Posted on 06/19/2008 2:35:55 PM PDT by blam
Americans migrate back to the cities
By Tom Leonard in New York
Last Updated: 2:23AM BST 19/06/2008
Americans are choosing to abandon the suburban sprawl in favour of a more comfortable, cheaper and greener life in the city centre.
Americans flocked to the suburbs after the WWII. Soaring energy prices and the sub-prime crisis are driving them back to the cities
The mass migration of America's middle classes from urban areas to the suburbs amounted to a demographic revolution in the years after the Second World War.
But the so-called "driveable suburb" is becoming increasingly unfeasible as soaring fuel costs make a long commute too expensive for many.
Higher energy prices are also having a disproportionate impact on bigger homes, such as those found in the suburbs, as they inevitably cost much more to heat in winter and cool in America's often fiercely hot summers.
The sub-prime mortgage crisis has accelerated this flight to the cities experts have christened it New Urbanism as property prices have particularly collapsed in more remote areas.
According to a poll for Reuters, about 10 per cent of Americans said they were considering moving closer to work while roughly the same percentage said they were thinking about getting a job closer to home.
John Zogby, a political pollster, said the findings added up to a "broad cultural change" which translated into millions of people considering a major transformation in their lives.
He said: "Low energy costs and the availability of autos helped fuel suburbanisation."
But as people concluded that high energy prices were here to stay, "this is now one of those big changes in our lives that requires nothing short of dramatic lifestyle changes," he said.
Even before the latest economic downturn, demand for urban living had been rekindled among two generations the so-called "baby boomers" in their fifties and "millenials", the latter born between the late 1970s and mid-1990s.
Both are already drifting away from the suburbs, the baby boomers because they want smaller homes and more accessible amenities, and the millenials to rebel against their cul-de-sac upbringing.
Transportation is now the second biggest household expense in the US after housing. Much of the new demand for city homes is in neighbourhoods close to light railway stations, hastening the move away from a car culture.
Some towns around cities have responded to this exodus by rejecting suburban status and working hard to reinvent their own centres.
Americans are not just reconsidering their living arrangements because of the latest economic downturn.
Nearly 39 per cent of those surveyed in the Reuters/Zogby poll said they were considering changing holiday plans, while 31 per cent plan fewer restaurant visits.
How nice...we were neighbors. ;)
Migrations back to the city per Agenda 21. It’s all written in the books on how and why.
Why? Harbors, skyscrapers that cost billions to erect, that employ millions, major existing corporations, etc. They might eek out a living in retail way inland, but all the big pay jobs for the most part are in OC and LA. Just the way it is.
But I agree, all who commute to sit at a key board all day, should be doing that from home, saving billions of gallons of gas a year, not to mention millions of man hours wasted commuting. Why this hasn't happen on a large scale is obscene.
>the ghetto is coming out to join you <
Again this is done under the guise of Agenda 21. People who are on welfare are given homes to live in, in middle class areas by the welfare office. This has the effect of lowering prices. It only takes one family of low class trailer trash moving onto your street to lower your home signifigantly. Bring in two families and those who are better off immediately move.
In five years a small shift of low class families into middle class neighborhoods can have a tremendous effect. Then demolishing public housing downtown and erecting large business offices in their place also makes way to continue the plan. In ten or fifteen years you will have accomplished the goal. Your City manager will be proud and the UN will be satisfied that everything is working smoothly, as planned.
This is part true, part projections. There have been successful projects to revitalize downtown areas. for instance Denver put in Coors Field for the baseball team in a rundown warehouse district, and encouraged bars and other hip places to locate nextdoor. This worked, and the real estate exploded in the area.
The projection part of it is kind of wishful thinking based on the real estate crash and the price of gas. In California, high real estate prices drove people out further and further away from the cities where the jobs were, sometimes over mountains and into farm towns. Now that the real estate has crashed, people can buy homes in the cities again, so why have a long and even more expensive commute to a house out in the farm towns when they can live close to work? The longer gas prices remain high, the more the outer bedroom communities will empty out, and the city centers near the jobs will fill up.
I don't know of any hard data yet, and its still early in the housing crash, but there are a few anecdotal stories that have been written about buyers looking for houses closer to work.
Home ownership is rare in England relative to the USA. More envy that will get them nowhere.
Ah, Fells Point, home of the infamous Frost family, of State Children's Health Insurance Program posterboy Graeme Frost.
Of course, young Graeme Frost and his siblings manage to avoid the "dreadful schools" by going to the exclusive, private Park School.
In the last twenty years thousands of Twin City residents have moved across the St. Croix river to Pierce County, Wisconsin moving it from one the least property expensive counties in Wisconsin to one of the most expensive. Just drive around for a while and the new half-million and more homes going up will astound you. And it's not stopping. Anyone who can afford to own a half million or million dollar plus home will not be put off by a dollar increase in the cost of gas.
“Nearly 39 per cent of those surveyed in the Reuters/Zogby poll said they were considering changing holiday plans, while 31 per cent plan fewer restaurant visits.”
Where can I find this Reuters/Zogby poll?
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.