Posted on 11/19/2017 12:33:41 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Just a decade ago, in the midst of the financial crisis, suburbia’s future seemed perilous, with experts claiming that many suburban tracks were about to become “the next slums.” The head of the Department of Housing and Urban Development proclaimed that “sprawl” was now doomed, and people were “headed back to the city.”
This story reflected strong revivals of many core cities, and deep-seated pain in many suburban markets. Yet today, less than a decade later, as we argue in the new book that we co-edited, “Infinite Suburbia,” the periphery remains the dominant, and fastest growing, part of the American landscape.
This is not just occurring in the United States. In many other countries, as NYU’s Solly Angel has pointed out, growth inevitably means “spreading out” toward the periphery, with lower densities, where housing is often cheaper, and, in many cases, families find a better option than those presented by even the most dynamic core cities.....
(Excerpt) Read more at ocregister.com ...
anyone who invests in be outer ring exurbs is fighting history.
the inner ring suburbs are very different.
this article coflates the 2 . big mistake
If people were headed back to the cities, which I doubt, the Obama regime changed that trend for a generation. Ask those who watched #BlackThugsMatter express themselves in Ferguson, Baltimore, . . .
Antifa? BLM? Democrats? Nope. I don't want to live near thugs and terrorists.
Any writer who mistakes “tracks” for “tracts” doesn’t have much to work with.
“....with experts claiming that many suburban tracks were about to become “the next slums.”
I believe that should be “suburban TRACTS,” as in “tracts of real estate.
Whenever liberals take over an area and befoul it with high crime, high taxes, and bad school systems, people will make the economic and logical choices to move to safer, cleaner, and more pleasant areas. Right now those are the suburbs and exurbs. And for 50+ years libtards have been crying about people moving out of the cities.
There are valid reasons why people have left most central cities to the filthy rich and the just plain filthy.
Save this.
How much of that was the equivalent of push polling. The left hated the idea of people moving away from them and towards more personal freedom, so they were pushing the "new urbanism". All the cool hipsters have downtown lofts so you should want to live there too. But even thise cool hipsters can see the problem with urban living if they want to raise kids - attending the local public school or even playing outside are impossible.
You can live in a city or you can raise a family, but it is crazy to raise a family in one of these urban cesspools.
The problem I see it is too many housing tracts with disposable homes. There are too many homes that can’t last two generations without a significant rebuild. Certain suburbs therefore become blighted by property that is not renovated for the next 50 years.
Density also plays into it, but that is a book long issue.
"...tracks and tracts..."
“The problem I see it is too many housing tracts with disposable homes.”
You raise a very important point. Apart from the rampant lawlessness and utter savagery in “da hood”, the cities are ringed with older suburbs that are full of “chicken shack” housing that is now falling apart. These areas are being filled with black section 8 housing welfare recipients and other layabout human detritus that cannot sustain viable communities. The white exodus thus seeks out areas even further removed from our collapsing urban and suburban cores. But the article is wrong. Eventually you will run out of usable land altogether. And the costs of carrying the burden of chaotic cities will become overwhelming and result in national bankruptcy.
I had a buddy, who as a young teen from wartime Netherlands, rode the train across the US to California with his dad in ‘48.
He was impressed by what he saw. His dad was surprised that “America was such a poor country.” He was confused by his dad’s assessment and questioned it. His dad explained that it appeared all Americans lived in frame houses, not stone or even composition brick. In Europe only the poorest lived in frame houses as they would not last for future generations of the family.
>>Eventually you will run out of usable land altogether.
In certain geographies, like the SF Bay Area, this is no doubt true. Out in flyover country, not so much. Places like Dallas, Atlanta, Nashville, and Charlotte have plenty of room for growth.
This country is very far away from using up available land.
The current trend in the US is for population to cluster along the two coasts while the interior of the country has experienced depopulation.
The same thing has happened to the French countryside where towns that have been in existence since medieval times are dying.
All eight of my great grand parents left Europe because they happened to be younger siblings of the MEN who inherited those stone houses. The women had to either marry a "stone house inheritor", or leave, as well. The process of passing on a family's wealth to future generations only worked when the family was VERY rich, or when few of the children survived childhood.
It was his perception at the time and gives an interesting insight, as does yours.
I spent my career as a builder but not a residential builder. I see residential construction much like this old Dutchman — transient.
“I believe that should be “suburban TRACTS,” as in “tracts of real estate.”
Or as in “huge tracts of land”.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.