Tag Archives: suburbs

Fastest-growing American counties are suburban

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Joel Kotkin highlights the fastest growing counties large counties in the United States:

Yet an analysis by demographer Wendell Cox of the counties with populations over 100,000 that have gained the most new residents since 2010 tells us something very different: Suburbs and exurbs are making a comeback, something that even the density-obsessed New York Times has been forced to admit. Of the 10 fastest-growing large counties all but two — Orleans Parish, home to the recovering city of New Orleans, and the Texas oil town of Midland— are located in the suburban or exurban fringe of major metropolitan areas.

Fastest Growiing US Counties: 2010-2012
Counties over 100,000 Population
Rank County Equivalent Jurisdiction    Growth
1 Williamson, TX 7.94%
2 Loudon, VA 7.87%
3 Hays, TX 7.56%
4 Orleans, LA 7.39%
5 Fort Bend, TX 7.16%
6 Midland, TX 7.14%
7 Forsyth, GA 7.07%
8 Montgomery, TN 7.04%
9 Prince William, VA 7.04%
10 Osceola, FL 6.97%

What these findings demonstrate is that more people aren’t moving “back to the city” but further out. In the last decade in the 51 largest U.S. metropolitan areas, inner cores, within two miles of downtown, gained some 206,000 people,  while locations 20 miles out gained over 8.5 million. Although the recession slowed exurban growth, since 2011, notes Jed Kolko at Trulia, suburbs have continued to grow far faster than inner ring areas as well as downtown. Americans, he concludes, “still love their suburbs.”

Rather than an inevitable long-range shift, the post-crash slowdown of suburban growth seems to have been largely a response to economic factors. The retro-urbanist dream of eliminating, or at least undermining, suburban alternatives depends very much on maintaining recessionary conditions that discourage relocation, depress housing starts, as well as lowering marriage and birthrates.

Where incomes are growing along with rapid job growth , suburban and exurban growth tends to be strong.  The metro regions that contain our fastest-growing counties — Austin, Houston, Nashville and Northern Virginia — all epitomize this phenomenon. For example, nearly 80% of all housing growth in greater Houston takes place in the areas west of Beltway 8 (the outer beltway). A similar pattern can be seen in the D.C. area, where the number of units permitted in Loudon has more than doubled since 2007. In 2012 permit issuances were the highest since 2005, and the vast majority were for either detached or attached single-family houses.

Kotkin’s conclusion is that the economic crisis slowed suburban growth for a few years, not a growing American move to cities and denser suburban areas. Some of this can’t be known until more time goes by; if Kotkin is right, recent years will be a blip and the kinds of places that were the fastest growing counties from 2010 to 2012 will continue to be fast-growing places.

There might be another approach that would allow both Kotkin and proponents of cities to both be able to claim some victory: outer suburbs might continue to grow as might attractive big cities (think Richard Florida’s creative class moving to the city) while inner suburbs who often have big-city problems, older housing stocks, and tax bases that have a hard time supporting suburban services languish.

How long until suburban homeowners use goats to keep their lawn in shape?

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I read that Naperville is using goats to clear some parkland and I had an idea: why shouldn’t suburban homeowners use goats to keep their lawns short? This could provide some nice benefits: no need to buy a lawnmower; less pollution; less noise; goats could handle grass as well as other vegetation (weed control!); they could be shared or rented out so that not every homeowner has to have a few goats. The drawbacks: the lawn probably wouldn’t look as nice; goats may be unsightly or detract from nicer neighborhoods (see discussions about suburban chickens); and tending goats would be time consuming.

I don’t suspect this is going to happen in large numbers anytime soon. Oddly enough, the biggest drawback might be that the goats won’t be able to produce the kind of finish that suburbanites tend to prefer…

 

Naperville mayor names volunteer leaders for outreach to Chinese, Indian residents

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Naperville has a growing Asian population and the mayor recently named two volunteers as leaders of outreach efforts from the city to Chinese and Indian residents:

Pradel this week announced the creation of the outreach positions to be filled by Bill Liu, who will work with Chinese residents, and Krishna Bansal, who will reach out to the city’s Indian community.

“We have such a diversified city that I’ve been wanting to kind of get on the cutting edge of bringing all our groups together,” Pradel said.

The outreach managers mainly will work to answer questions for Chinese and Indian residents and help them become more comfortable with the processes and procedures of city government, Pradel said. Liu and Bansal also will connect city leadership to important groups in the Chinese and Indian communities and stand in for Pradel if he’s unavailable for their meetings and events…

Pradel said he chose to begin outreach efforts among Chinese and Indian residents because they are two of the city’s largest minority groups. According to 2010 census data, 7.4 percent of Naperville residents are Indian and 3.9 percent are Chinese.

Appointing a similar leader to begin Hispanic outreach could be next, Pradel said. Hispanics and Latinos from all countries make up 5.3 percent of Naperville’s population, according to 2010 census figures. The rest of the city’s roughly 142,000 population is made up of 76.5 percent white people and 4.7 percent blacks.

Interesting move within the diversification of the suburbs more broadly but also within Naperville. It sounds like this is primarily about business opportunities, cultural events, and transmitting information from City Hall. The business part doesn’t surprise me – Naperville is known for its high-tech and white-collar jobs as well as growth – and suburbs are always looking for ways to improve communication with residents. The cultural events side could be interesting: could there be Chinese or Indian events in downtown Naperville in the near future? It also bears watching how outreach to Chinese, Indian, and Latino residents might differ in the future as issues of race/ethnicity, social class, and cultural practices intersect.

The End of the Suburbs – again?

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The author of a new book titled The End of the Suburbs suggests the American suburbs will change in response to several threats:

Q: So which demons are breathing down suburbia’s neck?

A: There’s a lot. To begin with, the nuclear family, which filled our suburban houses, is no longer the norm — marriage and birthrates are steadily declining, while the number of single-person households is growing rapidly. If the demand for good schools and family-friendly lifestyles has historically been the main selling point of suburban life, those things aren’t going to matter so much in the future.

Another thing is that Americans are just sick of driving. They’re sick of commuting. The number of miles driven per year is in decline. And the cost of gasoline has meant that homes on the suburban fringe are not such a bargain.

At the same time, cities, in general, are making a comeback, especially among young adults and even among families with children.

Q: Among the factors you write about in the book, which one is the biggest influence?

A: One of the things that’s the most potent of all of these factors is the demographic situation — the birthrate is falling, the marriage rate is falling, the nuclear family is rapidly becoming a minority household type in this country — 70 percent of households won’t have any children in them by 2025. When you look at those figures and the way our population is changing so dramatically, it hits home — we have built all these houses for a type of household that isn’t going to exist anymore.

But on the question of what happens to the suburbs, the author then goes on to suggest they won’t completely disappear as they will still appeal to a segment of the market.

A few things to note:

1. Critics have suggested the end of the suburbs for decades now. That doesn’t necessarily mean they won’t decline or disappear in the future; it just means plenty of people have made this prediction.

2. Perhaps the most important thing for the future of the suburbs is whether the adaptations to these threats take place within the suburbs or in cities. For example, there is already a push to more density within suburbs that might approximate more urban conditions without having to actually be in cities. These denser pockets would limit driving and also possibly provide different kinds of housing.

3. Her suggestion about the changing household composition is intriguing: see this earlier post about Going Solo in the suburbs.

Report shows Chicago region’s poverty split equally between city and suburbs

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Mirroring larger American trends, a new report finds poverty is split evenly between Chicago and its suburbs.

The “Poverty Matters” report, released today by the Heartland Alliance’s Social IMPACT Research Center, says the suburbs accounted for 34 percent of the area’s poor in 1990. Now, the suburbs are home to 50 percent of the area’s poor…

“We were pretty shocked that it balanced out to 50-50,” said research associate Jennifer Clary. “It definitely flies in the face of the image of affluence in the suburbs.”…

Since poverty is a complex problem, the Heartland Alliance report states there is no single reason for the shift. Causes include growth in low-wage work, stagnating wages and shifts in policies for low-income housing, according to the report…

In the suburbs, the poverty rate increased by 33 percent for foreign-born people, 26 percent for native-born whites, 31 percent for native-born Latinos, and 12 percent for native-born blacks from 1990 to 2011.

Given what is happening elsewhere, these findings shouldn’t been too surprising. But, as the report notes, now the onus is on suburban communities to adjust to changing populations.

More low-income students in suburban Chicago school districts

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A number of suburban school districts in the Chicago area have experienced increases in the number of low-income students:

An analysis of Illinois State Report Card data for 83 school districts in the Daily Herald’s circulation area shows poverty rates rose an average of 18 percentage points from 2000 to 2012…In 2000, only East Aurora Unit District 131 and Round Lake Unit District 116 identified at least one-third of students as low-income. None of the 83 districts’ poverty rates were above 50 percent.

By last year, 23 school districts reported their low-income student populations exceeded one-third. And of those, 11 had poverty rates that topped 50 percent.The most drastic increase over that period came in West Chicago Elementary District 33, where the low-income population jumped to 76 percent from 23 percent. Superintendent Kathy Wolfe didn’t respond to requests for comment…

Eight of the top 10 districts in poverty growth are in DuPage County, where the Hispanic population rose 50 percent from 2000 to 2010, according to a 2011 report by the county’s Department of Economic Development and Planning. Over the same period, the number of county residents living in poverty doubled, U.S. Census data shows.

This is not surprising given the increase in poverty in the suburbs in recent years. Yet, it highlights two other issues:

1. Some suburban communities and organizations just don’t perceive themselves as communities where lower-income people live. Traditionally, American suburbs were places for the middle- and upper-class. And, it would be interesting to see how many wealthier Chicago suburb residents would be willing to move to suburbs that have a reputation for being more working- or lower-class. My prediction: few, particularly when articles like this highlight the challenges for suburban schools, a common selling point for suburbs.

2. These same communities and organizations haven’t always allocated or shifted resources to facing the issues that accompany poverty and lower incomes. Providing more resources for schools may be unpopular with many, both because it could mean increased taxes but also because it may mean less money for other local services.

Both of these are hurdles to overcome.

Author argues the singular American suburban dream is splintering into multiple dreams

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In the new book The End of the Suburbs, Leigh Gallagher argues the suburban dream is changing:

That gets to what you say at the very end: the American dream won’t be singular anymore. There will be different dreams.

And they will be dreams. They won’t be houses. They won’t be buildings. Somewhere along the way the American Dream morphed from being a dream, an opportunity, to being a house. That’s no longer the case for a lot of people…

The future you outline are these “urban burbs”-style developments where people don’t have to drive more than a mile or two and they can reach other urban burbs by transit. How close are we to that on a broad scale?

We’re far away from being these network of nodes where everybody is hooked up to everyone else by public transit and we all read three hours more a day. We’re far from that. But the important thing is, people are recognizing that we can’t just keep doing what we’ve been doing. It’s not satisfying people. And it’s no longer meeting the market demand. Home-builders only react when they think the market wants something. And they’re starting to react.

One could argue that even at the peak of mass suburbanization, sometime between the late 1940s and mid 1960s, there have always been some different visions of suburbia. The common image is similar to what happened in the Levittowns: mostly white city dwellers fleeing the city and seeking out more private spaces in the suburbs. But, even then there were pockets of different kinds of suburbs, whether they were more industrial suburbs, suburbs with mostly African-American residents (see Places of Their Own by Andrew Wiese), and working-class suburbs (see My Blue Heaven by Becky Nicolaides).

Thus, this may an issue of the dominant trends in building and development (more urban suburban places) but it is also about the dominant image or narrative of the suburbs, particularly that of critics, falling apart. If suburbs become more dense on the whole, does it make them more palatable to everyone? How dense do they need to be before they are viewed as something very different?

“The United States Redrawn as Fifty States with Equal Populations” leads to interesting names in the Chicago area

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Here is a fun map/solution/art project regarding reforming the American electoral college: have all the states have equal populations.

electorally reformed US map

Here is the methodology for the map:

The map began with an algorithm that grouped counties based on proximity, urban area, and commuting patterns. The algorithm was seeded with the fifty largest cities. After that, manual changes took into account compact shapes, equal populations, metro areas divided by state lines, and drainage basins. In certain areas, divisions are based on census tract lines.

The District of Columbia is included into the state of Washington, with the Mall, major monuments and Federal buildings set off as the seat of the federal government.

The capitals of the states are existing states capitals where possible, otherwise large or central cities have been chosen. The suggested names of the new states are taken mainly from geographical features:

  • mountain ranges or peaks, or caves – Adirondack, Allegheny, Blue Ridge, Chinati, Mammoth, Mesabi, Ozark, Pocono, Rainier, Shasta, Shenandoah and Shiprock
  • rivers – Atchafalaya, Menominee, Maumee, Nodaway, Sangamon, Scioto, Susquehanna, Trinity and Willimantic
  • historical or ecological regions – Big Thicket, Firelands and Tidewater
  • bays, capes, lakes and aquifers – Casco, Tampa Bay, Canaveral, Mendocino, Ogallala, Salt Lake and Throgs Neck
  • songs – Gary, Muskogee and Temecula
  • cities – Atlanta, Chicago, Columbia, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Newark, Philadelphia, Phoenix and Washington
  • plants – Tule and Yerba Buena
  • people – King and Orange

The words used for names for the name are drawn from many languages, including many American Indian languages.

Interesting naming conventions. However, I don’t understand what is going on in the Chicago area. While it makes sense to name Chicago and some of the nearby suburbs “Chicago” (though I’m guessing a number of these suburbs would not want to be lumped in with Chicago), why in the world would the new state made up of the outer regions of the current Chicago area be called Gary? I’m sure people would ask why an industrial boomtown now ghost town (it isn’t quite this bad yet this is the sort of reputation Gary has), an exemplar par excellence of the Rust Belt, would lend its name to a full state. Gary has a bad reputation (which other suburbs, particularly the wealthier ones, would not want to be associated with), it is not the largest city in the area (Milwaukee, Rockford, Joliet are larger), it is located on the eastern side of the new state so isn’t exactly central, and Joliet is the named capital.

It is also interesting to see the New York and Los Angeles metropolitan regions are also split up. However, they don’t appear to be quite split on the lines of concentric rings like the Chicago area.

Discussing the dangers of retention ponds in Naperville

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Retention ponds are plentiful in suburban developments as a means to handle excess water. But, officials in Naperville may soon look at regulations for retention ponds after a 6 year old recently drowned:

The pond, near the Glenmuir Luxury Rental Homes complex where Amer lived, reaches about 10 feet at its deepest point and is one of more than 200 bodies of water in Naperville — many of them man-made ponds created in recent decades to ease flooding when subdivisions were built, Naperville Fire Chief Mark Puknaitis said.

“Most of the ponds don’t have fencing or barriers,” Puknaitis said. “It’s highly impractical to do that with every pond. Even if you did, there’s nothing stopping somebody from scaling it.”

Several city council members agree that requiring fencing isn’t the best way to prevent future tragedies.

While fencing may seem an obvious way to prevent children from getting too close to retention ponds or falling in, Novack said there is a stormwater management reason not to install them: they block the flow of water during floods and slow the drainage process.

When single-family homes are constructed in the sprawling American manner, retention ponds are a necessity. Developing land and building homes often involves flattening land and disrupting the natural drainage. This is particularly an issue in swampier or low-lying areas where water already collected. They are so common that they are a ubiquitous “natural” presence that are often used as play areas or places to walk dogs. But while these ponds may seem natural, they are a carefully constructed part of the suburban infrastructure.

However, there are means by which to make retention ponds safer:

She said the recent trend toward letting natural vegetation grow along the shores of ponds helps to keep people — and Canada geese — away from the water and could contribute to increased safety.

So could using streams landscaped with native plants instead of large ponds to store water, Brodhead and Novack said.

In other words, it might take a little extra planning or effort but there are ways to “naturalize” the drainage. Communities could require developers to utilize these methods around retention ponds. And even if accidents in ponds are rare, it is hard to argue against safety in suburban settings.

President Obama wants to turn American suburbs into Manhattan?

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Conservatives continue to worry that President Obama is opposed to suburbs:

The most obvious new element of the president’s regionalist policy initiative is the July 19 publication of a Department of Housing and Urban Development regulation broadening the obligation of recipients of federal aid to “affirmatively further fair housing.” The apparent purpose of this rule change is to force suburban neighborhoods with no record of housing discrimination to build more public housing targeted to ethnic and racial minorities. Several administration critics noticed the change and challenged it, while the mainstream press has simply declined to cover the story.

Yet even critics have missed the real thrust of HUD’s revolutionary rule change. That’s understandable, since the Obama administration is at pains to downplay the regionalist philosophy behind its new directive. The truth is, HUD’s new rule is about a great deal more than forcing racial and ethnic diversity on the suburbs. (Regionalism, by the way, is actually highly controversial among minority groups. There are many ways in which both middle-class minorities in suburbs, and less well-off minorities in cities, can be hurt by regionalist policies–another reason those plans are seldom discussed.)

The new HUD rule is really about changing the way Americans live. It is part of a broader suite of initiatives designed to block suburban development, press Americans into hyper-dense cities, and force us out of our cars. Government-mandated ethnic and racial diversification plays a role in this scheme, yet the broader goal is forced “economic integration.” The ultimate vision is to make all neighborhoods more or less alike, turning traditional cities into ultra-dense Manhattans, while making suburbs look more like cities do now. In this centrally-planned utopia, steadily increasing numbers will live cheek-by-jowl in “stack and pack” high-rises close to public transportation, while automobiles fall into relative disuse. To understand how HUD’s new rule will help enact this vision, we need to turn to a less-well-known example of the Obama administration’s regionalist interventionism…

The Plan Bay Area precedent makes it clear that HUD will use data on access to housing, jobs, and transportation to press densification on both urban and suburban jurisdictions. With the new HUD rule in place, municipalities will be under heavy pressure to allow multifamily developments in areas previously zoned for single-family housing. The new counting scheme, which measures access to housing, jobs, and transportation, will simultaneously create pressures to push businesses into the newly densified areas, and to locate those centers near transportation hubs. In effect, HUD’s new rule gives the federal government a tool to press ultra-dense Plan Bay Area-style “priority development areas” on regions across the country.

Housing discrimination is a real issue as is the lack of affordable housing. Leaving it to “the market” to sort this all out isn’t really working.

Also, there is some hyperbole going on here. See similar claims from conservatives about the US joining with the United Nations to push urban density. Pushing denser suburbs does not necessarily mean that all suburbs are going to be Manhattan. In fact, Manhattan is very unusual even among American cities for its density. Interestingly, the thriving cities of today are Sunbelt cities like Houston that tend to be less dense than traditional big cities in the Northeast or Midwest. Kurtz seems to be defending unmitigated sprawl, the idea that suburbs should have as little density as they like. This tends to be linked to greater local control as well as wealth – it is more expensive to have big lots/pieces of land. Additionally, less dense sprawl is viewed as the opposite of city life with its forced interactions with people different than you, less space, dirtiness, and urban problems (this perspective tends to ignores the benefits of urban life).

There are problems with unmitigated sprawl, even if people with means may desire it. Like any kind of development, there are tradeoffs involved. It is can be costly environmentally, tied to issues of land use and water runoff, among others. It leads to more driving which can be viewed as the ultimate expression of American independence but which also involves longer commutes, less walking, more traffic, and the expensive actions of owning and operating a car. It can be related to weaker communities and social relationships – see the discussion about sprawl in Bowling Alone. Its infrastructure is costly as roads, electric lines, gas lines, and local services are more spread out. Additionally, the fate of suburbs are linked to cities – the two areas are not independent (though they may appear to be so, say, when comparing Detroit with some of its wealthier suburbs) and problems in one area affect the other.

Having denser suburbs does not mean the American suburban way of life will disappear. It may mean smaller lots and less driving plus more mixed uses and new people in the suburbs but this does not necessarily equal Manhattan.