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Urban decay and decline, overgrown lawns and run-down housing, gang violence and heavy drug trafficking…in places like Gwinnett County? It is quite possible and, in fact, likely to happen.
Anybody who has ever visited Western Europe (and pays attention to such things) knows that the urbanization pattern on much of the Old Continent is essentially the polar opposite of our model here in the States. Broadly speaking, since the 1950’s American inner-cities have grown poorer and poorer while becoming surrounded by a mesh of increasingly expansive and increasingly prosperous suburbia. Downtown areas and typically adjacent “arts/cultural districts” have fared relatively well, but the inner-cities as a whole have been decimated by declining tax bases, drugs, and a whole host of other societal ills. In Europe, on the other hand, most of the large “inner-cities” never died. When rioting broke out among marginalized youth in France several years ago, it did not occur in the Latin Quarter or on the Champs-Élysées; it happened in suburbs outside of the city proper of Paris such as Clichy-sous-Bois. I still remember traveling to the Paris airport (Charles-de-Gaulle) for the first time in 2004; it is only once one is outside of the boulevard périphérique and heading through Paris’s northern banlieue that urban blight becomes painfully apparent - and boy does it become quite apparent (I’d feel about as safe venturing alone through some of those suburbs outside of Paris as I would taking a midnight stroll down Compton Boulevard.) Of course, just as in all other large cities there is social stratification and inequality in the city proper of Paris, with the eastern arrondissements such as the 20th and 11th generally less educated, poorer, and more heavy in immigrants than those on the western side of the city such as the 16th and the 17th. But by and large the city of Paris intra muros remains rich and relatively conservative as compared to much of its immediate suburbia.
Well, throw aside those old perceptions. They’re almost certainly about to change, radically. Not so much in Europe, but there is good reason to believe that the model here in the United States will significantly shift over the next 40 years. In some instances, it already has.
Wait, you may say. Aren’t the American and European models so fundamentally different because of differing policy philosophies and histories? You would be partially correct in that analysis. Post-war America needed room to expand and accommodate the Baby Boom, and the inner cities of places such as Cleveland and Pittsburgh were already packed to the brim; hence, suburbs such as Levittown popped up while the government decimated many urban neighborhoods building freeways to accommodate the (mostly white) families who moved to these new areas but still generally worked in the urban core. Our ethos was one of expansion and consumption, not of conservation, and we thus kept fuel taxes low, relegated public transportation systems to the garbage bin, and focused on building ever-larger and ever-faster freeway systems. Europe, on the other hand, was largely bombed to smithereens in the immediate Post-war period. Demographic pressures there were not nearly as pronounced as here, and their economies did not expand at anything approaching the pace of ours here in the States. In fact, many European countries were forced to import foreigners to help reconstruct destroyed infrastructure – and these foreigners, not upwardly middle class native families, were often the ones who ended up in lower quality housing on the outskirts of the inner cities. Europe built freeways in the Post-war period, but the smaller, more densely packed cities there facilitated the proliferation of efficient public transportation systems, and governments there grew to support policies that limited petroleum use by imposing high taxes (particularly after the OPEC oil embargo of the 1970’s.) So yes, in those ways the European and American systems are indeed fundamentally different.
But old trends do not always hold steady.
I’m hardly the first person to make note of fundamental changes in our economy and society that threaten to make American suburbs look much more like their European counterparts – for example, this article from March 2008 provides an excellent overview of the usual talking points on this issue. Exactly what changes could turn now prosperous American suburban areas into decaying slums? There are several:
1. High gas prices: Anybody who believes that our current sub-$2.50/gallon gas prices are permanent is either a total idiot, on an incredibly powerful controlled substance, or a total idiot on an incredibly powerful controlled substance. $6/gallon gas is in our near future – I wouldn’t rule it out, in fact, for summer 2009 when the travel season kicks into high gear (unless the economy continues to deteriorate and we see more demand destruction.) Commuting daily 40 miles each way from near-exurban Denton, Texas to downtown Dallas was quite feasible back when gas was under $1/gallon. When gas is at $6/gallon, a large vehicle averaging 10 miles-per-gallon in heavy traffic would consume $48/day making this 80 mile round trip. Working 20 days per month, this translates into a total monthly gas bill of an astounding $960 just for commuting (over $11,500 yearly) – not even counting trips to the stores, dropping the kids off, and any other incidental travel. For an average family, such a bill would constitute nearly a fourth of total annual income. While a Denton to Dallas trip may be on the far-end of an average daily commute, it is not at all uncommon for a person to commute 50 miles round trip each day, and for a family with two cars and both adults making this trip, the round trip daily commute averaging 10 mpg (100 miles) would translate to $60 daily, $1,200 monthly. People will also start to tire of communities where something as simple as going to a neighborhood Blockbuster requires a 5 mile automobile trip. Consequently, demand for living in exurban and far-flung suburban communities will drop like a rock. Demand for living inside and close to the city, generally falling for years, will rebound, and it will be the upper middle class and affluent who can most afford this luxury. This in fact is already occurring – while high-rise condos inside downtown Atlanta and downtown Los Angeles would have been unthinkable as recently as the 1980’s, projects such as those are now proliferating.
2. Traffic congestion: Let’s assume that a brilliant engineer somewhere comes up with an easily affordable car that requires absolutely no gasoline at all and has none of the performance or range problems that have plagued other futuristic vehicles. People abandon their old gas-guzzling vehicles in droves and adopt this lovely new vehicle. So we’ve now solved the problem of families spending in excess of $10,000 per year just to commute from their faraway suburb into the city. But don’t celebrate just yet – this still does absolutely nothing to alleviate the absolute hell of sitting in traffic for hours on the 405 in Los Angeles, or Interstate 85 in Atlanta, or Interstate 45 in Houston, or Interstate 95 in Washington DC, or…well, you get the point. Traffic congestion has continually grown worse and worse over the last several decades, even as we’ve built progressively larger freeways and interchanges to accommodate the constant influx of more vehicles. Economists who study these things estimate that we lose billions in wasted productivity each year sitting in traffic; studies have shown that suburban residents are fatter and more prone to health problems than urban denizens because they spend so much of their time sitting in traffic moving at 5 miles per hour. And people are, frankly, getting sick and tired of having to deal with traffic and gridlock. I fully expect to see more and more people – particularly empty-nesters – who are willing to trade in large suburban houses for smaller ones close to the urban core in order to avoid the hellish traffic gridlock that comes with life in suburbia.
3. The Rise of the Creative Class: Richard Florida, one of my favorite authors and demographers, documents the rise of a new “class” in America and elsewhere dominated by fields that require thinking and creativity (i.e. computer engineers, scientists, attorneys, etc.) As we have experienced waves and waves of deindustrialization coupled with rapid increases in educational attainment, this “creative class” has grown from a marginal percentage of our society to a large and rapidly expanding group. There are many properties that he has observed among members of this class, but one of the most important ones is that they (generally) thrive in dense, walkable, urban environments. They want to be able to go from home to a neighborhood coffee shop to a gay bar to a bookstore and back home again without driving 96 miles in the process. They, consequently, have tended to avoid far-flung suburbs like Plano, Texas and Naperville, Illinois, preferring instead to live either inside the city or very close to it. And they have been one of the most prominent groups in terms of gentrifying run-down inner city neighborhoods. This is the high-income, highly-educated class of the future, and they are largely eschewing traditional suburbia.
4. Sustainability: This one doesn’t require much of an explanation. Environmentally, there have been few things worse than auto-dependent suburbs. But even if we ignore the incredibly negative environmental impact of sprawling suburbs, the simple truth is that Earth does not provide us with an infinite amount of land around each and every one of our cities. Places such as Orange County, California and Broward County, Florida face the inconvenient reality of having no more developable land. Yet, those are still two counties where demand for residential units will remain high for decades. Since Broward and Orange counties simply do not have physical room left to build any more large single-family suburban developments, they are going to be forced to resort to urban infill projects and high-density growth in the urban core; the proliferation of high-rise developments in Santa Ana and Fort Lauderdale are a testament to this reality.
5. And in sum, “Perpetual Overbuild”: Not just “traditional overbuild”, which was exacerbated by the real estate boom when the laws of demand and supply lost all apparent connection to the real estate market. Places like Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Miami do have a glut of cookie cutter suburban tract homes that will not be sold off for many, many years, even given the boom in the Sun Belt. In the long term, however, I believe that all of the factors above will collectively contribute to a fundamental decline in demand for suburban housing, to an extent that “super-suburban” communities such as Mesa, Arizona might remain “perpetually overbuilt”, existing with a stock of housing that exceeds demand far into the future because people no longer find these communities desirable places to live, drawing increasingly poorer and less educated residents to them. The communities most vulnerable to falling into this scenario and becoming “slumburbs” are those low-density undifferentiated bedroom communities that are farthest removed from the urban core. Let me repeat that because it is important: the suburbs that will fall the hardest and are the best “potential slums” are those suburbs that are typical “bedroom communities” and the farthest isolated from the urban core. They are cookie cutter places without a soul such as Homestead, Florida and Henderson, Nevada; in short, they are places that lack any meaningful economic base other than big box stores, feature entire neighborhoods where all of the houses look alike, were generally egregiously overbuilt during the boom, and often feature no public transportation while being many miles away from the urban core and thus imposing a high degree of dependence on the automobile. I am hard-pressed to think of a better example of a current suburb (and likely future slum) than Homestead, Florida; it in fact meets every criteria presented here. After Hurricane Andrew nearly wiped this part of south Miami-Dade County off of the map in 1992, it was rebuilt as a sprawling bedroom community (except that unlike most bedroom communities, it has the minority-majority orientation that is typical of South Florida.) The city consists of dozens and dozens of undifferentiated neighborhoods full of cookie cutter sprawl; other than fast food and big box stores, there is virtually no economic base (there are currently plans underway for a commercial park, though this is hardly an economic diversity panacea.) Although it is in Miami-Dade County, the community (the last populated place one passes through before hitting the Keys) is isolated and about 35 miles from downtown Miami; Homestead, in fact, is so far removed from the urban core that a large number of communities in another county entirely – Broward – are a far more reasonable commute for those who work in Miami. The community was dramatically overbuilt during the real estate boom, and many stock houses there that went for more than $400K in 2006 are now on the market for under $200K. Most noticeably of all, you could argue that Homestead has already begun to demonstrate the attributes of a slumburb: the median household income in Homestead of $30,859 is far less than the overall Miami-Dade County median of $41,943, and while 25.7% of Miami-Dade County residents over age 25 have an undergrad BS/BA degree or higher, only 14.2% of Homestead residents have reached this level of educational attainment. When high-income, highly educated citizens land a job in Miami, Homestead is most assuredly not on their radar screen in terms of places to live – they’ll either look up the road at Broward County, or opt for places such as Coral Gables, Pinecrest, Aventura, or Miami Beach. Perhaps we can consider Homestead an “early stage” slumburb.
So overall, I don’t envision an exactly bright future for many of today’s suburbs. However, there are two categories of suburban communities that I believe will escape this bleak future entirely unscathed and remain prosperous well into the future. They are not mutually exclusive categories (i.e., some suburbs fit into both categories), and they are:
1. Edge Cities: An Edge City is like porn; nobody can precisely “define” it, but you know one when you see it. In general, Edge Cities are large suburban communities (often incorporated cities) marked by high growth and a significant business and entertainment/cultural presence. That last element is the key – Edge Cities are not simply “bedroom communities” that empty out during the day as nearly all residents commute elsewhere, and nor are residents required to go outside of the Edge City for entertainment and cultural venues. Edge Cities could not exist without the larger urban area of which they are part, but residents in Edge Cities can go for entire months, meeting all of their needs, without having to visit the urban core. These communities are highly desirable and, consequently, typically tend to attract high-income and highly educated residents, which in turn acts as part of an autocatalytic cycle by attracting even more businesses to locate there. The most “ideal” example of an Edge City that I have personally visited is The Woodlands, Texas. The Woodlands is about 35 miles north of downtown Houston, mostly in Montgomery County although some new neighborhoods will likely extend into Harris County. It has a population of nearly 90,000 and is a master-planned community. The Woodlands Town Center features numerous entertainment venues, it is home to a large regional-scale mall, and there is a significant and growing corporate presence in the area; one large energy sector corporation is actually based in the area. It is also known as one of the most affluent areas of the entire Houston metro area; the median household income there is around $90,000, and some 56.4% of the residents over 25 have a college degree (the national figure is 27%.) Suburban communities like The Woodlands, I predict, will never become future slumburbs.
2. Quality of Life ‘Burbs (QolBurbs): Sometimes an area can provide its residents with a certain “quality of life” that is hard to reproduce elsewhere. According to Richard Florida, this is why the rise of the creative class will make location more important in the future, not less important. I, personally, am a member of the creative class who provides a perfect example of this trend. Location to me is enormously important; I entirely reject the idea that people should simply “go wherever the work-related opportunities are.” I would have no hesitation at all in firmly rejecting a job that paid $250,000 but required me to live in Cleveland long-term; Cleveland simply cannot provide the type of quality of life that I demand, and there is in fact no amount of money that could make up for that (except, perhaps, some fantasy job that would make me so fabulously wealthy in one year that I could retire at age 22 back to a place like Florida.) There are often such places within a metro area and I call them “quality of life ‘burbs”, or “QolBurbs” for short (pronounced “call-burbs.”) These areas typically combine high-quality housing, natural beauty, great climate, numerous outdoor activities and close proximity to the urban core – and as one would expect given those attributes, they are generally highly educated, affluent areas. The quintessential QolBurb is Marin County, California. It is a stunningly beautiful place, and if it does not have the downright best climate in the world, it is very near the top in that category. Unlike far-flung suburbs such as Homestead, it is very close to the urban core of San Francisco. Residents in Marin County have long resisted cookie cutter sprawl, and the area has some of the best quality (and most expensive!) housing in the nation. Recreational activities are plentiful. Of course, Marin County is extremely wealthy and extremely highly educated. QolBurbs such as Marin County, I predict, will also never decline.
As hard as it may be to believe, all evidence would seem to suggest that American suburbs as we know them are quite possibly in their waning years. For those of us who are long-standing critics of suburbia, this comes as nearly entirely good news. To us, the idea of once again thriving inner cities – filled with condos, storefront shops, walkable neighborhoods with vibrant nightlife and pedestrian traffic well into the night – is infinitely more appealing than downtown areas that die off at 5 PM and all-white suburban cul-de-sacs that don’t even have sidewalks. But there is no denying that for many – particularly average middle-class citizens – this could prove to be a painful transition.
Not the last time that I’ll write on this subject – it is, after all, nothing less than one of the most critical trends in the rapidly evolving future version of our country.
Anybody who has ever visited Western Europe (and pays attention to such things) knows that the urbanization pattern on much of the Old Continent is essentially the polar opposite of our model here in the States. Broadly speaking, since the 1950’s American inner-cities have grown poorer and poorer while becoming surrounded by a mesh of increasingly expansive and increasingly prosperous suburbia. Downtown areas and typically adjacent “arts/cultural districts” have fared relatively well, but the inner-cities as a whole have been decimated by declining tax bases, drugs, and a whole host of other societal ills. In Europe, on the other hand, most of the large “inner-cities” never died. When rioting broke out among marginalized youth in France several years ago, it did not occur in the Latin Quarter or on the Champs-Élysées; it happened in suburbs outside of the city proper of Paris such as Clichy-sous-Bois. I still remember traveling to the Paris airport (Charles-de-Gaulle) for the first time in 2004; it is only once one is outside of the boulevard périphérique and heading through Paris’s northern banlieue that urban blight becomes painfully apparent - and boy does it become quite apparent (I’d feel about as safe venturing alone through some of those suburbs outside of Paris as I would taking a midnight stroll down Compton Boulevard.) Of course, just as in all other large cities there is social stratification and inequality in the city proper of Paris, with the eastern arrondissements such as the 20th and 11th generally less educated, poorer, and more heavy in immigrants than those on the western side of the city such as the 16th and the 17th. But by and large the city of Paris intra muros remains rich and relatively conservative as compared to much of its immediate suburbia.
Well, throw aside those old perceptions. They’re almost certainly about to change, radically. Not so much in Europe, but there is good reason to believe that the model here in the United States will significantly shift over the next 40 years. In some instances, it already has.
Wait, you may say. Aren’t the American and European models so fundamentally different because of differing policy philosophies and histories? You would be partially correct in that analysis. Post-war America needed room to expand and accommodate the Baby Boom, and the inner cities of places such as Cleveland and Pittsburgh were already packed to the brim; hence, suburbs such as Levittown popped up while the government decimated many urban neighborhoods building freeways to accommodate the (mostly white) families who moved to these new areas but still generally worked in the urban core. Our ethos was one of expansion and consumption, not of conservation, and we thus kept fuel taxes low, relegated public transportation systems to the garbage bin, and focused on building ever-larger and ever-faster freeway systems. Europe, on the other hand, was largely bombed to smithereens in the immediate Post-war period. Demographic pressures there were not nearly as pronounced as here, and their economies did not expand at anything approaching the pace of ours here in the States. In fact, many European countries were forced to import foreigners to help reconstruct destroyed infrastructure – and these foreigners, not upwardly middle class native families, were often the ones who ended up in lower quality housing on the outskirts of the inner cities. Europe built freeways in the Post-war period, but the smaller, more densely packed cities there facilitated the proliferation of efficient public transportation systems, and governments there grew to support policies that limited petroleum use by imposing high taxes (particularly after the OPEC oil embargo of the 1970’s.) So yes, in those ways the European and American systems are indeed fundamentally different.
But old trends do not always hold steady.
I’m hardly the first person to make note of fundamental changes in our economy and society that threaten to make American suburbs look much more like their European counterparts – for example, this article from March 2008 provides an excellent overview of the usual talking points on this issue. Exactly what changes could turn now prosperous American suburban areas into decaying slums? There are several:
1. High gas prices: Anybody who believes that our current sub-$2.50/gallon gas prices are permanent is either a total idiot, on an incredibly powerful controlled substance, or a total idiot on an incredibly powerful controlled substance. $6/gallon gas is in our near future – I wouldn’t rule it out, in fact, for summer 2009 when the travel season kicks into high gear (unless the economy continues to deteriorate and we see more demand destruction.) Commuting daily 40 miles each way from near-exurban Denton, Texas to downtown Dallas was quite feasible back when gas was under $1/gallon. When gas is at $6/gallon, a large vehicle averaging 10 miles-per-gallon in heavy traffic would consume $48/day making this 80 mile round trip. Working 20 days per month, this translates into a total monthly gas bill of an astounding $960 just for commuting (over $11,500 yearly) – not even counting trips to the stores, dropping the kids off, and any other incidental travel. For an average family, such a bill would constitute nearly a fourth of total annual income. While a Denton to Dallas trip may be on the far-end of an average daily commute, it is not at all uncommon for a person to commute 50 miles round trip each day, and for a family with two cars and both adults making this trip, the round trip daily commute averaging 10 mpg (100 miles) would translate to $60 daily, $1,200 monthly. People will also start to tire of communities where something as simple as going to a neighborhood Blockbuster requires a 5 mile automobile trip. Consequently, demand for living in exurban and far-flung suburban communities will drop like a rock. Demand for living inside and close to the city, generally falling for years, will rebound, and it will be the upper middle class and affluent who can most afford this luxury. This in fact is already occurring – while high-rise condos inside downtown Atlanta and downtown Los Angeles would have been unthinkable as recently as the 1980’s, projects such as those are now proliferating.
2. Traffic congestion: Let’s assume that a brilliant engineer somewhere comes up with an easily affordable car that requires absolutely no gasoline at all and has none of the performance or range problems that have plagued other futuristic vehicles. People abandon their old gas-guzzling vehicles in droves and adopt this lovely new vehicle. So we’ve now solved the problem of families spending in excess of $10,000 per year just to commute from their faraway suburb into the city. But don’t celebrate just yet – this still does absolutely nothing to alleviate the absolute hell of sitting in traffic for hours on the 405 in Los Angeles, or Interstate 85 in Atlanta, or Interstate 45 in Houston, or Interstate 95 in Washington DC, or…well, you get the point. Traffic congestion has continually grown worse and worse over the last several decades, even as we’ve built progressively larger freeways and interchanges to accommodate the constant influx of more vehicles. Economists who study these things estimate that we lose billions in wasted productivity each year sitting in traffic; studies have shown that suburban residents are fatter and more prone to health problems than urban denizens because they spend so much of their time sitting in traffic moving at 5 miles per hour. And people are, frankly, getting sick and tired of having to deal with traffic and gridlock. I fully expect to see more and more people – particularly empty-nesters – who are willing to trade in large suburban houses for smaller ones close to the urban core in order to avoid the hellish traffic gridlock that comes with life in suburbia.
3. The Rise of the Creative Class: Richard Florida, one of my favorite authors and demographers, documents the rise of a new “class” in America and elsewhere dominated by fields that require thinking and creativity (i.e. computer engineers, scientists, attorneys, etc.) As we have experienced waves and waves of deindustrialization coupled with rapid increases in educational attainment, this “creative class” has grown from a marginal percentage of our society to a large and rapidly expanding group. There are many properties that he has observed among members of this class, but one of the most important ones is that they (generally) thrive in dense, walkable, urban environments. They want to be able to go from home to a neighborhood coffee shop to a gay bar to a bookstore and back home again without driving 96 miles in the process. They, consequently, have tended to avoid far-flung suburbs like Plano, Texas and Naperville, Illinois, preferring instead to live either inside the city or very close to it. And they have been one of the most prominent groups in terms of gentrifying run-down inner city neighborhoods. This is the high-income, highly-educated class of the future, and they are largely eschewing traditional suburbia.
4. Sustainability: This one doesn’t require much of an explanation. Environmentally, there have been few things worse than auto-dependent suburbs. But even if we ignore the incredibly negative environmental impact of sprawling suburbs, the simple truth is that Earth does not provide us with an infinite amount of land around each and every one of our cities. Places such as Orange County, California and Broward County, Florida face the inconvenient reality of having no more developable land. Yet, those are still two counties where demand for residential units will remain high for decades. Since Broward and Orange counties simply do not have physical room left to build any more large single-family suburban developments, they are going to be forced to resort to urban infill projects and high-density growth in the urban core; the proliferation of high-rise developments in Santa Ana and Fort Lauderdale are a testament to this reality.
5. And in sum, “Perpetual Overbuild”: Not just “traditional overbuild”, which was exacerbated by the real estate boom when the laws of demand and supply lost all apparent connection to the real estate market. Places like Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Miami do have a glut of cookie cutter suburban tract homes that will not be sold off for many, many years, even given the boom in the Sun Belt. In the long term, however, I believe that all of the factors above will collectively contribute to a fundamental decline in demand for suburban housing, to an extent that “super-suburban” communities such as Mesa, Arizona might remain “perpetually overbuilt”, existing with a stock of housing that exceeds demand far into the future because people no longer find these communities desirable places to live, drawing increasingly poorer and less educated residents to them. The communities most vulnerable to falling into this scenario and becoming “slumburbs” are those low-density undifferentiated bedroom communities that are farthest removed from the urban core. Let me repeat that because it is important: the suburbs that will fall the hardest and are the best “potential slums” are those suburbs that are typical “bedroom communities” and the farthest isolated from the urban core. They are cookie cutter places without a soul such as Homestead, Florida and Henderson, Nevada; in short, they are places that lack any meaningful economic base other than big box stores, feature entire neighborhoods where all of the houses look alike, were generally egregiously overbuilt during the boom, and often feature no public transportation while being many miles away from the urban core and thus imposing a high degree of dependence on the automobile. I am hard-pressed to think of a better example of a current suburb (and likely future slum) than Homestead, Florida; it in fact meets every criteria presented here. After Hurricane Andrew nearly wiped this part of south Miami-Dade County off of the map in 1992, it was rebuilt as a sprawling bedroom community (except that unlike most bedroom communities, it has the minority-majority orientation that is typical of South Florida.) The city consists of dozens and dozens of undifferentiated neighborhoods full of cookie cutter sprawl; other than fast food and big box stores, there is virtually no economic base (there are currently plans underway for a commercial park, though this is hardly an economic diversity panacea.) Although it is in Miami-Dade County, the community (the last populated place one passes through before hitting the Keys) is isolated and about 35 miles from downtown Miami; Homestead, in fact, is so far removed from the urban core that a large number of communities in another county entirely – Broward – are a far more reasonable commute for those who work in Miami. The community was dramatically overbuilt during the real estate boom, and many stock houses there that went for more than $400K in 2006 are now on the market for under $200K. Most noticeably of all, you could argue that Homestead has already begun to demonstrate the attributes of a slumburb: the median household income in Homestead of $30,859 is far less than the overall Miami-Dade County median of $41,943, and while 25.7% of Miami-Dade County residents over age 25 have an undergrad BS/BA degree or higher, only 14.2% of Homestead residents have reached this level of educational attainment. When high-income, highly educated citizens land a job in Miami, Homestead is most assuredly not on their radar screen in terms of places to live – they’ll either look up the road at Broward County, or opt for places such as Coral Gables, Pinecrest, Aventura, or Miami Beach. Perhaps we can consider Homestead an “early stage” slumburb.
So overall, I don’t envision an exactly bright future for many of today’s suburbs. However, there are two categories of suburban communities that I believe will escape this bleak future entirely unscathed and remain prosperous well into the future. They are not mutually exclusive categories (i.e., some suburbs fit into both categories), and they are:
1. Edge Cities: An Edge City is like porn; nobody can precisely “define” it, but you know one when you see it. In general, Edge Cities are large suburban communities (often incorporated cities) marked by high growth and a significant business and entertainment/cultural presence. That last element is the key – Edge Cities are not simply “bedroom communities” that empty out during the day as nearly all residents commute elsewhere, and nor are residents required to go outside of the Edge City for entertainment and cultural venues. Edge Cities could not exist without the larger urban area of which they are part, but residents in Edge Cities can go for entire months, meeting all of their needs, without having to visit the urban core. These communities are highly desirable and, consequently, typically tend to attract high-income and highly educated residents, which in turn acts as part of an autocatalytic cycle by attracting even more businesses to locate there. The most “ideal” example of an Edge City that I have personally visited is The Woodlands, Texas. The Woodlands is about 35 miles north of downtown Houston, mostly in Montgomery County although some new neighborhoods will likely extend into Harris County. It has a population of nearly 90,000 and is a master-planned community. The Woodlands Town Center features numerous entertainment venues, it is home to a large regional-scale mall, and there is a significant and growing corporate presence in the area; one large energy sector corporation is actually based in the area. It is also known as one of the most affluent areas of the entire Houston metro area; the median household income there is around $90,000, and some 56.4% of the residents over 25 have a college degree (the national figure is 27%.) Suburban communities like The Woodlands, I predict, will never become future slumburbs.
2. Quality of Life ‘Burbs (QolBurbs): Sometimes an area can provide its residents with a certain “quality of life” that is hard to reproduce elsewhere. According to Richard Florida, this is why the rise of the creative class will make location more important in the future, not less important. I, personally, am a member of the creative class who provides a perfect example of this trend. Location to me is enormously important; I entirely reject the idea that people should simply “go wherever the work-related opportunities are.” I would have no hesitation at all in firmly rejecting a job that paid $250,000 but required me to live in Cleveland long-term; Cleveland simply cannot provide the type of quality of life that I demand, and there is in fact no amount of money that could make up for that (except, perhaps, some fantasy job that would make me so fabulously wealthy in one year that I could retire at age 22 back to a place like Florida.) There are often such places within a metro area and I call them “quality of life ‘burbs”, or “QolBurbs” for short (pronounced “call-burbs.”) These areas typically combine high-quality housing, natural beauty, great climate, numerous outdoor activities and close proximity to the urban core – and as one would expect given those attributes, they are generally highly educated, affluent areas. The quintessential QolBurb is Marin County, California. It is a stunningly beautiful place, and if it does not have the downright best climate in the world, it is very near the top in that category. Unlike far-flung suburbs such as Homestead, it is very close to the urban core of San Francisco. Residents in Marin County have long resisted cookie cutter sprawl, and the area has some of the best quality (and most expensive!) housing in the nation. Recreational activities are plentiful. Of course, Marin County is extremely wealthy and extremely highly educated. QolBurbs such as Marin County, I predict, will also never decline.
As hard as it may be to believe, all evidence would seem to suggest that American suburbs as we know them are quite possibly in their waning years. For those of us who are long-standing critics of suburbia, this comes as nearly entirely good news. To us, the idea of once again thriving inner cities – filled with condos, storefront shops, walkable neighborhoods with vibrant nightlife and pedestrian traffic well into the night – is infinitely more appealing than downtown areas that die off at 5 PM and all-white suburban cul-de-sacs that don’t even have sidewalks. But there is no denying that for many – particularly average middle-class citizens – this could prove to be a painful transition.
Not the last time that I’ll write on this subject – it is, after all, nothing less than one of the most critical trends in the rapidly evolving future version of our country.
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