Pushing poor people to the suburbs is bad for the environment

[xchrom]

http://grist.org/cities/pushing-poor-people-to-the-suburbs-is-bad-for-the-environment/

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In recent years, an overhyped counterrevolution has emerged in America. Millennials from the suburbs and their empty-nester parents have been flocking to certain desirable urban neighborhoods. This has led to a lot of chin-pulling about “demographic inversion,” wherein the cities become richer and whiter and the suburbs more non-white and poor. Skeptics note that suburbs are in the aggregate still richer and whiter than central cities and most middle-class families still settle in suburbia.

This sociological debate misses the important environmental question: What will we have achieved if we simply change the demographic complexion of who lives in walkable urban areas and who doesn’t? The answer is nothing. For the urbanist movement to be worthy of its name, the end result has to be that a higher percentage of Americans are actually living in central cities, and that the residents of both cities and suburbs represent the full spectrum of American life.

The evidence suggests that a combination of bad public policies is instead causing poor residents to be priced out of the most popular cities by well-heeled newcomers. Consider Annie Lowrey’s report on low-income renters in Tuesday’s New York Times. They are being squeezed by an economy where all the gains accrue to the top and new housing is built at the high end. Gentrification also brings wealthier renters into poor urban neighborhoods, bidding up the price of existing housing. Writes Lowrey:

The number of renters with very low incomes — less than 30 percent of the local median income, or about $19,000 nationally — surged by 3 million to 11.8 million between 2001 and 2011, according to a report released Monday by the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard. But the number of affordable rentals available to those households held steady at about 7 million. And by 2011, about 2.6 million of those rentals were occupied by higher-income households. …

Many of the worst shortages are in major cities with healthy local economies, like Seattle, San Francisco, New York and Washington.

[TBF]

1. I have been watching this in Houston -

the folks with serious money are buying land downtown, tearing down old cottages, and putting up mansions on 2-3 lots. The older suburban areas are filling with renters. It is a shift and with lack of public transportation not a good one.

[Igel]

2. A while back there was something I read that looked at geography in some cities.

The inner core might be mostly business but there were more and more fairly well-off people (not usually families, or if families small ones) that lived not far from downtown. The Heights in Houston; Fells Point in Baltimore. Some very wealthy people who hate commuting might live there. This is mostly restoring the historical norm from before easy transportation.

Then there was an outer core or inner suburb band that is fairly poor. They were the displaced poor after gentrification; they were also the less-poor who could afford to move, but not move too far. When we were house-hunting we'd go to some areas in this belt and almost stare. Houses that were 650 or 800 sq feet. But the family that had it built was probably happy at the time--private lot, not in a poor downtown flat. Suburbs, outside the city core. Houses were smaller then, but these were still at the trailing portion of the size distribution curve.

This is followed by the outer suburbs, which continue to be where the more prosperous (or social climbers) live. Or, in Houston, the exurbs (which are now pretty much contiguous with the suburbs)--Woodlands, Kingswood, Sugarland, Pearland. Exxonland, whatever that area's going to be called ("Spring Landing"?). I mean, some of those things you look at as they're being built and think, "An apt. building, here?" Then it's done and you realize it's an 8000 sq foot house, not including the 4 car garage, natatorium, and patios/car ports. Heck, some of them have foundations larger than the lot the apt. building I lived in in Los Angeles sat on, and I couldn't afford the electricity necessary to vacuum the suckers.

Put the general "north is good, south is bad" on top of it and you tend to get most distributions of populations in most cities.

[FarCenter]

3. It won't be a one-for-one transfer

Just as large homes near city centers were subdivided into 2 to 4 apartments, I'd expect the process to be reversed.

Suburban McMansions will be subdivided or occupied by large numbers of occupants, while in the city center lots will be combined or larger homes rebuilt.

[hunter]

4. It's possible to take a neighborhood like the one in the picture and turn it into something sound.

Take a couple of those houses, remove the interior fences, create a community garden.

Swimming pools become fish ponds. Garages become metal shops, wood shops, pubs, neighborhood grocery stores, health clinics. On-demand transportation serves everyone. Order a ride on your phone, and your phone pages you when your ride arrives. Most people don't need to bother with cars.

Etc., etc., etc.

The problem with so many of the very wealthy is they lack imagination. They gentrify a place and then they wonder why it's so boring. That's why they like to travel, but never to places that are too interesting; either too dangerous or the kind of places where nobody even pretends to respect their wealth.

And then, when the wealthy get too bored, they move in and destroy another place that has evolved it's own unique culture.