Is America's suburban dream collapsing into a nightmare?

[RamboLiberal]

This is the part I find fascinating about this article.

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Recent market research indicates that up to 40 percent of households surveyed in selected metropolitan areas want to live in walkable urban areas, said Leinberger. The desire is also substantiated by real estate prices for urban residential space, which are 40 to 200 percent higher than in traditional suburban neighborhoods -- this price variation can be found both in cities and small communities equipped with walkable infrastructure, he said.

The result is an oversupply of depreciating suburban housing and a pent-up demand for walkable urban space, which is unlikely to be met for a number of years. That's mainly, according to Leinberger, because the built environment changes very slowly; and also because governmental policies and zoning laws are largely prohibitive to the construction of complicated high-density developments.

But as the market catches up to the demand for more mixed use communities, the United States could see a notable structural transformation in the way its population lives -- Arthur C. Nelson, director of Virginia Tech's Metropolitan Institute, estimates, for example, that half of the real-estate development built by 2025 will not have existed in 2000.

Yet Nelson also estimates that in 2025 there will be a surplus of 22 million large-lot homes that will not be left vacant in a suburban wasteland but instead occupied by lower classes who have been driven out of their once affordable inner-city apartments and houses.

The so-called McMansion, he said, will become the new multi-family home for the poor.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/06/16/suburb.city/index.html

[villager]

1. Perhaps with the attendant land, these multi-family homes can turn the grass monocultures

into mini farms?

[AndyTiedye]

5. A Lot More Food Will be Grown in the Suburbs, Whoever Ends Up Living There

Some will move further in, some will move further out, some will stay put.
Whoever has land will be gardening more. Lawns are rapidly turning from an obligation to a liability.

The destiny of many of the McMansions might not be multi-family but multiple generations of the SAME family.
When living costs go up, the younger generation is slower to leave the nest. Sometimes the older generation needs to move in.

There were suburbs before there were cars. Public transport in the suburbs is doable.
Bikes and small electric things to get to the train station.

Walkable? Walkable to what? The grocery store and the drug store? It isn't hard to build more local stores. Zoning isn't evil, it just needs some adjustment.
Often the zoning is already there, but the local store couldn't stay in business with everyone driving to the shopping center. The one we used to have turned into office space.

Walk to work? That is may be hard for both husband and wife in a typical family to do, as they are unlikely to both find employment within walking distance,
even if they are willing to move every time either one of them changes jobs.

[Trajan]

2. I am dying to move to downtown Portland ....

Which reminds me of Brooklyn, with the older brick storefronts at street level with wonderful vintage apartments on the upper levels ..... a GREAT urban environment with kewl pubs and cafes and galleries and the like, with the Streetcar, MAX train and buses to get about .... I love that lifestyle ...

It wont be long ...

[izquierdista]

3. Zoning is a curse

Originally, it may have been a good thought; keep ugly work spaces away from nice residential spaces and have some sort of "master plan" that makes cities more livable. In actual practice, it has been anything but, making it virtually impossible to find neighborhoods with home, work, and commerce all in close proximity. I have found places where the three are blended together in a workable solution, but NOT in the United States. The problem in the U.S. is the assumption that everyone will have a personal vehicle to transport them from one to the next to the third, so they can be placed far apart from each other to make for more car and gasoline sales.

Don't expect any quick answers either. The problem has been 60 years in the making, and now all the railroad stations have either been turned into trendy boutiques or are in impoverished ghettos. Shopping has been moved to "malls" which are ringed with a pedestrian elimination zone otherwise known as "acres of free parking", and public transportation, if available at all, is only for the paid help too poor to afford a car. Brand new schools are situated on the edge of town or a little bit further, the better to see a wayward adult approaching so that he can be clapped in cuffs as a potential child molester should he get within a quarter mile. But not to worry, the school provides bus transportation for 100% of the students so that they need not worry about burning off their caloric overload by having to walk.

I'll be interested to see how Greensburg, KS rebuilds. Will they throw the insane conventions of American zoning aside and build a livable town? Or will conformity to cars and cheap gas and gated communities make it just another fresh hell.

[AndyTiedye]

7. Doing Away With Zoning Won't Have the Outcome You Want

You think doing away with zoning will get you a nice little store.
Nope. The neighbor is building a warehouse there to store water filters.
There will be blazing lights on and trucks coming and going all night long.

[hendo]

4. I can't stand cities

My first house will be in the country. If there is any of that left in 3 years.

[AndyTiedye]

6. We Come from Many LInes of People Who Mostly Couldn't Stand Cities

Contented city-dwellers do not board ships or covered wagons and travel thousand of miles to settle the frontier.
People came to America for many reasons, but one of the most common escape from crowded cities and get some land of their own.
The westward expansion was even more driven by a need for space.

The original version of the American Dream was a farm.

I think some of us simply don't have the "wiring" for the level of social interaction that city living requires.
We can do it after a fashion, but it is exhausting.

This sort of thing could very well be hereditary, and many of our ancestors were bothered by it enough to move here.

[Doctor_J]

8. Probably the market shaking out. Old Europe has lasted for more

than 1000 years by being metropolitan, progressive, neighborhood-driven. It's possible that the consumptive, disperse, mercantile, big-box model of the US wasn't built to last that long. Maybe we're just headed toward a more sustainable model.