Like all cities, the suburbs are where most of us live and as a
general rule we do not spend all of our time there. I can almost
equate that with remaining inside your bedroom or man-cave when there
are other parts of the house to explore and use. We entertain in the
formal living room or dine in the the kitchen if it is informal and
the dining room if it is not. Today's housing is a much more mixed
blend of uses but our neighborhoods and suburbs are not. I, and
others, believe that that may soon change.
I have lived outside of Man o' War for only two years. Those 2
years were over two decades ago and are still the dullest times of my
life. Getting to work and anyplace remotely interesting to me was
more effort than I usually want to put into something. Therefore,
the idea of making Lexington's suburban neighborhoods more like their
“first ring” older brothers and sisters is something on which I
fixate. I am always looking for ways to help make that change
happen.
Suburbs, or at least those which follow the American-style model,
have been called obesogenic , that is inducing its inhabitants
to become fat. Along the way, they have been called sterile,
homogeneous, anti-social simply because they are auto-centric and,
for the most part, very inefficient. Is there any hope for an urban
form so maligned to transition into someplace more desirable? Some
experts think so and I believe that they may be right.
Many places in the U.S. the suburbs are beginning to emulate the
patterns of cosmopolitan city centers, becoming more dense, taking on
new forms and practices and responding to economic and cultural
changes in our world. I am looking for ways to get Lexington moving
in such a direction. Maybe we can grow the city and protect the
rural area in doing so.
Without a doubt, the ideas which develop in American suburbs end
up influencing at least the affluent suburbs around the world. In a
recent article in Planning Theory & Practice, Arthur
C. Nelson and others discuss the demographic changes
and shifting consumer preferences that are likely to have dramatic
implications on suburban design in the next few decades.
Government subsidies, economic prosperity and demographic shifts
since the end of World War II have led to generations of low density
suburban growth which continue in Lexington to this day. Could it be
that current economic conditions will begin to alter our development
practices toward denser and better connected
neighborhoods/communities. Will we see a re-commitment to urban and
urbane living?
One place where w could begin that re-commitment is in our public
investment and financing strategies to keep up with expectations for
services such as public transit. Our regulations and development
financing need to shift away from contemporary practices to support
re-urbanization policies.
The process of “fracking” has led to the recent growth in
petro-carbon production and the proposals to build pipelines from
Canadian tar-sands to southern refineries may signal that “peak
oil” has not yet arrived. But to assume that the return to the era
of cheap energy may be sheer folly. We still need to shift away from
the reliance on the private automobile. Despite consumer preference
surveys which indicate that people say they would choose cosmopolitan
options, those options need to in place before the choice can be
made.
The suburban landscape needs to be able to transition in form,
function, and pattern as quickly as community needs change.
Financing practices, community attitudes and, above all, our zoning
regulations currently restrict that transition flexibility. Zoning
codes and covenants enforced by developers, neighborhood and
homeowners’ associations have increasingly limited the potential
for ready physical adaptation.
How will we find ways to address the needs of the less affluent
when the market producing our housing has other priorities? Jill L.
Grant, Professor of Planning at Dalhousie University (Halifax, Nova
Scotia, Canada), said it best “In trying to address the problems of
homogeneity and inefficiency which we regret in our old suburbs, how
can we avoid stimulating gentrification processes that suburbanize
poverty and disadvantage?”
Nelson is Director of the Metropolitan Research Center, City &
Metropolitan Planning at University of Utah so he probably
understands the subject of urban sprawl as well as anyone. Having
grown up in a suburb of Portland, Ore. and having to drive
everywhere, I believe that he seen the beast that sprawl has become
firsthand. He has also recognized the American suburbs are a unique
development form that may be replicated in some fashion around the
world although not to the extent that they are here at home.
American planners have built our suburbs as mostly low density,
with uniformly developed landscapes of few land-use interactions and
an intentional dependency on the automobile. At about 14,500
individuals per square mile, the suburbs of London, England are more
densely settled than such central cities as Boston, Chicago, Los
Angeles and Philadelphia. The actual City of London has under 10,000
residents of its own. It really becomes easy to see that we have
planned the very urban vibrancy we seek out of our neighborhoods.
“Unlike
suburbs in much of the rest of the world... ... American suburbs do
not have mixed land uses or a range of housing options, and lack
densities to support public transit.”
Nelson has identified three reasons as to why suburbs in America
are different.
First, Americans have an entrenched anti-urban sentiment with
strong libertarian undercurrents to the point that an individuals
property rights are above the community's interests. Outside of
Lexington and a few other communities, few impediments exist to
developing open land and that facilitates the low density environment
which encourages sprawl.
Second, government (and financial institutional policies) since
the Depression favor new construction over rehabilitation, new
highways over public transit,
construction of owner-occupied and detached homes over rented and
attached homes and converting farmland/open space into low-density
suburban development over sustaining working or passive landscapes.
Prior to World War II, the
worries in housing were from urban pollution brought about by
over-crowding and lack of sufficient daylight. After the war, the
plans actively sought to reduce the residential densities for public
health reasons. Section 701 of the 1954 Federal Housing Act provided
grants for land-use planning templates which separated residential
subdivisions from retail uses, employment centers and civic
institutions. All of the things which make a neighborhood and
community a vibrant and desirable place to live.
The third reason is a direct result of the preceding two.
Subsidized road projects and subsidized energy costs helped to
inflate the value of land for suburban development. More efficient
development was economically punished while less efficient
development was rewarded. More suburban uses imposed negative
externalities on adjacent farmland which depressed the farm land's
value and virtually assuring far more land was converted than would
otherwise occur.
There is little doubt that suburban America will continue to
dominate growth and settlement, but one should expect it to become
more urban along the way. Recent preference surveys and projections
of demographic trends hint that America’s suburban future may be
quite different. Lexington has embarked on a path of infill and
redevelopment which may need to achieve a certain level of
neighborhood urbanity to work.
So, what are these emerging trends that Nelson has identified?
1 Rising energy costs
From World War II until the early '70s there was a vast supply of
cheap gasoline and being able to drive out to the inexpensive land
available for home building took home ownership rates from 55% in
1950 to 69% in 2004. Rising fuel prices may dampen the appeal of the
suburban fringe for home buying, with or without self driving cars.
2 Lagging employment
The structure of the American labor force has made it prone to
high unemployment as may be evidenced by the dismal recovery from the
Great Recession. A key component of employment and income recovery
is educational preparedness and in many cases America trails in many
categories. A rapid population growth among those who are less
prepared to succeed, could lead to lower wages and higher
unemployment rates. Without falling home prices and and a return to
the previous mortgage underwriting policies there may be lower home
ownership rates in 2035 than in 2010.
3 Falling incomes
Median household incomes for ALL age groups in EACH income
category ended the decade lower than in 2000. Suburbs have accounted
for nearly half the increase in the population in poverty. Add this
with trends 1 & 2 and the effects may further lower demand for
owner-occupied homes over the next decades.
4 Shifting wealth
Nearly 99% of America’s wealth was held by the highest fifth of
households. Well higher than most of the last century. The shifting
of wealth in the US means that America has become a nation where
wealth inequality is greater than in many emerging countries. It is
now more difficult to rise above poverty than in nearly any developed
country.
5 Tighter home financing
In the wake of our recent financial disaster, lending institutions
have increased their underwriting requirements, thereby reducing the
number of people who can buy a home. Conventional mortgages now
need higher credit scores, longer and more stable work histories, and
20% down payments. Those changes alone may disqualify about five
million potential home buyers, resulting in 250,000 fewer home sales
and 50,000 fewer new homes built per year.
6 Changing housing and community preferences
Americans are looking for something different in their homes,
neighborhoods and communities than they have had in the past.
The latest period of suburbanization, what we generally call the
“era of sprawl” began in 1948 and is basically a “parasitic”
version of suburbanization since it fed of off resources not
generated by the growth itself. Fiscal policies, both State and
Federal, transferred wealth from cities to suburbs though
subsidization of roads and energy. Taxes on existing infrastructure
and property allowed for reduced levies on developing land. Land-use
and zoning codes socially engineered many a community composition.
The bursting of the “housing bubble” and, for Lexington, the
EPA consent decree are some evidence of the price which has now come
due.
Robert Fishman, as an Associate Editor of the Journal of the
American Planning Association, has suggested a fifth migration
emerged during the 2000s. Since 2005, we have seen a
re-urbanization of the inner city and our older suburban areas. It
has been led by the young professionals, many an empty-nester senior,
and and even immigrants.
It is exactly the disadvantages of our inner-city districts, the
“obsolete” retail and manufacturing facilities (Bread Box,
Distillery District, et. al.), the pedestrian scale, an ability to
rely on mass transit and even the aging housing stock which are being
turned into advantages in this fifth migration. I think that we may
need to extend or replicate some, if not all, of these new
“advantages”into the suburbs once held by the “fourth
migration”. That area we now call sprawl.
The challenge in making this transition is to change attitudes of
suburbanites. This is a tall order. Nelson suggests that “local
governments will need to become proactive in applying affordable
housing tools such as density bonuses, subsidized low and moderate
income housing, and inclusionary zoning.”
Older and closer-in suburbs, those built at low densities, may
find retrofitting them a bit difficult but higher density
redevelopment can be accomplished by using parking lots and low rise,
low intensity nonresidential property along commercial corridors.
Neighborhood opposition and disagreements along these commercial
corridors pass may undermine any opportunity of transition.
As Nelson ends his piece “Successful American suburbs of the
future will be resettled by very different kinds of households.” I
ask, when will we see it here?
