Tag Archives: suburbs

The importance of property values to NIMBYism

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NIMBYism is cited as a common American issue as homeowners often fight hard to protect their pristine homes and neighborhoods. I was reminded of this by an article looking at seven neighbors that damage property values:

Here, the seven suprising neighbors that can reduce your home’s value:

Power Plants. The data is fairly clear on the impact of power plants on nearby home values — it usually hurts them. A study from the University of California at Berkeley shows that home values within two miles of a power plant can decrease between 4% and 7%.

Landfills. A study from the Pima County (Arizona) Assessor’s office shows that a subdivision located near a landfill (and all other residential factors being equal, like house size, school quality and residential incomes) loses 6% to 10% in value compared to a subdivision that isn’t located near a dump.

Robert A. Simons, an urban planning professor at Cleveland State University, says that if you live within two miles of a Superfund site (a landfill that the government designates as a hazardous waste site), your home’s value could decline by up to 15%.

Sex Offenders. Living in close proximity to a registered sex offender is one of the biggest downward drivers of home values. Researchers at Longwood University’s College of Business & Economics conclude that the closer you live to a sex offender, the more your home will depreciate. In the paper, Estimating the Effect of Crime Risk on Property Values and Time on Market: Evidence from Megan’s Law in Virginia, Longwood researchers say, “the presence of a registered sex offender living within one-tenth of a mile reduces home values by about 9%, and these same homes take as much as 10% longer to sell than homes not located near registered sex offenders.”

Delinquent Bill Payers. One surprising way that neighbors can bring down the value of surrounding homes, especially in town home or condo communities, is by not paying their maintenance fees or their mortgages. “Bad neighbors bring values down by not paying their maintenance fees, in some cases their mortgage payments, and not maintaining the home’s appearance,” says Pordes. “These homeowners usually do not care about real estate values.”

Foreclosed Homes. Perhaps the biggest single factor that drives nearby home values down is a foreclosure. A recent study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology concludes that a neighbor’s foreclosed home can slash the value of homes within 250 feet of the foreclosed properties by an average of 27%. Says Federal Reserve Governor Joseph Tracy recently in his economic outlook for 2011: “The growing inventory of defaulted mortgages continues to weigh down any recovery in the housing market… Problems in housing markets can impact economic growth.”

Lackluster Landscaping. Studies show that lawn care has a big impact on surrounding home values. Virginia Tech University released a report stating that pristine landscaping can jack up the value of a home by 5% to 10%. But if the lawn looks like it just hosted the world rugby tournament, it can be a green thumb to the eye of local home prices.

Closed Schools. Sometimes, neighborhood problems can stem from local government action. For example, if a cash-strapped city or town closes a neighborhood school, that can easily steer home values south. The National Association of Realtors says that 75% of home shoppers, the quality and availability of schools in the neighborhood is either “somewhat important” or “very important.”

As the article notes, what an individual homeowner can do about these situations might be limited. Perhaps the best way to avoid this is simply to do one’s homework before moving into a neighborhood to assess what has happened or might happen in the future. This could involve checking community websites, reading local news, and talking with current residents. But, there are always trade-offs involved in this process. If someone desires a cheaper home, perhaps they might move into an area that has one of these conditions.

At the same time, there are plenty of land uses or neighbors that are not cited in the article where homeowners band together to protect their community. Here are a few recent situations in the Chicago region: a battle over affordable housing in Winnetka (with an update here), Naperville residents opposed to Show-Me’s and Evanston residents opposed to a Tilted Kilt restaurant, and a debate over lighting in Barrington Hills. Compared to a power plant or landfill, these uses seem much less obvious and yet are important concerns for residents of wealthier communities.

On the whole, this article illustrates that one of the primary goals of a homeowner is to protect and/or grow their property values. In order to do this, a homeowner may have to be in opposition to larger neighborhood or community goals. After all, power plants and landfills and sex offenders have to be somewhere. But, if you have the economic means in the United States, you generally move to nicer and nicer neighborhoods where these NIMBY concerns are likely reduced. It would be interesting to track how people’s neighborhood or suburban moves over the years progressively place them further and further away from such property value lowering uses.

Finding Bin Laden in the suburbs

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There has been a lot of commentary about where Osama Bin Laden was found in Pakistan. On one hand, there has been a lot of interest in his house, including people dubbing the compound a “McMansion.” (However, reports yesterday and today have suggested that the house was less unusual or prominent as was first suggested.) On the other hand, he was found in an unusual military town. Here is one take that suggests that Bin Laden was found in the unlikeliest of places: a suburb.

We now all know that, of course, bin Laden was not in a cave. He was hiding in plain sight in a million-dollar mansion in a posh suburb of Islamabad.

Not only that, the suburb was a military complex described as Pakistan’s West Point. And the mansion apparently was built expressly for him – as though he were some chief executive officer cashing in on his bonus options, so he wasn’t being especially discreet.

He apparently had been living there undisturbed for six years, according to Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.). He was a suburbanite enjoying the pleasures of a life of leisure – behind 12-foot walls.

This was so far beyond our expectation of how the world’s most wanted terrorist would be living that no one, apparently, bothered to look for him outside the mountains. Terrorists just don’t live in the suburbs.

I’m not so sure this community was a suburb. It was at least an hour outside of Islamabad. It was also a military community, not necessary a resort community. However, there have been reports that a number of wealthier military officials live in this community. And Bin Laden was living a life of leisure when he was possibly in the same room for five years? Bin Laden is comparable to a CEO “cashing in on his bonus options”? In terms of thinking that this community is like a typical American suburb outside of Los Angeles or Chicago and Bin Laden was the typical suburban head of household, this is not quite the case.

The story goes on to cite the sociological idea of “lifestyle enclaves”:

Back in 1985, the sociologist Robert Bellah and his cohort, in their seminal book “Habits of the Mind,” coined the term “lifestyle enclaves” to describe the way Americans had begun to cluster on the basis of “shared patterns of appearance, consumption and leisure activities, which often serve to differentiate them sharply from those with other lifestyles.”

These enclaves were self-selected – you gravitated toward others like you. In the sociologists’ view, they were increasingly replacing real community in America with these superficial bonds of similarity.

There are dozens of these enclaves today – from members of the National Rifle Association, to upwardly mobile young married couples, to outdoorsmen, to the very wealthy. Enclaves have become a primary way we define ourselves.

But I doubt that Bellah and the others ever thought of terrorists as a possible enclave back when they were writing the book. Yet the concept of people who choose to live with others who look like them and think like them is now so deeply embedded in our consciousness that the idea of a terrorist enclave apparently did cross the mind of the intelligence community today.

The conclusion of the piece is that Bin Laden was found because he didn’t play by the “lifestyle enclave”/suburban rules. So all of the residents of Abbotabad were terrorists?

All of this seems like a stretch in order to connect to the average American suburban reader. The basic premise could be interesting: the suburbs (or more rural/military town suburbs) are supposed to be the land of safety, not the place where terrorists (or any people who commit violent crimes) actually live next door. But to suggest that Bin Laden was similar to a typical suburbanite and was caught because he didn’t fit in seems kind of silly. Projecting the image of the American suburbs on Abbotabad, Pakistan may not be the best way to understand a complex situation.

Proposal for government to study driving tax by mile

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I’ve occasionally written about the gas tax (see here and here for recent examples) as well alternative forms of deriving tax revenue from driving (see here). There is a report that the Obama administration has proposed a new federal study that would look at taxing drivers per mile driven:

The Obama administration has floated a transportation authorization bill that would require the study and implementation of a plan to tax automobile drivers based on how many miles they drive…

Among other things, CBO suggested that a vehicle miles traveled (VMT) tax could be tracked by installing electronic equipment on each car to determine how many miles were driven; payment could take place electronically at filling stations.

The CBO report was requested by Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-ND), who has proposed taxing cars by the mile as a way to increase federal highway revenues…

The administration seems to be aware of the need to prepare the public for what would likely be a controversial change to the way highway funds are collected. For example, the office is called on to serve a public relations function, as the draft says it should “increase public awareness regarding the need for an alternative funding source for surface transportation programs and provide information on possible approaches.”

I have several quick thoughts about this:

1. Doesn’t the government have to go to some method like this in the future with the advent of electric cars? If people are buying less gasoline (which is generally thought of as a good thing), then gas tax revenue will decrease.

2. If a tax like this were implemented, does this deincentivize purchasing electric cars or more fuel-efficient vehicles? Although you might pay less at the pump for gas, you would then pay more for driving longer distances.

3. How much of this is going to turn into a public relations battle? It is interesting that the proposed study would look into this. I’m sure a few things would worry some people:

a. How is the government going to use this tracking information since they will already be tracking the miles driven? Of course, this is potentially already an issue in states with toll transponders like Illinois and the IPass system

b. Is this a tax on mobility or on the American way of life (i.e. sprawl)? It would be interesting to see how this new tax might compare to existing costs for driving. Overall, this article reminds me that driving is not cheap – it may feel like freedom but it is expensive freedom.

4. Is a tax for miles-driven too broad? Different vehicle sizes put different stress on road surfaces. Should a tax also take this into account? Or is the difference between a Honda Insight and a Honda Pilot not significant?

5. There could be some interesting consequences of this. Would there be fewer road trips and driving vacations? Would the airline industry (and the rail/high speed rail industry) benefit? Would putting the costs into miles driven rather than tacked onto a gallon of gasoline make people think twice about purchasing a home further from their work?

Comparing inner vs. outer suburban growth

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There are numerous types of suburbs (I think I now have at least 13 different types in one of my lectures in American Suburbanization) but one broad comparison includes looking at suburbs adjacent to cities (“inner-ring suburbs”) vs. suburbs on the metropolitan fringe (often referred to as “exurbs”). USA Today reports on some of the population trends in these two areas:

A new pattern is emerging this century. Most of the growth is happening on opposite ends of the suburban expanse: in older communities closest to the city and in the newer ones that are the farthest out.

“A few decades ago, all the growth was on the edge,” says Robert Lang, an urban sociologist at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas who analyzed 2010 Census data. “Now, there are citylike suburbs doing well on one side of the metropolis while conventional suburbs still flourish on the fringe.”

Close-in suburbs in the 50 largest metropolitan areas added 6 million people from 2000 to 2010, an 11.3% increase. The nation grew 9.7% in the same period.

At the same time, less populated suburbs on the outer edge grew even faster. They gained 6.7 million, a 24.5% increase.

DuPage County, Illinois is cited in this story as an example of suburban areas that are between these two extremes. Such “mature suburbs” had lower rates of growth as they “add[ed] 3.5 million people, a 7.8% increase” over the previous decade.

I like this emphasis on looking at the different rates of suburban growth depending on proximity to the city. There are a couple of stories that one could tell:

1. The suburban population is growing. I still am eager to hear the final 2010 figures that tell us what percentage of Americans live in suburbs compared to urban and rural areas.

2. The fastest-growing suburbs are on the metropolitan fringe. This is what might be considered typical suburban growth and/or “sprawl” as metropolitan regions continue to expand. It would be helpful to know how this 24.5% population increase over the last decade compares to previous decades.

3. Inner-ring suburbs are also growing quicker than the national growth rate. This may support recent findings that people want denser neighborhoods. It would be interesting to see how much of this growth is due to city dwellers moving just across municipal boundaries (for example, did those 200,000 people who left Chicago move to Oak Park or to Joliet?) or whether this population growth is from people from other areas, such as outer-ring suburbs, moving closer to the city.

4. So where does this leave mature suburbs? They are caught in the middle as they don’t have the open land for sprawl development but also are unlikely to have the denser or taller development of inner-ring suburbs. Most projects will either have to be small in-fill projects or bigger redevelopment projects. It will be interesting to see how these suburbs adapt: they were once outer-ring suburbs but will now have to make decisions about what direction to go.

h/t The Infrastructurist

Current trends in Finnish suburbs

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This blog contains a number of posts about American suburbs but I am also interested in learning more about suburbs in other countries. Here are some insights into the changes taking place in Finland’s suburbs:

Urban geographer Venla Bernelius says that the same process that took place in other parts of Europe is now under way in Finland. A previous low level of immigration, combined with relatively small income disparities has delayed the phenomenon.

“The direction appears clear. Differentiation is increasing all the time.”

Experiences from other parts of Europe and North America suggest that it is very difficult to reverse a process of ethnic differentiation. Bernelius says that the time to act is now.

At present, conditions in Finnish suburbs are nowhere near those of slums or ghettoes in other countries.

However, Matti Kortteinen, professor of urban sociology at the University of Helsinki says that isolation from the population at large makes it more difficult for immigrants to adapt to Finnish society.

“The development harms people’s overall well-being”, Kortteinen says.

One reason for the trend is that immigrants often end up living in areas where there is much municipal housing. Many Finns who are long-term unemployed also live in these areas.

“The issue is not only about ethnic differentiation. The worst-off Finns and the worst-off immigrants live in isolated suburbs”, Bernelius says.

It might be helpful to compare these trends with what is taking place in American suburbs. To start, more minorities and immigrants are moving to the American suburbs (just as it sounds like Finland). More broadly, the American suburbs contain a variety of communities and suburbs, some very wealthy and some quite poor. But, the suggestion here is that immigrants and minorities become isolated in Finnish suburbs while we would tend to think the opposite in the United States. If people have “made it” in the US or have certain income levels, they tend to move to the suburbs. A more general European pattern works in reverse: the poorer segments of the population, immigrants and natives, live in suburbs away from the city and its wealth.

It will be interesting to see how Finland, and other European nations, adjust and respond to this kind of suburban population growth.

From gated communities to cameras and license plate readers

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In the 1990s and early 2000s, there was an increase in scholarly work addressing the growing phenomenon of gated communities. Such communities were often criticized for at least giving the appearance of trying to withdraw from the world, being exclusive, and indulging the fears of suburbanites. So I wonder what these researchers might think about a community that wants to use cameras to read the license plates of everyone who enters their community:

Kings Point is one of the wealthiest villages on the North Shore, and residents want to keep it that way with the latest security…

To protect its 3.3 square miles, Kings Point plans to install 44 cameras and license plate readers at each of the 19 points of entry. The devices will take pictures of every vehicle and license plate and compare them to data bases.

“It will alert us to suspended registrations, felonies, stolen cars, order of protection, sex offenders, things like that,” Kings Point Police Commissioner Jack Miller said…

There’s no way of knowing whether the project will reduce crime. It may just send it off to other towns that are less secure.

Police said the project will cost $1 million, and will be paid for over several years. They also stressed only police will have access to surveillance information.

The article mentions one other key piece of information: there seems to have been a (small?) string of recent crimes in the community which has prompted the installation of cameras.

There may be some privacy issues here but I think some of same concerns about gated communities could be raised about this move. This is a wealthy community: according to Census data, there are 5,305 residents, the median household income (in 2009 dollars) is $144,000, the median home value is $1,000,000+, 55.3% of those 25 and older have a bachelor’s degree or more, and the community is 95.3% white, 3.4% Asian, and 3.1% Latino. Is this simply a move to protect the exclusivity of this community? While the article references plans in New York and London (presumably to fight terrorism), does a community like this really need to go to this level? If you look at some neighborhood/real estate websites, Kings Point Village seems to have quite a low crime rate (with a fun feature of this link being you get to see your odds of “becoming a victim” in whatever community you search for). This seems to me to be a much better question than whether police should have access to this information and therefore invade your privacy.

Additionally, it will be interesting to see what police do with this data. Which criminal offenses are enough to warrant attention? Is the goal of the program just to have a record of who was in the community so that they can be tracked down later or will there be more immediate actions taken? If the goal is to just to track down people after a crime has been committed, will residents be happy or will they suggest that the crime should have been prevented?

High fences indicative of a lack of community in suburbs?

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Suburbs are often criticized for a lack of community: residents drive in and out of garages with little interaction. In searching for a missing girl in Cairns, Australia, several people suggest that the search is made harder by the high fences that separate suburban yards:

Cairns is losing its sense of community and neighbourhood spirit, with residents only finding time to help each other in times of natural disasters.

That’s the verdict of sociologists, politicians and police, who believe people in the Far North are living more isolated lives than ever before.

Fewer people know much about residents in their street, which potentially leads to an increased risk of crime.

And they say this trend can be most clearly demonstrated in, of all places, the proliferation of high fences in the suburbs.

At no time has this been more apparent than with the dilemma facing authorities as they seek information on the disappearance for teenager Declan Crouch and the murder of Erica Liddy.

Despite many pleas for help, vital clues from the public – the eyes and ears of Cairns – are yet to come.

A few decades ago, high fences in the suburbs were extremely rare, with neighbours often the best of friends, talking regularly over small mesh wire side fences in the backyard.

But experts say the fast pace of modern life mixed with a blend of fear, apathy and population growth is keeping residents hidden away from each other, behind those all-pervasive six-foot high fences.

I would suspect that the problem involves more than just fences. The fences are just a symptom of bigger issues – get rid of the fences and neighbors won’t necessarily know each other any better. And if there is a lot of media attention about these sort of stories (abductions, murder, etc.), why wouldn’t more suburbanites build fences to keep their yards and kids safe?

This story itself is illustrative of a larger question regarding suburbs: if they were simply designed a little differently, would there be stronger communities? This is a key claim of New Urbanists: moving cars and garages to a back alley, making streets more pedestrian friendly, and reintroducing porches to the front of houses will lead to more community. And with recent data suggesting that Americans do want to live in more walkable communities but still want to remain private, the verdict is still out on such design changes.

An argument for moving beyond cities/suburbs to walkable/unwalkable areas

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A demographer makes an argument for moving beyond comparing cities and suburbs to looking at walkable and unwalkable areas which are not necessarily concentrated in either cities or suburbs:

Unfortunately, the census shines the light on the terms “city” and “suburb”–neither of which are the keys to understanding today’s built environment.

Core cities are comprised of pedestrian-oriented urban places, how Jerry Seinfeld lived, but they also include auto-centric suburban places, like the San Fernando Valley in the city of Los Angeles or the Palisades in the District of Columbia. Likewise, the suburbs of those core cities include classic subdivisions and McMansions, like the home of Tony Soprano, but they also include booming places like Old Town Pasadena, Reston Town Center near Dulles Airport outside D.C., and revitalized Jersey City and Hoboken, NJ, on the other side of the Hudson River from Manhattan.

The issue is where are walkable urban places being built, and they are being built in both central cities and the suburbs surrounding them. My 2007 survey of the walkable urban places in the top 30 metros showed 50 percent of them were in central cities and 50 percent were in the suburbs. In the metro area with the most walkable urban places, the Washington region, 70 percent of the walkable urban places were in the suburbs. These included Bethesda and Silver Spring in suburban Montgomery County, nine places in suburban Arlington County (like Ballston and Crystal City), and the newly built Washington Harbor in suburban Prince George’s County.

I haven’t looked at this 2007 survey data but it sounds interesting. Is there an easy way to demarcate walkable vs. unwalkable areas through publicly available data? While the Census definitions of and boundaries between cities and suburbs might be frustrating, the data is easy to understand and available to all.

At the same time, this argument is broader: it is about comparing denser versus less dense areas. Walkable areas work because residents can easily walk to or access essential needs like grocery stores, public spaces, eateries, and more. At stake here is whether less dense urban areas, like the north side of Chicago with its many single-family homes, are more similar to suburban areas (which range from inner-ring suburbs to very sparse communities on the suburban fringe) or to more central districts like the Chicago Loop.

I would think that suburban areas are more similar to each other in design and culture than to large portions of large cities. But if more suburban areas become more dense (and this may be what Americans want) and the importance of the core of metropolitan areas decline, perhaps this will change.

The current state of Zipcar

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The Infrastructurist provides a quick overview of the current state of Zipcar. Some of the things you should know:

Zipcar went public last week, and how. On its first day of trading, the company raised $174.3 million and finished up 56 percent. All told, Zipcar sold 9.7 million shares of stock at $18 a pop and earned itself a market value of $1.21 billion, according to Bloomberg…

The 11-year-old company currently operates in 14 cities — 12 in the United States, plus Vancouver and London — and 230 college campuses. Its fleet stands at around 8,000 cars, and its membership at 560,000.

Robin Chase, the company’s founder, has been known to say: “Infrastructure is destiny.” The business world is more concerned with whether profits are destiny. So far, for Zipcar, they have not been. Last year the company generated about $186 million in revenue but still posted a net loss of roughly $14 million…

Zipcar’s biggest problem, writes the Wall Street Journal, may be growing competition from traditional car rental companies…

In the end Zipcar’s success may hinge on how transportation evolves in the near future.

This overview is pitched as a look at whether Zipcar is “a good investment.” This would be the business angle: the company has not turned a profit even as it seems like investors are at least somewhat confident that they could make some money down the road.

But there are plenty of other questions to ask (the answers to these questions would have an impact on the business side but are more interesting to me): is this company on to something regarding infrastructure and the use of cars? In recent months, there is some data to suggest Americans want to live in more walkable environments (which could presumably lead to less interest in owning a vehicle). Is this model sustainable even in these cities, let alone less dense cities? It would be interesting to see Zipcar usage data regarding less urban college settings (like the Zipcars at North Central College in Naperville, Illinois – currently, there is a Toyota Matrix and Toyota Prius available on campus) compared to the big cities. Ultimately, is a car-sharing model the end goal or a middle step between gasoline powered vehicles and vehicles of the future that will be powered by something cleaner and cheaper?

Chinese purchase “monster homes” in New Zealand

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McMansion type homes are not just restricted to the United States. This article describes what Chinese buyers are moving into in New Zealand:

When veteran architect Ron Sang drives around the outer fringes of Auckland near Albany or Botany, he can always spot a house built for a Chinese buyer.

“Generally it has a high portico on the outside – a big, high, ostentatious-looking porch, usually double height,” he says.

“Generally above the door you have a window and through the window you can see chandeliers. Inside the door you’ll see a big, ostentatiously curved stairway. They like to show wealth.”

These grand mansions on small suburban sections – what sociologist Paul Spoonley, adopting a Canadian term, calls “monster houses” – have become the stereotypical Chinese footprints in our cityscape.

While the homes described here are called “monster homes,” this sounds very similar to what Americans would call McMansions with the traits of a big entryway, garish appointments, the goal of impressing a buyer or visitor, and large homes on relatively small lots in suburban neighborhoods.

There is an interesting discussion later in the article about Chinese immigration to and residential patterns of Chinese residents in New Zealand.