‘New Urbanism’ Taking Over the Suburban American Dream

Livin’ in the suburbs ain’t what it used to be. Where once there was an endless parade of ‘little boxes on the hillside’ – with their flawless emerald carpets of grass, shiny SUVs in each driveway and children riding their bicycles along the sidewalks – now has become dotted with abandoned buildings, overgrown grass, graffiti and caution tape. American suburbs are starting to look like the alt-timeline version of Marty’s hometown in Back to the Future: desolate and crime-ridden.

The suburban American dream is dying, helped in no small part by the subprime mortgage crisis and perhaps set to be finished by ever-rising energy costs. While some may mourn this picturesque model of American living and all of the Norman Rockwell nostalgia that goes along with it, others are seeing a better future in urban living. What many people are finding is that urban life is the sustainable model of living that will help us cut back on pollution and preserve what’s left of our untouched land.

CNN has more:

This change can be witnessed in places like Atlanta, Georgia, Detroit, Michigan, and Dallas, Texas, said Leinberger, where once rundown downtowns are being revitalized by well-educated, young professionals who have no desire to live in a detached single family home typical of a suburbia where life is often centered around long commutes and cars.

Instead, they are looking for what Leinberger calls “walkable urbanism” — both small communities and big cities characterized by efficient mass transit systems and high density developments enabling residents to walk virtually everywhere for everything — from home to work to restaurants to movie theaters.

The so-called New Urbanism movement emerged in the mid-90s and has been steadily gaining momentum, especially with rising energy costs, environmental concerns and health problems associated with what Leinberger calls “drivable suburbanism” — a low-density built environment plan that emerged around the end of the World War II and has been the dominant design in the U.S. ever since.

Experts are anticipating a major structural change in the way we live, driven by the desire for walkable communities that keep us close to everything we need to live our daily lives – public transportation, employment, shopping and recreation. It’ll take a while for the country to catch up, since governmental regulations and zoning laws will have to be adjusted to allow for high-density developments, but after a while it’s expected that all of those suburban McMansions will get divided up into multi-family housing for the poor.

Many people will see this as gentrification of our urban centers, and fear that the spirit of many of our cities will be compromised. It generally does happen that as downtown real estate is purchased by developers to turn into condos or other high-end spaces, the colorful small businesses that once flourished are forced out. Hopefully, cities will make an effort to retain diversity in urban areas so that in the process of ‘new urbanism’, our cities don’t turn into gleaming re-arranged versions of the stereotypical homogenized suburban neighborhood.

Link [CNN]
Photo credit: Jim Zarroli/NPR

The Suburbs Are Turning Into Crime Ridden, Cookie Cutter Hellish Barrens

Remember the scene in Back to the Future II when Marty stumbles around his alternatively universed crime ridden suburban neighborhood, which is filled with empty houses and gang warfare? That is quickly becoming the reality in a many suburbs as the subprime mortgage crisis ripples out. There are neighborhoods today were 61% of the houses are empty and in foreclosure.

Formally middle and upper class homes are being rented out to shady (poor) people and are falling apart thanks to the cheap-as-possible construction methods of most conventional home builders. Neighborhoods with homes that used to sell for upwards of half a million dollars are turning into run down crime hives.

The Atlantic has a great piece titled “The Next Slum“ that explores this growing problem and the urban flight from from the suburbs. Here’s a snip:

Arthur C. Nelson, director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech, has looked carefully at trends in American demographics, construction, house prices, and consumer preferences. In 2006, using recent consumer research, housing supply data, and population growth rates, he modeled future demand for various types of housing. The results were bracing: Nelson forecasts a likely surplus of 22 million large-lot homes (houses built on a sixth of an acre or more) by 2025—that’s roughly 40 percent of the large-lot homes in existence today.

For 60 years, Americans have pushed steadily into the suburbs, transforming the landscape and (until recently) leaving cities behind. But today the pendulum is swinging back toward urban living, and there are many reasons to believe this swing will continue. As it does, many low-density suburbs and McMansion subdivisions, including some that are lovely and affluent today, may become what inner cities became in the 1960s and ’70s—slums characterized by poverty, crime, and decay.

Link [The Atlantic]

Photo credit: Flickr user tlindenbaum, faux tilt shift added with Photoshop