The Collective Costs of Suburban Sprawl

[Jcrowley]

Exiles From Main Street
Spaced out: The collective costs of suburban sprawl
by Matt Fleischer-Black
December 15th, 2006 3:40 PM



<snip>

Suburbia's failings have been obvious for half a century. Housing subdivisions have stranded kids and mothers in communities devoid of communal life. They have forced residents to spend more time in cars than in conversation. They have chewed up God's green earth. And yet: Two out of three Americans now live there, up from one-third of the 1960 population.

Fifteen years after Joel Garreau's classic book Edge City spotlighted the clustering of malls and glass-cube office parks next to interstates, a spate of authors (Alan L. Berger, David Brooks, and James Howard Kunstler among them) are revisiting suburban supremacy. Why have Americans climbed over hills and fanned through valleys to move into new exurbs, even as traditional cities have revived?

The plainest reason, Anthony Flint writes in This Land: The Battle Over Sprawl and the Future of America, his crisp new dissection of how suburban development steamrollered its foes, is that Americans want roomy and affordable houses located in safe places near edge-city jobs. The heart of Flint's book, though, is his tracing of the repercussions of this shift. His report: Moving to the fresh air, opening the door, and shooing out the kids—the American dream—has devolved into an unhealthy, financially unsustainable, and ecologically destructive habit. Glimpsed through Flint's eyes, suburban development looks unstoppable, too bound up with the American pursuit of material comfort. The suburban split-level has become an addictive drug, offering a fantasy of escape. But after a blissful honeymoon, a new development rises next door, and traffic grows constipated. Local taxes rise to pay for new pipes and schools and wider roads. Craving cash, the town welcomes big-box stores and office parks. The physical toll keeps growing; water bans and power brownouts increase.

Flint zeroes in on suburbia's layout, which wastes fuel, land and water.Developers scatter the key parts of life, creating a jumble of thrown-together anyplaces where (as Tom Wolfe noted) you can't tell where towns start and end until the 7-Elevens and Home Depots repeat. Flint, who created a development beat for The Boston Globe, observes that the suburban landscape dictates the routine of tens of millions of people, yet it seems to have been built by stoners: "The guiding principle for arranging the physical environment isn't feng shui. It's nonsequitur." And now suburbanites winding trips between work, school, store, and home have grown longer than ever. They compensate by recovering in big garage-Mahal homes that require lots of fuel to heat and cool.

<snip>

http://www.villagevoice.com/books/0651,fleischerblack,75316,10.html

[mark414]

1. the suburbs are the places where they cut down all the trees

and then name their streets after them....:eyes:

bomb the suburbs!

[maxsolomon]

2. "it seems to have been built by stoners"

as a veteran stoner, planner, and architect, i resent that deeply.

the suburbs are in fact the perfect manifestation of utilitarianism. space made by engineers - valuation of the quantitative above the qualitative in all things. only in the last 10 years have aesthetics clawed & scratched their way back to the table. and its the little kid's table - the machine of suburban developement will only be stopped by a deep deep recession/peak oil.

"the road is an arm of the law, grasping everywhere for the pollution of money" -raoul vaneigem. go to cabo san lucas, the pacific coast of costa rica, montana's flathead valley, the cornfields 30 miles outside columbus ohio, you'll see the truth of this 40 year old quote, from a man who's lived his whole life in vibrant, dense european cities.

stoners know the value of the qualitative. & stoners know the value of having things convenient - you should be able to WALK to the corner store to get cheetos, for instance. its much more enjoyable.

:smoke:

"Garage Mahal" is a keeper, though. salute!

[Selatius]

3. This is why I generally love old cities built before cars than ones built after.

You literally can't get anywhere without a vehicle in the latter. There are no sidewalks, and mass transit is virtually non-existent. Because everything is spread out, gas is wasted, which is why the US consumes the largest amount of fuel per person in the entire world. In the old cities, you may end up living on the 2nd or 3rd floor of a building, but the grocery store was within walking distance, and sometimes it was literally on the 1st damn floor of your building.

[Zookeeper]

4. I agree with you, unfortunately....

it's a nightmare to drive and park a car in one of those cities. I lived in S.F. for ten years, most of that time without a car, which was perfect except for trying to get out of the city every once in a while. When Mr. Z. and I finally bought a car, we would spend as long as 40 minutes trying to find a place to park it.

Even here in Mpls./St. Paul, the residential streets feel too narrow for both parked cars and moving traffic. And when there is plowable snow and a parking ban on one side of each street, lots of people end up at the impound lot.

[KamaAina]

5. Holy cats! I know this guy's mom!

She used to work with my mom years ago in Conn. They've stayed in touch. I never actually met Tony but do know that he has a son named Hunter. Go figure.

I might want to get next to this (maybe I can even finagle a signed copy!). The topic is actually one of interest to me, as it turns out.

This post brought to you by "Three Degrees of DU Separation". Pick up the home version today!

edit: spelling

[bobbolink]

6. And, to think, I just saw an article in the Saturday Evening Post about

why s-p-r-a-w-l is good...

:eyes:

No wonder the rest of the world thinks we're crazy. :crazy:

[MazeRat7]

7. I'm on track to move out of the "burbs" further into the country...

The last place I want to be is a city. My general guide for where I live is pretty simple..."how many stars can I see and how many people can I avoid seeing in the same place"....

And yes, I'll engineer my next home to run mostly off-grid but I will take back that savings since I will need to drive a light truck to the burb-centers for supplies. :)

MZr7