[westexas]

Fortune Magazine: The end of the suburbs
http://money.cnn.com/2013/07/08/real_estate/suburbs-end.pr.fortune/index.html
(Full article behind paywall)

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')hen the United States suffered its epic housing bust, no part of the country felt the agony more than the suburbs. Of course, suburbia and its farthest reaches (known as exurbia) were where the most egregious homebuilding excesses took place. Once things fell apart, they became ground zero for foreclosures and short sales, leaving what some writers described, in near-apocalyptic terms, as "zombie subdivisions." In truth, the housing bust only accelerated a tectonic shift: The near-universal yearning for a spacious house in the suburbs -- a central element of the American dream -- is receding. So argues Leigh Gallagher, an assistant managing editor at Fortune, in a new book, The End of the Suburbs: Where the American Dream Is Moving. Gallagher uncovers this epochal shift and describes the many reasons behind it. She chronicles the growing distaste for long commutes and sprawling development that have sent families back to more urban areas; the demographic changes that have led to a dramatic decline in the number of suburban households with young children; and a litany of other shifts, including surprising reversals in suburban and urban housing, poverty, and crime. For every generation after World War II until now, population flowed from the city to the suburbs. Today, as this excerpt from Gallagher's book demonstrates, a tide that long seemed inexorable has begun to reverse.

[Plantagenet]

The suburbs have been replaced by small towns in rural areas.

IN the old days poor people and workers lived in the cities and professionals and managers lived in the suburbs and commuted into work. Manufacturing was done in clusters of urban factories, where steel and other parts were assembled and manufactured into finished industrial products.

With the downfall of US manufacturing and the rise of entrepeneurs and small businesses who rely on the internet, the action has shifted to nice small towns. There is no longer any need to commute into a city---retirees and small business owners are asking themselves why not live in a nice small town where crime is low and it is safe, commutes are short, housing is cheap, and business can still be conducted over high-speed internet connections.

fast-growing small towns in the USA

[Paulo1]

Regarding the mindset of suburban living, what do people do all day? I can see that living in a city would/could be vibrant, noisy, with many things to do. We live rural, and there is so much to do we can hardly keep up. It is not for everybody, but wonderful for us. I spent my family raising years in the suburbs. I was bored, and worked all the time to make it something it was not. Gardens, ponds, a pool, heated with wood, and chased around to get stuff to keep busy. Looking back I was going slowly crazy. Except for road hockey and skateboarding for the kids, it seems pretty artificial. Grim.

I think people are now open to alternatives and/or circumstances are forcing them to change where they live. With taxes and cummuting costs, plus chasing for activities, suburbia is a very expensive lifestyle. Just think of the toys parked in the driveways for most of the year. What a waste.

Paulo

[Lore]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', 'T')he suburbs have been replaced by small towns in rural areas.

IN the old days poor people and workers lived in the cities and professionals and managers lived in the suburbs and commuted into work. Manufacturing was done in clusters of urban factories, where steel and other parts were assembled and manufactured into finished industrial products.

With the downfall of US manufacturing and the rise of entrepeneurs and small businesses who rely on the internet, the action has shifted to nice small towns. There is no longer any need to commute into a city---retirees and small business owners are asking themselves why not live in a nice small town where crime is low and it is safe, commutes are short, housing is cheap, and business can still be conducted over high-speed internet connections.

fast-growing small towns in the USA

[SeaGypsy]

Factory farm, mega scale has both fed the growth of cities and the death of country and village scale community life. The places not gutted out but near urban centers for commuting are expensive. Have to say you Amerikanos are blessed with far more realistic options for those who want to 'get a patch' of fertile land- extremely expensive down under by comparison.

[AgentR11]

Suburbs are what you make of them; and most are not the uncommutable disasters that are presented by the urban renewal folks. Yes there are excesses, especially in the PNW where exurban development is forced by geography and land use rules to follow long, strung out patterns. But most are relatively dense, single family homes 10-20 miles away from work, and as time has passed, a lot of work has moved out towards the suburbs, many of which you could just as well call "small town" and be done.

In our town, there is plenty of new residential construction going on. My take is that the small town environment really does offer everything that most folks are looking for in their "urban" wishing, but without the price tag. Primary transport does remain ICE powered vehicle, but *everything* is within 5 miles, and most stuff is within 2 miles. Heck, I walked to jury duty last time, and I'm on the fringe of our town. How it plays out in the future is anyone's guess, but distributed office space and telecommuting may well be on the table.

As for me, I get a distinctly repulsive "up-sell alert" that goes off in my head when I see people pitching new urban center homes and apartments... I think a certain segment of the population really enjoys that "up-sell" experience though, so whatever makes them happy...

[AgentR11]

nb... by small town, I mean populations of 25k-75k; not the essentially abandoned post-ag husks with a street and two antique stores on the highway...

[vision-master]

Just get a VW 2.0 TDI for commuting.

[kublikhan]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Paulo1', 'R')egarding the mindset of suburban living, what do people do all day? I can see that living in a city would/could be vibrant, noisy, with many things to do. We live rural, and there is so much to do we can hardly keep up. It is not for everybody, but wonderful for us. I spent my family raising years in the suburbs. I was bored, and worked all the time to make it something it was not. Gardens, ponds, a pool, heated with wood, and chased around to get stuff to keep busy. Looking back I was going slowly crazy. Except for road hockey and skateboarding for the kids, it seems pretty artificial. Grim.

I think people are now open to alternatives and/or circumstances are forcing them to change where they live. With taxes and cummuting costs, plus chasing for activities, suburbia is a very expensive lifestyle. Just think of the toys parked in the driveways for most of the year. What a waste.

[kublikhan]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'D')espite a short reprieve during the recession, the number of jobs moving to the nation's suburbs grew over the last decade. Jobs within 3 miles of a city center fell from 24.5% of overall positions in 2000 to 22.9% in 2010, according to a report released Thursday from the Brookings Institution. During the same time, jobs in the outer suburbs -- between 10 and 35 miles of a city's center -- grew from 40.9% in 2000 to 43.1% in 2010.

The recession halted the flight of jobs to the suburbs for a few years as industries like manufacturing, construction and retail -- businesses that thrive in a city's outer regions -- bore the largest brunt of layoffs. But by 2010, the suburbs accounted for nearly twice the share of jobs as city centers, continuing a trend that has been underway for decades. "Where the jobs are matters to the overall development of a region," said Elizabeth Kneebone, a fellow at Brookings' Metropolitan Policy Program. "It can impact long-term productivity."

Despite the much-hyped revitalization taking place in many city centers across the country, Kneebone said the jobs are not necessarily following the shift of residents toward downtown districts. In many places, these new urban dwellers end up reverse commuting to the suburbs for work.

[C8]

I think the decline of the suburbs has been greatly overplayed. Many writers of news articles are urban types who look down on suburbanites. In fact, if you look at the major municipal crisis areas, they are still cities: Detroit, Cleveland, New Orleans, Newark, etc..

When the population of an area becomes too dominated by poor folks and minorities they tend to elect govt. office holders based on the candidates racial similarity to the population as the main criteria. This allows corruption to flourish as the mayors, city council people, etc. really don't have to worry about how bad they are- they are guaranteed a re-election due to their race and a thug campaign staff (if you don't believe this accusation see the film "Street Fight" about the ugly Newark campaign- both candidates were black but one wasn't "black enough".). Quite simply, cities are often settling into more of a 3rd world status with poor services, high crime, abandoned neighborhoods, and high poverty. Kunstler was totally wrong (again) about viewing the suburbs as having no future- its the cities that have a scary future.

[Pops]

I didn't see this one when I started another on a similar topic.

From 2010-'12 rural areas declined in population for the first time ever in part because non-urban building stopped.

And pretty obviously the slow pace in building and development of new 'burbs will continue to force more people into higher density housing, that, pretty well by definition happens in the city.

Add in that kids are less and less inclined to drive, again, a defining requirement for suburban living and I'd guess the future isn't necessarily rosey.

Oh and poverty is growing faster in the suburbs than anywhere else up 64% over the past decade. $this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')here are now almost 16.4 million suburban residents living below the poverty line, nearly 3 million more than in the cities.

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Paulo1', ' ')Looking back I was going slowly crazy. Except for road hockey and skateboarding for the kids, it seems pretty artificial. Grim.

[vtsnowedin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('AgentR11', 'n')b... by small town, I mean populations of 25k-75k; not the essentially abandoned post-ag husks with a street and two antique stores on the highway...

[westexas]

Regarding the book I referenced above, the Book summary on Amazon does have a reference to oil prices:

http://www.amazon.com/The-End-Suburbs-A ... 1591845254

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '�')��The government in the past created one American Dream at the expense of almost all others: the dream of a house, a lawn, a picket fence, two children, and a car. But there is no single American Dream anymore.”

For nearly 70 years, the suburbs were as American as apple pie. As the middle class ballooned and single-family homes and cars became more affordable, we flocked to pre-fabricated communities in the suburbs, a place where open air and solitude offered a retreat from our dense, polluted cities. Before long, success became synonymous with a private home in a bedroom community complete with a yard, a two-car garage and a commute to the office, and subdivisions quickly blanketed our landscape.

But in recent years things have started to change. An epic housing crisis revealed existing problems with this unique pattern of development, while the steady pull of long-simmering economic, societal and demographic forces has culminated in a Perfect Storm that has led to a profound shift in the way we desire to live.

In The End of the Suburbs journalist Leigh Gallagher traces the rise and fall of American suburbia from the stately railroad suburbs that sprung up outside American cities in the 19th and early 20th centuries to current-day sprawling exurbs where residents spend as much as four hours each day commuting. Along the way she shows why suburbia was unsustainable from the start and explores the hundreds of new, alternative communities that are springing up around the country and promise to reshape our way of life for the better.

Not all suburbs are going to vanish, of course, but Gallagher’s research and reporting show the trends are undeniable. Consider some of the forces at work:

• The nuclear family is no more: Our marriage and birth rates are steadily declining, while the single-person households are on the rise. Thus, the good schools and family-friendly lifestyle the suburbs promised are increasingly unnecessary.

• We want out of our cars: As the price of oil continues to rise, the hours long commutes forced on us by sprawl have become unaffordable for many. Meanwhile, today’s younger generation has expressed a perplexing indifference toward cars and driving. Both shifts have fueled demand for denser, pedestrian-friendly communities.

• Cities are booming. Once abandoned by the wealthy, cities are experiencing a renaissance, especially among younger generations and families with young children. At the same time, suburbs across the country have had to confront never-before-seen rates of poverty and crime.

[TheAntiDoomer]

The end of suburbs has nothing to do with oil and everything to do with a reversal of white flight. Suburbs were created as white folk ran from the cities in the 60' to 80's. Today's generation is far more multicultural and pretty much hated their suburban ubringing. Thus the shift to suburbs back to cities would have happened with 2$ gas or 3.50$ gas, it's not really that big a difference.

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('TheAntiDoomer', ' ') Thus the shift to suburbs back to cities would have happened with 2$ gas or 3.50$ gas, it's not really that big a difference.

[SeaGypsy]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ibon', '
')
My daughters and their peers do not see the economic viability of paying back college loans, owning cars, insurance, fuel costs, home mortgages that suburbia requires. Besides the fact that for the reasons you pointed out suburbia offers them nothing in terms of their lifestyle choices.

[AgentR11]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('vtsnowedin', 'I') suppose you could write off a whole state post peak but the remaining native Vermonters will have to be driven into the cities at gun point and god help the poor smuck that gets the job of doing that.

[vtsnowedin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('AgentR11', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('vtsnowedin', 'I') suppose you could write off a whole state post peak but the remaining native Vermonters will have to be driven into the cities at gun point and god help the poor smuck that gets the job of doing that.