America's suburban dream?
- Thread starter Howell
- Start date
timwhit
Hairy Aussie
Interesting article. I plan to never leave the city. My dream certainly isn't in a suburb. Several of my friends talk about leaving the city in a few years when they start having kids, they might change their minds if they have to be reliant on a car when gas prices are $8-10/gallon. Or if some of what that article talks about with exurbs becoming the new ghettos. I'm actually in the process of selling my tiny condo and buying a 3bd/2ba condo in one of the densest neighborhoods in Chicago.
On a side note buying and selling real estate really sucks.
On a side note buying and selling real estate really sucks.
Fushigi
Storage Is My Life
Well, that article doesn't mention nor appear to factor other things that impact neighborhoods. More and more people can work from home, for instance, which eliminates the commute altogether, improves traffic/rush hour for those who can't avoid it, and cuts costs tremendously. It also means people are home more which should reduce crime rates for non-violent crimes like theft/home invasion.
I'd also note that the article focused on neighborhoods impacted by the sub-prime market. That does not reflect all and probably not even close to a majority of suburban neighborhoods. My subdivision, for instance seems to have about the same percentage of homes for sale that it has had since we moved here in 2002. The homes here cost $200-400+ thousand for 2200-4200 square feet. And for a suburban area, within walking distance are 5 restaurants, various services (2 banks, pharmacy, 2 dentists, 3 dry cleaners, 2 exercise places, hair salon, car repair, etc.), grade & middle schools (HS is 1.5 miles away), walking trails, swimming poool/tennis courts/park, and whatnot. A convenience store w/gas station is also within walking distance, although I'd prefer a full-sized grocery instead. For that we have to drive a couple of miles.
Comparing urban living (Chicago) to the suburbs is really no contest. Sure, some things are within walking distance, but you still need a mode of transport. Buses, taxis, etc. are less convenient and are not always more efficient. Or if you retain a car be prepared to pay to park. Parking is generally free in the suburbs (minimum $14 for 12 hours downtown Chicago) and while you do drive to get to a lot of places, those drives are usually short. Just yesterday my wife & I went to downtown Naperville, parked for free, and shopped for a couple of hours. Speaking of, let's look at sales tax: 9.25% for Chicago; typically 6.75-7.25 in the suburbs. Have a vehicle? Even if you don't drive it you'll need a Chicago parking sticker; those start at $75 a year. Few suburbs mandate such stickers. Chicago simply costs more and gives you crappy infrastructure, failing schools, and corrupt politics in return.
Of course life in teh 'burbs isn't perfect. Retail space is hurting. Strip mall development has slowed but not stopped yet existing developments have not achieved 100% occupancy. And when stores go under or pull out, replacements have been slow or non-existent. This is as true at the local mega-mall as it is in the smaller strip malls. Some stores are taking the opportunity to move to better locations, but this lateral doesn't improve the overall retail real estate situation.
I'd also note that the article focused on neighborhoods impacted by the sub-prime market. That does not reflect all and probably not even close to a majority of suburban neighborhoods. My subdivision, for instance seems to have about the same percentage of homes for sale that it has had since we moved here in 2002. The homes here cost $200-400+ thousand for 2200-4200 square feet. And for a suburban area, within walking distance are 5 restaurants, various services (2 banks, pharmacy, 2 dentists, 3 dry cleaners, 2 exercise places, hair salon, car repair, etc.), grade & middle schools (HS is 1.5 miles away), walking trails, swimming poool/tennis courts/park, and whatnot. A convenience store w/gas station is also within walking distance, although I'd prefer a full-sized grocery instead. For that we have to drive a couple of miles.
Comparing urban living (Chicago) to the suburbs is really no contest. Sure, some things are within walking distance, but you still need a mode of transport. Buses, taxis, etc. are less convenient and are not always more efficient. Or if you retain a car be prepared to pay to park. Parking is generally free in the suburbs (minimum $14 for 12 hours downtown Chicago) and while you do drive to get to a lot of places, those drives are usually short. Just yesterday my wife & I went to downtown Naperville, parked for free, and shopped for a couple of hours. Speaking of, let's look at sales tax: 9.25% for Chicago; typically 6.75-7.25 in the suburbs. Have a vehicle? Even if you don't drive it you'll need a Chicago parking sticker; those start at $75 a year. Few suburbs mandate such stickers. Chicago simply costs more and gives you crappy infrastructure, failing schools, and corrupt politics in return.
Of course life in teh 'burbs isn't perfect. Retail space is hurting. Strip mall development has slowed but not stopped yet existing developments have not achieved 100% occupancy. And when stores go under or pull out, replacements have been slow or non-existent. This is as true at the local mega-mall as it is in the smaller strip malls. Some stores are taking the opportunity to move to better locations, but this lateral doesn't improve the overall retail real estate situation.
ddrueding
Fixture
I live in a downtown area now, and am considering moving to the country (10+ acres of land, 0.5 mile to nearest neighbor, 10 miles to town). Suburbs always struck me as the worst of both worlds; you have to interact with your neighbors, but you are still too far to walk to the grocery/restaurant/theater, etc.
Bozo
Storage? I am Storage!
I agree with Fushigi. CNN has become "the sky is falling" news station.
When you consider that a lot of the housing problem came from the FHA (lowered the requirements for getting a loan and lowered the down payment) and the reality companies getting greedy (they are responsible for pushing the sub-prime loans) you are going to have some housing markets tank. In my suburban area we usually have one house per year for sale. This year is no different. Our local banks, one of which survived the great depression, didn't fall for that "creative financing" nonsense. They also don't sell their mortages to other banks for a quick profit.
Some people might be moving back to the city, but I don't think it is a mad rush to get there. It's all the people that moved from the city and found they couldn't afford it that are moving back. And, a lot of the crime came with them.
Bozo :joker:
When you consider that a lot of the housing problem came from the FHA (lowered the requirements for getting a loan and lowered the down payment) and the reality companies getting greedy (they are responsible for pushing the sub-prime loans) you are going to have some housing markets tank. In my suburban area we usually have one house per year for sale. This year is no different. Our local banks, one of which survived the great depression, didn't fall for that "creative financing" nonsense. They also don't sell their mortages to other banks for a quick profit.
Some people might be moving back to the city, but I don't think it is a mad rush to get there. It's all the people that moved from the city and found they couldn't afford it that are moving back. And, a lot of the crime came with them.
Bozo :joker:
jtr1962
Storage? I am Storage!
Here is another interesting read on the subject.
What is really happening is inevitable. Think about it for a while. Suburban living is basically spread out living, but with infrastructure close to the standards of a more densely populated city. A mile of sewer pipe or electrical line or road still costs the same to build in the suburbs. However, its cost is spread among far fewer households. Government on all levels bankrolled the initial suburban infrastructure in order to make this way of living affordable to the middle class, and to help Detroit sell cars. That infrastructure is now showing its age. Repairing or replacing it will cost far more in constant dollars than initially building it. The needed taxes will be more than most middle class can afford. Even now taxes in the suburbs are often prohibitive. In many NY area suburbs the annual tax bill is exceeding $10K. Yes, by and large the great suburban experiment will enter failure mode. As was the case in the past, those living in the country will be mainly the wealthy who can afford to pay the real cost of the necessary infrastructure.
Not helping matters either is the tendency to build discrete areas where people live, work, and shop, often separated by many miles of empty land. This necessitates many car trips to do what I can essentially do in a 15 minute walk. Seriously, why does a new housing development have to be plopped down 20 or 30 miles from where people might work or shop? For heaven's sake that's enough distance to avoid most of the effects of a good-sized nuclear blast. It's totally irrational to spread things out to that extent. It's not cost effective, either. Instead of running one set of sewer and power lines now you have three or four sets going to places separated by miles. The cost per capita goes way up. People actually think it's normal now to travel 20 or 30 or even 75 miles to their jobs. That's the problem. If you're really that worried about the "negative" effects a mall or an office park might have on a housing development, is putting it 20 miles away any better than putting it 1/4 mile or 1/2 a mile away? Barring things like airports or chemical plants which should be isolated, I can't see, hear, or smell something 1/4 mile away. As far as I'm concerned it doesn't even exist. Yet this crazy idea of compartmentilizing development based on use, and keeping different types of zoning separated by miles, is common in many parts of the country. To me it's dehumanizing to have things set up basically for the benefit of the automobile, rather than the people in them.
I fully agree with Dave that the suburbs are the worst of both worlds. Even as a city person I maybe can see the appeal of living in a really rural place (Alaska might do it for me). However, to live in a place where you can still see your neighbors and you have to drive miles if you run out of milk is neither here nor there.
Even more insidious is that the nonsense in suburbia has spilled over into cities. Now I couldn't care less how people in the suburbs choose to live. If they want to spread things apart so that they need to drive 60 miles to the office park where they work that's their perogative even if to me it makes absolutely zero sense from any perspective. What I do object to is when this way of life based on automobiles starts spilling over into the city where I choose to live. NYC has more roads and cars than it should, largely as a consequence of the spillover from suburbia. Moreover, the autocentric way of life of the rest of the nation has caused this model to be used in quite a few new commercial developments. Huge parking lots and auto travel just doesn't work well in NYC. What you end up with instead is traffic moving at 5 mph plus loads of pollution. Some of these new shopping centers aren't even easily reachable by public transit, effectively shutting those too poor to own cars out. In other words, sprawl has come to NYC, a place where for years we were building up instead of out. Ironicially, since we added 1 million people in the last decade, we're going to have to start building up again whether we want to or not. There just isn't the room to build out any more. All the empty lots by me filled up in the last decade.
Fushigi mentions there being no contest between suburban and urban living. Well, no suprise there because in most parts of the country we totally gave up on our cities in favor of the suburbs! It was the assumed default position of planners that the suburban way of life was superior, and that even those remaining in the cities would "get out" if they could. We let our cities rot. Small wonder viable cities just don't exist in most of the country outside of the coasts. It seems only now we're finally starting to get it that some people actually find urban living preferable. NYC has obviously had a huge resurgence since 1990. With any luck the infrastruture will keep up with the population growth. We sorely need more subways. Now with high gas here to stay, public transit is finally getting its due. Public transit is really what makes viable cities. You just can't cram enough roads in to meet transportation needs. As we let public transit systems die in the 1960s and 1970s, so too went the cities they served. I think politicians are starting to understand this. They're also starting to understand that bus transit is a poor substitute for rail. The higher investment in rail pays for itself many times over. The hard fact is we're going to face an influx of suburban refugees in the coming decades. We best start preparing for it right now. Despite the best efforts of people like Robert Moses, big cities are here to stay. They offer much more than just centralized business districts. It's just a more human way of living where you can actually use your own two feet to get around.
What is really happening is inevitable. Think about it for a while. Suburban living is basically spread out living, but with infrastructure close to the standards of a more densely populated city. A mile of sewer pipe or electrical line or road still costs the same to build in the suburbs. However, its cost is spread among far fewer households. Government on all levels bankrolled the initial suburban infrastructure in order to make this way of living affordable to the middle class, and to help Detroit sell cars. That infrastructure is now showing its age. Repairing or replacing it will cost far more in constant dollars than initially building it. The needed taxes will be more than most middle class can afford. Even now taxes in the suburbs are often prohibitive. In many NY area suburbs the annual tax bill is exceeding $10K. Yes, by and large the great suburban experiment will enter failure mode. As was the case in the past, those living in the country will be mainly the wealthy who can afford to pay the real cost of the necessary infrastructure.
Not helping matters either is the tendency to build discrete areas where people live, work, and shop, often separated by many miles of empty land. This necessitates many car trips to do what I can essentially do in a 15 minute walk. Seriously, why does a new housing development have to be plopped down 20 or 30 miles from where people might work or shop? For heaven's sake that's enough distance to avoid most of the effects of a good-sized nuclear blast. It's totally irrational to spread things out to that extent. It's not cost effective, either. Instead of running one set of sewer and power lines now you have three or four sets going to places separated by miles. The cost per capita goes way up. People actually think it's normal now to travel 20 or 30 or even 75 miles to their jobs. That's the problem. If you're really that worried about the "negative" effects a mall or an office park might have on a housing development, is putting it 20 miles away any better than putting it 1/4 mile or 1/2 a mile away? Barring things like airports or chemical plants which should be isolated, I can't see, hear, or smell something 1/4 mile away. As far as I'm concerned it doesn't even exist. Yet this crazy idea of compartmentilizing development based on use, and keeping different types of zoning separated by miles, is common in many parts of the country. To me it's dehumanizing to have things set up basically for the benefit of the automobile, rather than the people in them.
I fully agree with Dave that the suburbs are the worst of both worlds. Even as a city person I maybe can see the appeal of living in a really rural place (Alaska might do it for me). However, to live in a place where you can still see your neighbors and you have to drive miles if you run out of milk is neither here nor there.
Even more insidious is that the nonsense in suburbia has spilled over into cities. Now I couldn't care less how people in the suburbs choose to live. If they want to spread things apart so that they need to drive 60 miles to the office park where they work that's their perogative even if to me it makes absolutely zero sense from any perspective. What I do object to is when this way of life based on automobiles starts spilling over into the city where I choose to live. NYC has more roads and cars than it should, largely as a consequence of the spillover from suburbia. Moreover, the autocentric way of life of the rest of the nation has caused this model to be used in quite a few new commercial developments. Huge parking lots and auto travel just doesn't work well in NYC. What you end up with instead is traffic moving at 5 mph plus loads of pollution. Some of these new shopping centers aren't even easily reachable by public transit, effectively shutting those too poor to own cars out. In other words, sprawl has come to NYC, a place where for years we were building up instead of out. Ironicially, since we added 1 million people in the last decade, we're going to have to start building up again whether we want to or not. There just isn't the room to build out any more. All the empty lots by me filled up in the last decade.
Fushigi mentions there being no contest between suburban and urban living. Well, no suprise there because in most parts of the country we totally gave up on our cities in favor of the suburbs! It was the assumed default position of planners that the suburban way of life was superior, and that even those remaining in the cities would "get out" if they could. We let our cities rot. Small wonder viable cities just don't exist in most of the country outside of the coasts. It seems only now we're finally starting to get it that some people actually find urban living preferable. NYC has obviously had a huge resurgence since 1990. With any luck the infrastruture will keep up with the population growth. We sorely need more subways. Now with high gas here to stay, public transit is finally getting its due. Public transit is really what makes viable cities. You just can't cram enough roads in to meet transportation needs. As we let public transit systems die in the 1960s and 1970s, so too went the cities they served. I think politicians are starting to understand this. They're also starting to understand that bus transit is a poor substitute for rail. The higher investment in rail pays for itself many times over. The hard fact is we're going to face an influx of suburban refugees in the coming decades. We best start preparing for it right now. Despite the best efforts of people like Robert Moses, big cities are here to stay. They offer much more than just centralized business districts. It's just a more human way of living where you can actually use your own two feet to get around.
udaman
Wannabe Storage Freak
- Joined
- Sep 20, 2006
- Messages
- 1,209
Yeah, I pretty much agree with Fushigi's analysis, and almost completely disagree with jtr's very warped reality distortion field, what can I say, but it's true
.Yep, lived all my life in the largest 'suburbia' of them all Los Angeles. Now before I was born, go back to pre-1940's era LA, Santa Monica, Bevery Hills were way far apart, with not much build up between them. Today, the 'metropolis' has 'cajoined' hundreds of cities by the hip into one huge mess.
Don't have enough time to refute jtr's simplifications, but will say 200-400k for burbs of Chicago is dirt cheap compared to LA where you need to have huge income to afford a single family home, with no prior equity. When I have time this week I'll take some pictures of current/recent past west side area real estate. Just built, 'luxury' condos (average build quality from what I saw when they were under construction) 2-3 bed, now 'reduced' to only 699,999, lol...or was it 799,999 and I don't mean Yen or pesos. This on a somewhat noisy frontage of a 4-lane business street just 2blks east of the SM Airport...can watch the Govenator land his Gulfstream from time to time, just 2 blocks west of the congested 405 8-lane freeway.
ddrueding
Fixture
800k? Just a drop in the bucket
And I don't know anyone that wants to live in San Jose; though it would be a trade-up from LA
And I don't know anyone that wants to live in San Jose; though it would be a trade-up from LA
Will Rickards
Storage Is My Life
Timely for me, as I'm moving this summer.
I'm not sure where to move to.
I didn't really consider moving into philly as my job is in the suburbs not the city.
I'm not sure where to move to.
I didn't really consider moving into philly as my job is in the suburbs not the city.
ddrueding
Fixture
My suggestion would be to live in between your work and the nearest restaurant/supermarket/theater.
udaman
Wannabe Storage Freak
- Joined
- Sep 20, 2006
- Messages
- 1,209
Thread jack alert!
Sorry for the jack
Don't know how it would relate to the thread title as it hasn't aired on the west coast yet. Some of you might be interested in viewing it (I got an error message 1st time I used the link below):
PBS Frontline:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/youngchina/
Ah crap, the C&P of the graphics didn't work well....let's try the local PBS graphics, ah that's better:
June 16-22
FRONTLINE
"Young & Restless
in China"
Tuesday 9:00 PM
Shot over four years, the film follows a group of nine young Chinese men and women from across the country as they scramble to keep pace with a society changing as fast as any in history.
Sorry for the jack
Don't know how it would relate to the thread title as it hasn't aired on the west coast yet. Some of you might be interested in viewing it (I got an error message 1st time I used the link below):
PBS Frontline:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/youngchina/
Ah crap, the C&P of the graphics didn't work well....let's try the local PBS graphics, ah that's better:
June 16-22
"Young & Restless
in China"
Tuesday 9:00 PM
Shot over four years, the film follows a group of nine young Chinese men and women from across the country as they scramble to keep pace with a society changing as fast as any in history.
Fushigi
Storage Is My Life
My practice has been as follows: If there are no external influencing factors and I'm renting, I'll try to get a place as close to work as is reasonable.
But if there are extenuating factors (children who need good schools, buying v. renting, need to be close to family, etc.) then I'd move where I want/must.
IOW being close to work is a convenience that gets rated below the importance of family and other obligations.
ddrueding
Fixture
My work and my family are both 70 miles away. My friends and my hobbies are within a mile or so. If I don't have enough work/money I know why :crap:
Stereodude
Not really a
That's because New York is busy pissing away well over $10k per student in the horribly performing public school system. That's why the taxes are high, not because of the expense of the upkeep of the infrastructure.
Fushigi
Storage Is My Life
That's a good argument against larger cities, Stereodude. For some reason school systems seem almost universally unable to scale once the student population exceeds 50K or so. I'd normally think economies of scale and neighborhood/school boundary planning would lead to efficiency but I've never seen it work out that way. A quality education - the school system's product - always seems to drop as the system gets larger.
ddrueding
Fixture
I can't think of anything that directly involves people and scales well. People seem to be able to screw up any "optimized system".
Bozo
Storage? I am Storage!
Size doesn't matter.
We have a relatively small school system here. The quality of the education has been declining for years. There are a number of reasons:
Complete lack of student disipline both at home and in the schools;
Too much emphasis on sports;
No grading of teachers...pay raises are automatic whether it is the worst teacher or the best;
Tenure;
At the college level, making nonsense courses mandatory. IE, making a mechanical engineering student take Aztec history. WTF!
Calculators;
Proof? The SAT test have been made easier 3 times since the 1970's. Now there is a push to make them even easier. Why? Because the national average scores keep going down.
Bozo :joker:
ddrueding
Fixture
The biggest one you mentioned above (IMHO) is:
The reason for lack of discipline in the schools is fear of retaliation from the parents. So this is really one problem; it used to be parents+teachers vs. students, now it is parents+students vs. teachers.
The other issue is that every level of education is trying to be 100% inclusive. The more kids you involve, the lower the level will be.
The reason for lack of discipline in the schools is fear of retaliation from the parents. So this is really one problem; it used to be parents+teachers vs. students, now it is parents+students vs. teachers.
The other issue is that every level of education is trying to be 100% inclusive. The more kids you involve, the lower the level will be.
Fushigi
Storage Is My Life
10.25% for Chicago starting tomorrow. :crucified:
CougTek
Hairy Aussie
Your other points, I won't dispute, but that one is b/s. Here, schools with a strong physical education program always outperform regular schools. Moving activates the system, including the mind. You can blame pretty much anything to explain tpoor student ratings, but not sports.
Forcing a juvenile full of hormones to sit for seven hours is a good way to get it bored and unmotivated.
Bozo
Storage? I am Storage!
Physical Education (gym class) is completely different than playing sports. Being on the football team does not lead to better students and higher test scores. When the school board spends $125000.00 to install a new track and $60000.00 to erected a practice building for the wrestlers, but doesn't have enough math and science for all the students (they had to share) something is very wrong.
When members of the football team graduate and go to college and fail miserably in their first symester, something is very wrong. (they were all sent home)
When teachers forged the jocks grades so they could play in sports, something is very wrong.
When said teachers were caught forging grades and not fired (tenure), something is very wrong.
When the bullying in school results in physical harm to academic students, and the perpatrators were just given a 'talking to' because they were on the wrestling team, something is very wrong.
When preforming arts courses and other intelectural 'extra' courses are cut, (because of budget cuts) but they still play football, something is very wrong.
When local TV stations dedicate 30-60 minutes of time every Friday night to high school football, something is very wrong.
When young kids start to harm their bodies (shoulders, elbows, knees, etc) by being pushed to 'Be the best' in sports, something is very wrong. I see a doctor for my aching joints (I'm 60) and he was telling me he is starting to see 14 year olds with shoulder and elbow injuries from baseball. These kids will suffer the rest of their lives with joint problems because the were pushed to throw a faster fast ball. ( I believe trying to throw a knuckle ball is worse) Some needed surgery. Something is very wrong.
These are not isolated cases. This is happening everywhere.
There is way too much emphasis on sports.
BTW, I encouraged my son to play baseball and football and to tryout for the wrestling team. He made the local baseball Allstar Team, wasn't big enough for football, although he did play for an entire season, and was advised by our doctor to give up wrestling as he is double jointed. The doctor was afraid of the injuries he could incure. But, he did earn his 'letter' two years on the Chess team. He now has an engineering degree.
My daughter played field hockey and softball. And, for a few years coached a local girls softball team, who won an area championship.
Bozo :joker: