From the library: The End of the Suburbs

By Leigh Gallagher.

Many years ago, I read a number of books on the New Urbanism.  There are a lot of good titles, most notably The Geography of Nowhere (1994) and Home From Nowhere (1998), by James Howard Kunstler, as well as the pretty picture book The New Urbanism: Toward an Architecture of Community (1993) by Peter Katz. 

So when I started this book, I was prepared to settle into the same type of book, but I was disappointed.  Ultimately, the difference is, in large part, that the prior books were written by experts in the field and this one was written by a journalist.  She provides something of a broad overview of U.S. urban and suburban development historically, and of the New Urbanism movement in particular, and features anecdotal accounts of families unhappily living in the suburbs, and finding new life in the city.  She correctly observes ways in which far-flung suburbs risk being unsustainable (for instance, people unable to afford their long commutes if gas prices rise — which she seems to hope for; and low density requiring heavy tax rates to pay for basic community infrastructure such as roads and water service), and points to a number of trends suggesting something of a shift.  But she ultimately doesn’t pull the various strands into a single whole, and they don’t all even seem to fit together in the first place.

What are her trends?

First of all, the appeal of New Urbanism-style developments.  New Urbanism originally had a very specific definition, with designs adhering to concepts developed by the Congress for the New Urbanism, but uses this as a catch-all term for developments which aim to recapture an urban flavor.  And it’s true that suburban infill developments generally favor denser housing, and that, at least around here, there has been a lot of high- or at least mid-rise condo construction at the commuter train stations. 

Second, the changing demographics.  The population is aging (though she doesn’t link this to a renewed preference for urban living — seniors generally want to stay in their homes, not leave them for a more urban environment), and young people are more likely to live with their parents (again, no link to urbanism).  She doesn’t really address the impact of the drop in the birth rate — the increasing percentage of childless individuals and couples does in fact lead to a preference for urban life, as well as the delayed age of marriage and childbearing among the middle class. 

Third, the increasing preference of millenials, especially the middle-clss, for an urban lifestyle when they do move away from home (though, so far, there’s no actual experience to tell us whether this is just the temporary preference to live in a bar-hopping trendy neighborhood while young, or a long-term preference to stay there when older).

Fourth, a trend to some degree (not documented with data) of families raising children in the city by choice.  Not working-class or even middle-class families, mind you — they’re not the ones able to afford the pricetags — but the upper-middle-class and the wealthy. 

Fifth, some corporations are moving their headquarters into cities (though I’m not impressed, since the size of tax incentives is a large factor in the decision).

Sixth, far flung subdivisions, partially completed or even just barely begun when the bust began, are empty, and even being bulldozed.  But then she veers off course, and cites Detroit:  “which experienced the largest depopulation of an industrial-age American city and in response bulldozed hundreds of homes and turned over much of its land to fields and farmland that lay there before.”  (Hello?  Detroit isn’t a suburb — and she’s got her facts wrong, anyway, as the plan to establish urban farming hasn’t materialized yet.) 

But she never really brings these different threads together. 

And while many people are drawn to urban-like areas, they still generally want to be able to load up their car at the grocery store, and keep an eye on the kids playing in the backyard when they get home. 

Besides, nearly all of the inhabitants of her book are upper-middle-class, at least; she writes about what she knows, in that regard, I suppose.  As fertility trends produce fewer and smaller upper-middle-class families and larger and more working class and poor families, and an ever-increasing percentage of immigrant families, it’ll be these groups that’ll drive housing trends and preferences, and we get nary a thought about them.

So I’m disappointed.  At least it’ll motivate me to head back to the library and see what else the library has in the adjacent call numbers.