Tag Archives: suburbs

Reconsidering what sprawl, suburbs, and world-class city mean

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A sociology grad student involved with the city of Calgary regarding development and growth suggests we need to step back and reconsider the “vacant terminology” used by “urbanistas”:

When it comes to sprawl, said Gondek, the term actually means “non-contiguous growth of an urban area.”“It’s uncontrolled, it’s unplanned. In our opinion, it’s simply not the case for Calgary,” she said…

“Suburb” is Gondek’s least-favourite misused term, preferring the term “community” instead.

“Suburbs, as they are properly defined, are areas outside the metropolitan region,” she said.

“They are bedroom communities. It’s an American concept that means independent municipalities outside of the city.”

Growth on Calgary’s edges actually involves periphery communities, not suburbs.

“Calgary’s so-called suburbs are actually a part of the city — there’s nothing ‘sub’ about them,” said Gondek, pointing out that these homeowners pay property taxes into the same pool as inner-city residents do.

The third phrase is the idea of just how “world-class” is Calgary.

Gondek looked at various indices to see how cities are rated on their globalness. She found a wide variety of measures, depending on what angle of “globalness” was sought to be defined: population, income, walkability, transportation — any number of measures.

Gondek drew the conclusion that indices of world-classness depend on the subjective views of what the creators of the indices decide is world-class, rather than any real, fundamental, unified definition of the term.

Some of this makes sense. Suburbs are now vital parts of metropolitan regions rather than ugly step-children of cities. Also, sprawl is not necessarily unplanned or disordered as critics suggest; there is a logic to it, typically involving profits to be made by developers and others. Both of these terms are often loaded with negative connotations by critics.

On the other hand, the definition of a world-class city seems more set to me. The term used widely in urban sociology actually is “global city” which has a lot of overlap with the concept of a world-class city. The global city is typically defined as being a global economic center with a high concentration of FIRE (finance, insurance, and real estate) industries. But, there are other dimensions to global cities including cultural and government institutions. (For one example of these various dimensions, see this ranking of global cities.) I wonder if the suggestion that world-class city is a nebulous term is done so that Calgary can feel better about what it is doing…

Texas governor not the only one after Illinois businesses; also Florida, Wisconsin

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The Texas Governor campaigned for Illinois businesses and he spoke earlier this week at a conference. But, he is not alone – other states also want Illinois businesses:

Perry is not the only governor out to siphon commerce this week. Wisconsin’s Scott Walker on Tuesday attended the same Chicago conference, touting his state’s business environment and standing as a bioscience leader. A day earlier, Florida’s Rick Scott sent a “Wish you were here” letter to Illinois business owners, noting that his state is “nipping at the heels of Texas every day” as a place to do business and pointing out that “Illinois’ formula of more taxing and spending ISN’T WORKING.” (Never let it be said Scott is undercapitalized.)…

Perry isn’t just selling Texas in a state weighed down by budget crises and the lack of political will to make the tough choices that solutions will require. He is on a trip financed by a public-private partnership to sell the concepts of lower taxes, less government interference, “a legal system that doesn’t allow for oversuing,” lower workers comp rates…

In this, pitting one state against another is good, Perry argued, in “the same way that it’s good for the White Sox and the Cubbies to compete against each other. If you don’t have competition, you’re not going to get pushed out of your comfort zone. That’s the simplest form I can put it in. I think our Founding Fathers understood that you had these laboratories of innovation and the ones that were good at it would be successful.”

Perry ignores one area of competition present in the Chicago area: between cities and suburbs. There have been numerous discussions in recent years about the tax breaks offered in different communities (here is an example in Hoffman Estates) or Chicago attracting headquarters and businesses back to the city and whether this harms the suburbs. Granted, all of these communities have to deal with the issues and regulations of the State of Illinois. But, it appears a number of businesses have still found places they like including in the Loop, Schaumburg, Northbrook, Deerfield, Naperville, Oak Brook, and other places. Between these localities, businesses can look for favorable settings and take advantages of the peculiarities of each place.

There was also one issue that highlighted a possible problem in Texas that may have been highlighted by a recent tragedy:

Take a good look at how close the fertilizer factory that blew up last week was to a middle school and nursing home in West, Texas, and decide for yourself whether you endorse Texas’ stance on zoning (“We respect local control,” Perry said) or think the state should intervene. Laissez faire isn’t always the way to go.

I assumed Illinois provided for local control over zoning as well…though I’m not sure what happens when it comes to potentially dangerous fertilizer plants.

Plans in the Chicago region to help mitigate future flooding

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With the flooding that took place in the Chicago region in recent days, it is reasonable to ask what is being done to limit flooding in the future. Here is one answer from a regional expert:

Asked if costly and disruptive transportation chaos is inevitable, Josh Ellis, a stormwater expert with the Metropolitan Planning Council, offered some rays of hope.

“We can definitely do better. I’m not sure we’re willing to invest the amount of money needed to have an infrastructure that truly withstands a 100-year storm. When we built most of our infrastructure it was for a five- to 20-year storm standard.”

What’s slightly depressing is that current Metropolitan Water Reclamation District infrastructure and projects under way, including tunnels and reservoirs, will provide about 17 billion gallons of storage, Ellis calculates. Compare that to the 70 billion gallons or so that roiled Cook County alone in storms Wednesday and Thursday.

“Even when the Deep Tunnel is complete, the numbers don’t add up in our favor,” Ellis said. “We can do better, but I’m not sure we can ever solve this and have zero problems.”

So what can we do?

As individuals, it can come down to reducing the impermeable pavement on your property or cultivating a rain garden that holds stormwater temporarily.

On a wider level, it’s going to take expanding municipal stormwater systems, creating stream-side ponds to store rainfall and investing in green infrastructure, Ellis thinks.

“It’s about finding other places to put the water other than in big pipes … that’s what green infrastructure is,” he said. “It’s about finding ways for natural vegetation to prevent water from entering the storm system.”

Likely candidates for ad hoc stormwater storage include public entities with a lot of land — from schools with athletic fields to park districts.

The causes and consequences of flooding like this can be traced to human development. Critics of sprawl have noted for decades that flooding is one pernicious side effect: cover land with houses and asphalt and there is less place for water to go. Cover up natural wetlands and build close to waterways and this is going to happen every so often. Think of the concept of a retention pond; it is an admission that we have altered the natural landscape in such a way that we need to create a space for excess water to go.

I know some critics of sprawl would say the answer is to have less sprawl. Since this cat is out of the bag in many places in the United States, Ellis’ answers above are interesting: a combination of large-scale, regional projects would help as would more individual and municipal actions. Large projects like Deep Tunnel are impressive but they aren’t silver bullets. I’ve noticed more nearby communities have moved toward combining park land and floodplains. Thus, if flooding occurs, not many buildings are hurt and fewer people need to be evacuated.

This could also lead to broader questions: who is responsible for the flooding and its effects? Should individual homeowners bear the burden of protecting themselves and cleaning up? Should local communities? How about regional entities – how much power should they have to tackle such issues? This sort of problem requires coordination across many governmental bodies, calling for metropolitan approaches. It still strikes me as strange in the United States that individual homeowners may not know much at all about the flooding or water problems their property might have.

For a longer look at flooding and water issues in suburban sprawl, I highly recommend Adam Rome’s 2001 book The Bulldozer in the Countryside.

“The average Australian is a suburban Frankenstein”?

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One columnist is not pleased with the idea of the average Australian in the suburbs:

Earlier this month the Bureau of Statistics, apparently hoping to deter Wayne Swan from cutting its allocation in the May budget, made a grab for publicity with a report on the characteristics of “the average Australian”. In the process it broke its own rules.

The ABS applied mathematical magic to data from the 2011 census and sent the media off in search of a blonde brown-eyed 37 year old woman with two photogenic children aged nine and six, two cars and a mortgage of $1800 a month on her three bedroom home. Edna Everage’s granddaughter was born here (like her parents), describes herself as Christian, weighs 71.1 kg, and works as a sales assistant…

Start packing your bags. The ABS decision to build a suburban Frankenstein for the sake of a publicity boost risks returning us to the point in recent history when certain people were labelled “unAustralian” if their language or behavior did not match the world view of Alan Jones, John Laws, Neil Mitchell or Andrew Bolt.

The ABS has played into the hands of those titans of talkback who like to keep the message simple. They’re not interested in this qualifier the ABS included at the end of the report to salve its conscience: “While many people will share a number of characteristics in common with this ‘average’ Australian, out of nearly 22 million people counted in Australia on Census night, no single person met all these criteria. While the description of the average Australian may sound quite typical, the fact that no-one meets all these criteria shows that the notion of the ‘average’ masks considerable (and growing) diversity in Australia.”

The columnist may indeed be correct that the best way to do this would have been to use medians, rather than averages. But, the bigger issue here seems to be the idea that there is a “suburban mold” that Australians need to fit into. Not everyone likes this image as the suburbs are often associated with homogeneous populations, consumption and behaviors to keep up with the Joneses, and middle-class conservatism. Regardless of what the statistics say or whether a majority of Australians (or Americans) live in the suburbs, these suburban critiques will likely continue.

Chicago’s explosive 19th century growth driven by excrement

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Whet Moser argues Chicago’s remarkable growth from frontier town to big city was the result of excrement and new sewers:

The city was literally shaped by excrement. Its biggest single period of growth, the growth that turned Chicago into the Second City by population, came in the late 1800s, when the city’s sewer and sanitary systems were the envy of what were then suburbs. Lake View Township (the whole of the northeast side from North Avenue up to Rogers Park), Hyde Park Township (the south side between Pershing, State, and 138th), Lake Township (the southwest side bordered by Pershing, State, 87th, and Cicero) all latched on to the city when sophisticated sanitary systems were beyond the reach of booming townships, which were tightly restricted by the state’s limits on local debt.

Read on for more of the story of Chicago’s sewers.

This story in Chicago was not wholly unique. The late mid- to late-1800s were a period when numerous suburban communities outside big cities like Chicago, Boston, New York, and Philadelphia were annexed into the city. This annexation was approved by suburban communities for several reasons. First, as Moser notes, sewers and other infrastructure improvements like water and electricity were too expensive for small communities. Second, these communities wanted to be part of the big city and the status that came with that.

Yet, the story changes quite a bit from the 1880s onward when suburban communities started rejecting annexation efforts from big cities. The price of the infrastructure improvements dropped, putting them within reach of smaller suburbs. Cities were growing so fast that they couldn’t keep up with social problems as well as infrastructure improvements, limiting the status appeal of being part of the big city. Finally, an idealism was developing among the suburbs themselves as places people wanted to move to in order to escape the big city. By the 1920s, annexations had basically stopped.

This was a major turning point for most Northeast and Midwest big cities. Once annexations stopped and suburbs decided to go on their own, the boundaries of big cities became fixed. Later, as wealth and jobs fled the city for the suburbs, there were few opportunities for Rust Belt cities to expand their boundaries. In contrast, cities in the South and West (the Sunbelt) have had different annexation histories and many are much bigger in land area.

Supermax prison looks like suburban sprawl from the air?

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A photographer taking and examining aerial photos of prisons made an interesting connection: the prisons look like suburban sprawl from the air.

High above the Arizona desert in 2010, after a day of photographing housing developments, Christoph Gielen looked down from the helicopter upon Arizona State Prison Complex-Florence. The hexagonal arrangement of the prison site, to him, replicated the six-sided concentric order of suburbs he’d shot previously. That chance observation kickstarted a three-year project called American Prison Perspectives, in which Gielen examines the architecture of Supermax prisons via aerial photos…

“I want to expose the prevailing trend toward building increased-security prison systems, and illustrate how prison design and architecture do, in fact, reflect political discourse, economic priorities, cultural sentiments and social insecurities,” says Gielen. “What does our ongoing tolerance of solitary confinement say about us as a society?”

Alas, there is not much talk here about the possible connections between the design of suburbs and high-security prisons. However, I imagine the commentary consistent with common critiques of the suburbs might go like this: we shouldn’t be surprised at this because suburban patterns are meant to help isolate and imprison people. A difference is that Americans might be self-isolating (though one could argue there is certainly a social and cultural push toward the suburbs) and prisoners have little choice in these prisons. But, wouldn’t that make the suburban prison even worse?

It would be interesting to know if there is any tangible connection/influence between these two kinds of designs…

When drug cartels arrive in the American suburbs

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The American suburbs are sometimes portrayed as idyllic but drug cartels operating in the suburbs would give way to a different view…

But a wide-ranging Associated Press review of federal court cases and government drug-enforcement data, plus interviews with many top law enforcement officials, indicate the groups have begun deploying agents from their inner circles to the U.S. Cartel operatives are suspected of running drug-distribution networks in at least nine non-border states, often in middle-class suburbs in the Midwest, South and Northeast…

Border states from Texas to California have long grappled with a cartel presence. But cases involving cartel members have now emerged in the suburbs of Chicago and Atlanta, as well as Columbus, Ohio, Louisville, Ky., and rural North Carolina. Suspects have also surfaced in Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota and Pennsylvania.

Mexican drug cartels “are taking over our neighborhoods,” Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane warned a legislative committee in February. State Police Commissioner Frank Noonan disputed her claim, saying cartels are primarily drug suppliers, not the ones trafficking drugs on the ground…

Statistics from the DEA suggest a heightened cartel presence in more U.S. cities. In 2008, around 230 American communities reported some level of cartel presence. That number climbed to more than 1,200 in 2011, the most recent year for which information is available, though the increase is partly due to better reporting.

There are some high-profile suburban cases mentioned later in the story.

My first thought is that this could make a hot TV show or movie: charming suburb shattered by the actions of a cartel family. Why resort to stories about international spies or terrorism (thinking about The Americans)? This also reminds me of a scene in Gang Leader for a Day where Sudhir Venkatesh describes a meeting of the gang leaders in a large suburban house. While the kids play and the wives socialize, the men plotted.

But, I can also imagine the real concern of suburbanites. I remember being in late grade school and middle school when gangs were seen as a big threat to our suburb. This topic seemed to dominate conversation for several years. So then take it a step up and think how suburbanites might react to international drug cartels with lots of money, manpower, and weapons. This goes against everything suburbs are supposed to represent: a lack of violence, safety for kids, respectable neighbors.

It would be interesting to look further at why drug cartels are expanding operations in the suburbs. Is this where the demand for drugs is highest? Is it easier to be anonymous? Do the suburbs offer the “good life” while conducting operations?

McMansions part of the “dark side” of the Midwest

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A review of the work of author Gillian Flynn suggests McMansions help fill in the scene for the darker side of Midwest life:

But the novel – like the 41-year-old Flynn herself – is a deeply felt product of the midwest. The real place, not the idly dismissed fantasy image held in the minds of those too lazy to venture out into what really goes on in the American heartland. The book is set in an ailing Missouri river town on the banks of the Mississippi – the same giant waterway that inspired Mark Twain. But the town is dying, its mall crushed by an ailing economy and its McMansions crumbling at the seams. Beneath the surface glitter of the marriage of Nick and Amy Dunne, dark things lurk: secrets, hidden plans and desperation.

To anyone who knows the midwest for real, this is no surprise. This is the same region that gave us Truman Capote’s exploration of random, empty Kansas murderers in his masterful In Cold Blood. This is a place founded on the old grass prairies, whose Native American inhabitants were butchered and displaced, and whose soil was ripped up. The midwest is the Indian Creek massacre and the “dust bowl” as much as Little House on the Prairie.

Who knew the Midwest was so dark? Actually, this sort of portrayal sounds very similar to a common genre of work about suburbs that arose after World War II. Both the Midwest and suburbs might be viewed as the “heartland” or where “average” Americans go to live. (At the same time, the Midwest can’t claim the same sort of population proportions as the suburbs – now over 50% of Americans live in suburbs.) But, authors, filmmakers, artists, and musicians have frequently “exposed” the seemy underside of these places. There is no doubt that there are bad things lurking below the surface in all places so perhaps the issue here is the facade that cultural producers think too often gets portrayed as “the truth” about the Midwest and suburbs.

Overall, certain places tend to get a more noir treatment compared to others. For example, the Los Angeles School of urban scholars has argued that Los Angeles also is presented in this way – it may look like a glamorous, sunny place but there is a lot of crime and cruelty below the surface. (See the revered movie Chinatown or the TV show Dragnet.) From the perspective of the LA School, this noir treatment tells the truth as it exposes the capitalistic underpinnings that make Los Angeles both glittering and a hotbed of inequality. Should we take a similar perspective about the Midwest – it really is a place with problems that need to be revealed to the world?

When Chicago suburbs disqualify candidates running for public office

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Local government and control is a cherished part of suburban life. But, the Chicago Tribune highlights today on its front page how often Chicago suburban governments disqualify candidates running for local office:

For its investigation, the Tribune focused on races that critics say are the most troubling: suburban candidates running for city and village offices. Reporters canvassed every suburb in the Chicago region, reviewed scores of objections filed against candidates and interviewed dozens of those involved in the system. The newspaper found:

Widespread abuse. At least 200 candidates faced objections this year, with only a small fraction alleging serious matters, such as criminal histories, residency issues or outright fraud. Ultimately panels kicked 76 candidates off the ballot across three dozen suburbs.

Rampant bias. Of those knocked off, most fell at the hands of panels stacked with members who had a political stake in their own decisions. Conflicts also went beyond simple politics: Even relatives ruled on their own family members’ cases.

Wild inconsistencies. The rules are not evenly applied, with similar infractions leading some panels to remove candidates, but not other panels.

Costly tabs. The challenges cost taxpayers in some towns tens of thousands of dollars each election cycle, many times in suburbs that can least afford it…

The Tribune studied local election systems in the suburbs of the nation’s other largest metro areas: New York, Los Angeles, Dallas and Philadelphia. None has Illinois’ combination of difficulty getting on the suburban ballot and ease in getting kicked off.

Local government is often thought to be more non-partisan than elections at higher levels of government. But non-partisanship does not necessarily mean that officeholders aren’t still looking to stay in office and will do what they can to keep challengers out. Local races can be particularly nasty even as very few people vote. I suspect most suburbanites would not like what the Tribune found but ironically probably wouldn’t be too motivated to vote on the issue, pressure politicians about their concerns, or run for office themselves to change the situation.

Underlying all of this in the suburbs is that suburban culture promotes letting people do their own thing and trying to avoid public friction. A great source on this is the book The Moral Order of a Suburb by M. P. Baumgartner. Here is how the Amazon book description puts it:

Drawing on research, observation, and hundreds of in-depth interviews conducted during a twelve-month study of an affluent New York City suburb, M.P. Baumgartner reveals that the apparent serenity of the suburb is caused by the avoidance of open conflict. She contends that although nonviolence, nonconfrontation, and tolerance produce a superficial social harmony, these behaviors arise from disintegrative tendencies in modern culture–transience, fragmentation, weak family and communal ties, isolation, and indifference–conditions customarily viewed as sources of disorder, antagonism, and violence. A kind of moral minimalism pervades the suburbs, a disorganized social order that, with the suburbs’ rapid growth in America, promises to be the moral order of the future.

This is a paradox of the suburbs: we tend to think of transience and fragmentation leading to social disorder but Baumgartner argues this is what actually brings suburbanites together.

Big rise in suburban poverty since 2000

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CNBC highlights a Brookings Institution report on the growth in suburban poverty in recent years:

The number of suburban residents living in poverty rose by nearly 64 percent between 2000 and 2011, to about 16.4 million people, according to a Brookings Institution analysis of 95 of the nation’s largest metropolitan areas. That’s more than double the rate of growth for urban poverty in those areas.

“I think we have an outdated perception of where poverty is and who it is affecting,” said Elizabeth Kneebone, a fellow at the Brookings Institution and co-author of the research. “We tend to think of it as a very urban and a very rural phenomenon, but it is increasingly suburban.”

Simons’ situation is complicated by the fact she’s a single mom. Poverty and financial insecurity among single moms is far higher than for households headed by single dads or two parents.

The rate of poverty among single mothers actually improved dramatically through the 1990s, thanks to a strong economy, more favorable tax breaks and the success of so-called welfare-to-work programs. But two recessions and years of high unemployment erased many of those gains.

More and more suburbs now have residents with incomes near or below the poverty line. While suburbs have traditionally been thought of as wealthier places, this is not the case any more. One July 2012 report suggested the poverty rate in American suburbs could stay above 11% for a while. Similar factors that contribute to urban poverty are now also affecting the suburbs: a knowledge and service based economy that makes it difficult for those with less education; residential segregation where different races and classes live in more troubled communities. There are also unique issues contributing to poverty in the suburbs: the need for a car to get around and reach even low-paying jobs, a lack of affordable housing, and a lack of social services in communities that may not be used to providing such services.