpack, Krakow said.

How many more times will this happen? Naperville is a wealthy and high status suburb.

Second, a covered bridge in Long Grove keeps getting hit by trucks. It just happened again earlier this week:

Once again, a box truck became stuck under Long Grove’s iconic covered bridge early Monday morning, with the vehicle taking the brunt of the damage.

“The vast majority of the times this happens, it damages the vehicle,” Long Grove Assistant Village Manager Dana McCarthy said. “The bridge is made of heavy duty steel.”…

Though the bridge has certainly been hit well over 50 times since it reopened in 2020 after an extensive renovation, the village itself doesn’t keep count of the instances.

If this happened a few times, it could be a pattern in suburbs where these things tend not to happen. “Strange but true” stories from the suburbs that happen a few times.

But now people are paying attention – both of these occurrences are now “common” – and they keep happening. The media widely reports on the police work at Topgolf yet more arrests are made? There are plenty of warnings around the bridge about the height but trucks keep trying to drive through?

I assume the phenomena will end at some point but it is hard to know when.

    Eight American metro areas have homes worth over $1 trillion – and one involves a large suburb

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    What do all the housing values in a city add up to? For eight American metro areas, the housing values are over $1 trillion:

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    According to residential real estate website Redfin, less than 10 metro areas in America are now worth $1 trillion in collective real estate home values. Most of those areas make sense for the list, like New York, Boston and Atlanta (the latter of which has a metro population of more than 6 million people). Anaheim, on the other hand, has a population of about 350,000 people, and for years fought to disengage itself from the ignominious nickname “Anacrime,” despite being home to the so-called happiest place on Earth…

    The Orange County city reached its recently minted status due to an explosion in the real estate market in that area, with home prices up more than 12% over the past year, Redfin says. To source its findings, the Seattle-based company relied on aggregate home sale data for almost 100 million homes across the U.S.

    San Francisco, meanwhile, has not reached trillion-dollar status yet, but that’s only because the city itself is so small. When combined with other large area real estate markets in San Jose and Oakland, the number jumps to a staggering $2.5 trillion. The other cities that did cross the $1 trillion threshold are Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Phoenix.

    Nationally, the biggest overall rise in home values comes from more rural and suburban areas, Redfin says. The high cost of homeownership in Anaheim specifically points to ongoing issues in California around housing supply and affordability. Orange County has long been a wealthy area in aggregate, with pockets of affordability. Now, many prospective homeowners may be feeling the squeeze to leave, departing for less expensive homes in places like the Inland Empire and Bakersfield.

    To some degree, this measure may not have much value. The biggest metro areas are on this list. (Missing are Dallas and Houston.) Have a lot of people and have relatively high prices and a place ll make this list.

    On the other hand, Anaheim does seem like a bit of a surprise. It is a suburb of Los Angeles. In 1950, it had just over 14,500 residents. It grew tremendously in the postwar era. According to the Census Bureau, it has a median housing value of over $713,000.

    What other suburbs could be close to joining this list? They would need to be large and expensive. This would rule out many communities in the Northeast and Midwest where suburbs tend to be smaller. Are there some Sunbelt or West Coast suburbs that could join the list soon?