And so what we are seeing in America seems to be a shift to more European model, of fantastically wealthy cities and increasingly–slummy suburbs
It's hard not to notice the trend: inner cities get gentrified, people from the slums relocate to cheaper suburbs where they can recreate the problems of the inner city. Meanwhile, working and middle class Americans who can't afford to relocate to the high-end gentrified districts get their neighborhoods destroyed by people from the city slums.
To buy my 275K house in Apex NC it will now cost you 450-525K. I’m sitting on my suburban investment!-)
This has moving in this direction for approx. 30 years. It is not surprise to people who have been paying attention. The suburbs will be the new ghettos.
The Great Inversion and the Future of the American City
http://www.amazon.com/Great-Inversion-Future-American-City/dp/0307474372
> [suburbs] are places scrubbed of physical danger at the cost of mediocrity, soulless consumerism, and despair. Further, the suburbs are now widely-condemned as the moral and policy expression of racism; created to accommodate white flight and to further impoverish blacks.
What a load.
The suburbs are the slums of the future.
They are only getting older, they were built poorly and quickly to begin with and wont age well. They have low ceilings are were built too close together with almost no character or some character repeated 1000 times over within a few blocks.
Here we clearly see an example of a DEMOCRAT governor and decades of a democrat supermajority legislature destroying business.
Suburbia or not doesn’t matter. This is hardly an example of the point the article is trying to make. Liberal policy is at fault here.
In 2015 they announced they were leaving that HQ and would build a new one in downtown Seattle. The reason? The once mighty brick and mortar forest products is now essentially a financial business managing only forest lands as a REIT. They said a metropolitan city is where the talent is. The new building will have only 40 or so parking spaces. Who knows how many bike racks. I doubt few working there will be family people, rather than childless urban people.
They’re conflating two distinct things here: businesses moving back to the cities, and residents. I live on the San Francisco Peninsula, in between “the City” and the Silicon Valley. For all the hype about how vibrant the economy in San Francisco is, everyday in the morning there is a massive stream of traffic heading south out of the City towards the suburban Silicon Valley. Real estate in the City is crazy, but in relative terms, it’s worse in places like Palo Alto.
Yep, I grew up in blue collar suburb and have seen it change from a bedroom community to being peppered with "section 8" apartments and flooded with cheap heroin from Mexico.
It’s the age and condition of the houses and buildings.
1st ring suburbs are now pretty old and are falling apart.
3rd ring suburbs still have new developments being built and are rather expensive.
Inner city areas that have been torn down and replaced or have been totally remodeled are also pretty expensive.
Apparently, all of these people with millions to throw around in elections aren’t being taxed NEARLY enough. I guess this will be one of the many things they can expect to lose - like “Foundation” loopholes hidden by tax-exempt status, money in overseas accounts, etc.
No wonder they are all freaking out. They may have to end up paying their actual fair share - not what they put on paper to the IRS.
Suburbs are white and Obama is determined to destroy them by importing minority poor through his proposed affirmative housing Hud rules.
the high-carbon lifestyle of the suburbs / the lower-carbon lifestyle of mass-transport living in big cities
This libtard lie can be easily disproven simply by price, which is an extremely accurate proxy for total energy consumption. If government transportation were at all energy efficient the government wouldn't have to pay 90% of the fare cost to get people to ride it.
The reason it costs thousands of dollars per month to rent a tiny apartment in a big city is because the energy consumption and pollution output to build and maintain vertical steel and concrete real estate is off the charts.
The real reason they want to herd us into the cities is because the higher the population density, the more socialist the voters. This is a leftist plot by the Democrat Central Planning Committee. If not for massive third world immigration the Democrat party would have already gone extinct.
The reason G.E.went to Boston is the same reason Lockeed-Martin-Sikorsky will leave as well as General Dynamix Dlectric Boat.
The Taxes are too damned high.No amount of state subsidies will keep those companies in Connecticut,and Connecticut can’t afford it (Subsidies)any longer.
The governor,Dannel Malloy just reported that the States budget is blown and their finally going to have to cut the number of highly paid employees.
The State has also found that the income tax is out of balance and they’re not collecting as much from the high income people because the stock markets are terrible and these same people are fleeing the state for greener pastures.
It looks like the people of Connecticut made their beds.Now their going to have too lay in them.That is after they work like a dog to pay off Connecticut’s debt.
How does not having white people around "further impoverish blacks"?
They tax, spend and cater to public unions like big city democrats?
“They are places scrubbed of physical danger at the cost of mediocrity, soulless consumerism, and despair.”
I saw some of that despair right around the time Obama was sworn in back in 2009. I was still seeing it in 2013 and while it appears to have been on the wane, it still has enough momentum behind it to come back on the rebound.
This is blithering nonsense. On one hand, things change. They change for many, many reasons, but these intellectual midgets think they have the ability to encapsulate all the underlying causes with their shallow-as-a-mud-puddle theories.
And his theory isn’t even accurate. Sure, San Francisco meets this format, but SF is very very small, geographically, and surrounded on 3/4 sides with essentially zero land available. But for every SF there are 3-8 Des Moines.
And screw this racism thing. What, it’s not enough that upscale urban whites don’t like homeless people crapping on their sidewalks after these cruel, heartless whites put up with the homeless, pay taxes to help feed them and all the vultures who administer them, and now pay for their health care. What is it that we are getting out of these homeless people whose greatest contribution to society is to crap on the sidewalks? Frankly, I don’t think people are being racially discriminated against when they defecate in the streets.
A good city neighborhood is like a small town, with the addition of big city amenities within easy reach. I have work, church, my kids' elementary and middle schools, groceries, plenty of shopping, and over a hundred restaurants with 1.5 miles -- all this in a walkable, bikeable neighborhood with quiet tree-lined streets and not much traffic. Hard to beat.
I work in land development, so I tend to pay attention to these sorts of things.
I don’t think the suburbs are dying...I think of it more as concentric rings around the city. When the first ring becomes old, the streets fall apart, the neighbors become lousy, etc, people who can leave do just that - and move to a secondary ring.
Sure there are some cities where people are moving back downtown - but that model really only applies to congested areas (northeast), where geography prevents expanding rings.
Look at Detroit as a model. Downtown there are of course the glistening office buildings, stadiums, and all the trappings of a modern city - because this is where people still primarily work. Then there is a broad ring of complete dilapidation - from Google maps its easy to identify these areas, because so many of the houses have been torn down. But further out, just a 15 minute drive by interstate, there are fantastic suburbs, with solid home values and perfectly cut lawns.
I don’t think the suburbs will ever go away, unless something is done to address the underlying urban problems that people are trying to escape from.
A long, long time ago...
I can still remember
How that music used to make me smile.
And I knew if I had my chance
That I could make those people dance
And, maybe, they’d be happy for a while.
But february made me shiver
With every paper I’d deliver.
Bad news on the doorstep;
I couldn’t take one more step.
I can’t remember if I cried
When I read about his widowed bride,
But something touched me deep inside
The day the music died.
So bye-bye, miss american pie.
Drove my chevy to the levee,
But the levee was dry.
And them good old boys were drinkin’ whiskey and rye
Singin’, “this’ll be the day that I die.
“this’ll be the day that I die.”
Did you write the book of love,
And do you have faith in God above,
If the Bible tells you so?
Do you believe in rock ‘n roll,
Can music save your mortal soul,
And can you teach me how to dance real slow?
Well, I know that you’re in love with him
`cause I saw you dancin’ in the gym.
You both kicked off your shoes.
Man, I dig those rhythm and blues.
I was a lonely teenage broncin’ buck
With a pink carnation and a pickup truck,
But I knew I was out of luck
The day the music died.
I started singin’,
“bye-bye, miss american pie.”
Drove my chevy to the levee,
But the levee was dry.
Them good old boys were drinkin’ whiskey and rye
And singin’, “this’ll be the day that I die.
“this’ll be the day that I die.”
Now for ten years we’ve been on our own
And moss grows fat on a rollin’ stone,
But that’s not how it used to be.
When the jester sang for the king and queen,
In a coat he borrowed from james dean
And a voice that came from you and me,
Oh, and while the king was looking down,
The jester stole his thorny crown.
The courtroom was adjourned;
No verdict was returned.
And while lennon read a book of marx,
The quartet practiced in the park,
And we sang dirges in the dark
The day the music died.
We were singing,
“bye-bye, miss american pie.”
Drove my chevy to the levee,
But the levee was dry.
Them good old boys were drinkin’ whiskey and rye
And singin’, “this’ll be the day that I die.
“this’ll be the day that I die.”
Helter skelter in a summer swelter.
The birds flew off with a fallout shelter,
Eight miles high and falling fast.
It landed foul on the grass.
The players tried for a forward pass,
With the jester on the sidelines in a cast.
Now the half-time air was sweet perfume
While the sergeants played a marching tune.
We all got up to dance,
Oh, but we never got the chance!
`cause the players tried to take the field;
The marching band refused to yield.
Do you recall what was revealed
The day the music died?
We started singing,
“bye-bye, miss american pie.”
Drove my chevy to the levee,
But the levee was dry.
Them good old boys were drinkin’ whiskey and rye
And singin’, “this’ll be the day that I die.
“this’ll be the day that I die.”
Oh, and there we were all in one place,
A generation lost in space
With no time left to start again.
So come on: jack be nimble, jack be quick!
Jack flash sat on a candlestick
Cause fire is the devil’s only friend.
Oh, and as I watched him on the stage
My hands were clenched in fists of rage.
No angel born in hell
Could break that satan’s spell.
And as the flames climbed high into the night
To light the sacrificial rite,
I saw satan laughing with delight
The day the music died
He was singing,
“bye-bye, miss american pie.”
Drove my chevy to the levee,
But the levee was dry.
Them good old boys were drinkin’ whiskey and rye
And singin’, “this’ll be the day that I die.
“this’ll be the day that I die.”
I met a girl who sang the blues
And I asked her for some happy news,
But she just smiled and turned away.
I went down to the sacred store
Where I’d heard the music years before,
But the man there said the music wouldn’t play.
And in the streets: the children screamed,
The lovers cried, and the poets dreamed.
But not a word was spoken;
The church bells all were broken.
And the three men I admire most:
The father, son, and the holy ghost,
They caught the last train for the coast
The day the music died.
And they were singing,
“bye-bye, miss american pie.”
Drove my chevy to the levee,
But the levee was dry.
And them good old boys were drinkin’ whiskey and rye
Singin’, “this’ll be the day that I die.
“this’ll be the day that I die.”
They were singing,
“bye-bye, miss american pie.”
Drove my chevy to the levee,
But the levee was dry.
Them good old boys were drinkin’ whiskey and rye
Singin’, “this’ll be the day that I die.”