Tag Archives: suburbs

Pick the wrong suburb and you can try again

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Keep trying and you might just find the suburb that suits you:

Switching suburbs after you’ve plunked down a hefty down payment and settled your children in school seems infinitely challenging, and indeed some recent transplants who have doubts about their new communities resign themselves to the idea that there is no such thing as a perfect suburb.

But for others, the gnawing sensation that something is not quite right pushes them to keep searching for another suburb, a better suburb, a place where they might actually feel at home. Maybe it’s the commute. Maybe the schools are too big or too small, or the town is too quiet or not quiet enough. Maybe what they thought was important — the big yard and the birds singing out the windows — was not so important after all….

Even if a possibility looks great on paper, one person’s idea of a great place to live can be another person’s nightmare. “The suburbs are not the same; the subtleties of their personalities are so different,” he said. “Just like someone living on the Upper East Side won’t fit into Williamsburg, someone who likes Maplewood may not fit into Short Hills. You can end up in a place that really doesn’t suit you.”

Moving to a new suburb may be the way to recapturing your identity, whether it’s somewhere where you can walk to dinner or a place with more like-minded people. But first, you should give serious thought to who lives in the town and what types of things go on there. Whom will you encounter when you walk your children to the park? Whom will you drink a beer with at the neighborhood block party? What do the mothers wear to drop-off, or will you see only nannies?

I get that the American suburbs are often about finding individual happiness. And buying a suburban home is a significant investment. The consumer is king. But, does this go too far? How many times can the average family move? Is there any concept of contributing to a suburban community rather than just finding people like you or that you enjoy?

One of the side effects of encouraging individuals to find the suburb that suits them is that it encourages further geographic sorting. Residential segregation is already a major issue in the United States and further moves for psychological or social fit likely allows those with more resources to pick their preferred setting.

 

Why South Barrington is not the home to Fermilab

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While doing some recent reading on the Fermilab facility in Batavia, I ran into a passage in Fermilab: Physics, the Frontier, and Megascience that describes why South Barrington was not selected for the facility:

Illinois was forced on April 5 to withdraw its South Barrington site, despite having the strongest congressional support at the time, according to an AEC tally. Science magazine reported that residents from the affluent Chicago uburb feared that the influx of physicists would “disturb the moral fiber of the community.” (76)

That physicists would alter the character of a wealthy suburb for the worse is humorous to consider. How exactly would the “moral fiber” be disturbed? New housing? Non-white residents? I’m guessing the South Barrington area might wish that local leaders and residents had been more enthusiastic in 1966…

Pastor: “The suburbs are essentially an attempt to create an alternate Kingdom”

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A pastor from South Africa describes what ministry in the suburbs should entail and then concludes this way:

The suburbs are essentially an attempt to create an alternate Kingdom. A place of peace and security here on earth. As such, it is a noble endeavor, but it does it through exclusion and not through the power of God’s grace and truth.

It strikes me that this critique from a conservative Protestant may not be that different from the standard critique of suburbs since at least the early 1920s. This standard critique goes something like this: suburbia tries to make everything look pleasant – from being able to purchase a home, keeping the lawn neat and green, and having a wholesome life centered around your family – but underneath this surface are human beings striving to break free from conformity, dullness, and consumerism. Conservative Christians who critique the suburbs make a similar case that the comfortable suburban life dulls people’s senses to their need for spiritual renewal. Of course, the two groups have very different outcomes in mind: the first critique often hopes for a return to diverse and exciting cities while the conservative Christians place less emphasis on where one lives in the end and care more about their spiritual state wherever they may be.

Increasing tourism in the Chicago suburbs

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Suburbs may not dominate lists of where travelers want to vacation yet tourism is up in the Chicago suburbs:

Growth in tax revenue attributed to tourism from 2015 to 2016.

State receipts      Local tax receipts

Cook County          +4.5%                       +6.8%

DuPage County      +3.7%                       +6.1%

Kane County           +1.9%                       +4.2%

Lake County            +3.3%                       +5.6%

McHenry County    +6.5%                       +8.9%

Will County              +29.6%                     +16.1%

Sources: Illinois Office of Tourism, The Economic Impact of Travel on Illinois Counties 2014, a report prepared by the Research Department of the U.S. Travel Association.

It helps that every suburban region has carved out its own niche, focusing on different travelers. While they all woo convention and business travelers, Rosemont targets the international travelers who come through O’Hare International Airport; DuPage County emphasizes its forest preserves and natural spaces; Aurora focuses on attracting national youth sports tournaments; and Schaumburg eyes business travelers and mall-loving shoppers.

McHenry’s tourism — which saw the biggest gains in the latest reports — developed a niche with agritourism and fall festivities. Things like Richardson Adventure Farm’s world’s largest corn maze; giant fall festivals at local farms; and Quarry Cable Park, the newly renovated wakeboard park in Crystal Lake; are attracting more visitors to the area.

If you can get outsiders to come spend money in your community (rather than just relying on local revenues), it seems like a win for suburbs. Yet, there may also be downsides to increased suburban tourism:

  1. Some people move to suburbs to get away from people and crowds. Bringing in people might change the local atmosphere.
  2. More visitors may lead to a need to construct more infrastructure to support those visitors. This could include everything from roads to new facilities.
  3. As the article hints, this could turn into another venue for competition as suburbs try to draw visitors from other suburbs.

All of this highlights the changed nature of suburbs in recent decades: they are not just bedroom suburbs (and arguably never were) but rather are a diverse set of communities with a number of different attractions (from entertainment scenes to office parks to varied housing types to racial/ethnic and class diversity).

Suburban TV shows have never dominated TV ratings

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One of my studies, From I Love Lucy in Connecticut to Desperate Housewives’ Wisteria Lane: Suburban TV Shows, 1950-2007, recently came out in print in Sociological Focus. Here is the abstract for the piece and I’ll add a few thoughts afterward:

The majority of Americans now live in suburbs, and a number of scholars have highlighted how various pop culture objects, from novels to television shows, have either reflected or encouraged suburban life. An analysis of the top 30 Nielsen-rated television shows from 1950 to 2007, a period of both rapid suburbanization and television growth, reveals that suburban TV shows did not dominate popular television. There is slightly more evidence for reflection theory with more sets of seasons with higher numbers of suburban-set shows following decades of rapid suburban growth. Additionally, the number of suburban-set shows was also influenced by the popularity of the genres of sitcoms and dramas. These findings suggest a need for further research into why relatively few popular shows were set in suburbs compared to big cities and how viewing settings on television directly influences suburban aspirations and behavior.

In sum: even if suburban set television shows have been a staple of fall lineups and reruns since the 1950s, they often do not rank among the most highly rated and there is limited evidence that they inspired suburban growth.

All that said, I think there is a lot to be done with connecting television depictions of locations with behaviors and attitudes. While Americans still watch multiple hours of TV a day on average, it is not fully clear how all that viewing affects people. What it does mean if the suburbs tend to be depicted in certain ways – either family sitcoms or the underside of happy-looking suburban life – and cities are depicted in other ways – the main setting for crime or police shows, which are heavily represented in top rated shows going back decades? On the whole, few shows are able or willing to deeply delve into a location and its people – such as the celebrated The Wire – even though they have the hours to do so. Does the generic big city or suburb on TV change viewers?

Suburbs to respond to companies returning to cities

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Another new issue facing suburbs – in addition to homelessness – is how to respond when companies move their headquarters back to cities:

In Chicago, McDonald’s will join a slew of other companies — among them food giant Kraft Heinz, farming supplier ADM and telecommunications firm Motorola Solutions — all looking to appeal to and be near young professionals versed in the world of e-commerce, software analytics, digital engineering, marketing and finance…

Aetna recently announced that it will relocate from Hartford, Conn., to Manhattan; General Electric is leaving Connecticut to build a global headquarters in Boston; and Marriott International is moving from an emptying Maryland office park into the center of Bethesda, Md…

The migration to urban centers threatens the prosperity outlying suburbs have long enjoyed, bringing a dose of pain felt by rural communities and exacerbating stark gaps in earnings and wealth that Donald Trump capitalized on in winning the presidency…

Long term, the corporate moves threaten an orbit of smaller enterprises that fed on their proximity to the big companies, from restaurants and janitorial operations to subcontractors who located nearby.

It is difficult for any community – whether big city or suburb – to adjust to the move of a large firm out of the community. A number of things are lost: prestige, jobs, philanthropic contributions, and tax revenue. Arguably, suburbs lose more compared to big cities that have broader and more diverse economies: the headquarters in the suburb might be a sizable community anchor.

This may be similar to when suburbs with once-thriving shopping malls try to figure out what to do with that space. It can be difficult to fill the property all at once so suburbs might have to take their time and move one small step at a time.

I’ve argued before that this whole city-suburb competition for headquarters could harm both in the long run as it takes the focus away from a metropolitan effort to encourage business growth. On the whole, it matters less if a company moves from the Chicago suburbs to downtown than if the company decides to leave the entire region for another location. If more businesses move back to major cities, could suburbs find some way to work together to prevent moves? Or, or is the sometimes cutthroat competition between suburbs impossible to stop?

Addressing homelessness in wealthy Orange County

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Suburbs in Orange County, California are working to address homelessness:

The vanishing benches were Anaheim’s response to complaints about the homeless population around Disneyland. Public work crews removed 20 benches from bus shelters after callers alerted City Hall to reports of vagrants drinking, defecating or smoking pot in the neighborhood near the amusement park’s entrance, officials said…

At the county’s civic center in Santa Ana, homeless encampments — complete with tents and furniture and flooring made from cardboard boxes — block walkways and unnerve some visitors. Along the Santa Ana River near Angel Stadium, whole communities marked by blue tarp have sprung up. In Laguna Beach, a shelter this summer is testing an outreach program in which volunteers walk the streets offering support and housing assistance to homeless people.

Cities across California — notably Los Angeles and San Francisco — are dealing with swelling ranks of the homeless. But officials in Orange County said most suburban communities simply don’t have the resources and experience to keep up.

Susan Price, Orange County’s director of care coordination, said officials are trying to build a coordinated approach involving all of the more than 30 disparate cities that takes into account the different causes of homelessness, including economic woes, a lack of healthcare and recent reforms in the criminal justice system.

With a location like this, the headline just writes itself: “While homelessness surges in Disneyland’s shadow…” Juxtaposition! Yet, this shouldn’t be a surprise in this suburban era. Fewer suburban communities and residents are far removed from what they may have once considered to be “urban problems.” The changes across suburbs in recent decades – more diverse populations, continued job opportunities though there is an increase in the service sector, higher housing prices (particularly in places like California) – have pushed many suburbs to consider new issues.

If Orange County does indeed enact a regional approach to homelessness, it could be a worthwhile study to compare the outcomes with those in the city of Los Angeles. Can wealthier suburban communities successfully address homelessness compared to cities who have addressed the issue for longer periods of time? (Success would not be allowed to be defined as moving the homeless elsewhere.)

Flooding as a major suburban problem

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Suburbs are often derided for their sprawling development that chew up acres of land and significantly alters more rural settings. Within that sprawl, one problem that consistently shows up but receives less attention than it should is flooding. For example, the significant rain received in parts of the Chicago region this past Wednesday (July 12) has impacted a number of suburbs:

While some suburban communities Saturday saw water levels begin to recede in the wake of Wednesday’s downpour, others still are bracing for the worst of the fallout from flood-ravaged rivers experts expect will crest later today into next week.

In Algonquin, the Fox River reached 11.79 feet by noon Saturday, with the National Weather Service predicting it will crest nearly a foot higher, at 12.9 feet, sometime Tuesday.

As of noon Saturday, The National Weather Service reported the Des Plaines River near Gurnee had reached a record-setting 11.96 feet and was expected to crest at about 12 feet sometime in the next 24 hours. In Lincolnshire, the level had dropped to 15.5 feet, but official predictions indicate the river may rise again to crest at 16.3 feet sometime Sunday.

While Wednesday’s rain was unusual (and we could argue about how frequently such big storms do and should occur), the results highlight a common issue across suburban landscapes: what happens to all that water? Suburbs don’t just change rural or farm land into developments; they change how water flows and is absorbed into the soil.

A variety of techniques are available to deal with the water. Common in this area are retention ponds, sunken areas within developments that are often dry but serve as places where water can pool when excessive rainfall occurs. In the Chicago area, the need to deal with flooding led to one of the largest civil engineering projects in the world: Deep Tunnel. Floodplains are fairly visible during heavy rains as homes and other structures near large bodies of water, particularly rivers, are affected. Less easy to see are  formerly swampy or marshy land which have been filled in, the channeling of creeks and rivers (or even covering them up completely), and covering the ground with less permeable surfaces such as roads and driveways (this can be combated by using different kinds of surfaces).

Instead of viewing flooding within major metropolitan regions as the unfortunate result of large storms, we should see it as a regular issue within suburban settings. And if we do so, that might prompt better plans to avoid the flooding that comes when so much land is altered.

Could the success of Columbia, Maryland be replicated elsewhere?

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Columbia, Maryland is often held up as an unusually successful suburb:

But as Columbia marks the 50th anniversary since the first residents moved in, it has become clear that Rouse got some important things right. As progressive urban planners have turned their attention to the suburbs, they’ve striven to achieve a lot of the same things Columbia already has. The unincorporated town of 100,000 is prosperous and more varied racially and economically than many revitalized urban neighborhoods in cities like New York, Washington and San Francisco, which have become islands of extreme wealth. It turns out that stable, diverse, flourishing communities can exist without short city blocks, warehouses-turned-lofts and beer gardens — and Columbia is the proof…

The “Columbia concept” was innovative in a number of other ways. Instead of having churches or temples, religious denominations shared interfaith centers. (Rouse thought each denomination getting its own plot was a waste of land.) There was even a community health plan that was an early version of an HMO. To maintain open spaces and public facilities, Rouse established the Columbia Association, a nonprofit whose board is elected by residents. The association acts as a quasi-government for the unincorporated town, with hundreds of employees paid through resident dues.

The town was organized but diffuse. Six loosely formed villages, each with a small shopping center and high school, were arranged around the Town Center, whose nucleus was the mall. The village centers catered to residents’ everyday needs, with grocery stores, barber shops, dry cleaners and recreation facilities. Tall signs were forbidden, and power lines were buried to preserve the land’s bucolic appearance. Apartments and townhouses, which were uncommon in suburbs at the time, drew singles, young couples and people with lower incomes than their neighbors in the split-levels and ramblers, a conscious attempt to foster what Rouse and his team called “social mix.” And Columbia was not simply a bedroom community: Rouse Co. executives wooed employers such as General Electric to open offices there.

Not everything worked out perfectly: At one point, Rouse thought he could get corporate executives to move to Columbia alongside their workers, but they largely didn’t. And some of the experiments, such as a minibus system, pilot day-care centers and a women’s center, didn’t pan out. Rouse also fell short of his goal of 10 percent subsidized housing. Still, by 2011, Columbia, flaws and all, had managed to surge past another target of his: a population of 100,000.

Aside from the things cited above, two things stand out to me from this article:

  1. Few developers or builders get an opportunity to plan an entire community. This requires a lot of effort: acquiring land, obtaining permission from local governments, and then seeing a long process through. Instead, much of suburbia is constructed in patches with a developer building a subdivision here while another builds an office park there.
  2. Much of the story of Columbia rests on the shoulders of the developer: James Rouse. Here, he is credited with forward-thinking ideas. He anticipated what might help suburban communities thrive rather than just focusing on profits. (However, I’m guessing he still made a good deal of money.) As noted above, not all of his ideas worked out but many of the key features were his.

On the whole, would it be worthwhile to take these two lessons and apply them to future suburbs? What might happen if developers were given (1) thousands of acres to work with in order to create a full community and (2) the developer had the ability to craft and put into practice a particular vision?

I would venture that some of these master-planned communities would be successful while others might not. Indeed, some of the success might be out of control of the developer and local residents. For example, if the template for Columbia was transported to the Houston region in the 1960s, would it be so successful? Or, if it was plopped into the Bay Area today? Not necessarily given changing regional forces, different demographics, and varied reactions from local officials.

It is interesting to think about how the public narratives regarding urban planning in the last century or so often involve powerful people: Robert Moses, Jane Jacobs, the Levitt family, James Rouse. These narratives are either triumphs or disasters depending on how much influence the person wielded (and how they used it) and how their projects operate decades later. Would a structural view of these individuals as well as urban planning as a whole help us better understand how to contribute to thriving communities?

More findings on poverty in the suburbs

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Following Confronting Suburban Poverty in America published in 2014 comes a new book – titled Places in Need and also published by Brookings – with additional findings regarding suburban poverty:

Allard spent years studying Census data and speaking with social service providers across the country, and discovered that while concentrated poverty is still a stubborn issue in cities, it’s also becoming a much larger issue in suburbs. In 1990, there were 8.6 million poor people in the suburbs and 9.5 million in the city. In 2014, the numbers had shifted; 17 million poor Americans living in the suburbs, while 13 million poor were in cities. And it’s not just in the inner-ring suburbs; roughly two-thirds of poor suburbanites live in communities built after 1970, and poverty is growing fastest in suburbs built after 1990…

Allard also found that concentrated poverty was on the rise in the suburbs. He looked at areas with a 20 percent poverty rate, lower than the traditional 30 to 40 percent poverty rate used in many studies, and found many more people in traditional suburban areas falling into this threshold. At that point, there are serious problems, such as discrimination from labor market opportunities, public safety issues, and access to quality housing…

Allard says that sometimes, people mistakenly assume that the poor in suburbs have come from elsewhere and are new arrivals to the neighborhood, a preconception that has made it harder for suburban regions to find the political support to tackle poverty issues.

His research shows the opposite, especially since the Great Recession, which he says hit the suburbs much harder than the rest of the country. The housing crisis hit the mortgage and real estate industry as well as the home improvement business, and the changes in poverty actually became more severe in the suburbs after the larger national recovery started. Grocery markets and retail shops were having a harder time staying afloat in hard-hit suburban regions. The impact inspired the book’s cover image: a strip mall filled with closed or vacated commercial space.

If the poor do become more visible in suburban communities – either because of their numbers or because of increased attention from academics, local officials, and nearby residents – it will be interesting to see how suburban communities and residents respond. Given the exclusionary nature of American suburbs, there could be several possible responses:

  1. Ignore this as long as possible. Suburbanites are not exactly known for their social interactions with a broad range of people so if those living in poverty are outside their immediate social circles, perhaps it can simply be ignored.
  2. Not provide many social services to the suburban poor. This might be with the goal of ignoring the nearby poverty or hoping that the residents go away. Or, communities might refuse to do much on the local government level and wait for non-profits and state agencies to respond.
  3. Move away from communities where there are visible numbers of suburban poor to wealthier suburbs. If this happens, the process of white flight continues as the wealthy just keep moving away from poorer residents.

It will be worth checking in a decade or so down the road to see how exactly suburban poverty has been addressed.