Suburban Poverty Is Our Unfortunate Future
- Posted by: Patrick James
- on February 18, 2009 at 2:25 pm
I’ve heard the idea bandied about for a while now, but this Miller-McCune post offers a pretty decent distillation of the oncoming suburban crisis. It states that in 2005, suburban poverty topped urban poverty for the first time, and it will continue to do so.
By 2025, predicts planning expert Arthur C. Nelson, America will face a market surplus of 22 million large-lot homes (a sixth of an acre or more), attracting millions of low-income residents deeper into suburbia where decay and social and geographic isolation will pose challenges few see coming. …
Nelson and others warn that suburbia’s least desirable neighborhoods—aging, middle-class tract-home developments far from city centers and mass transit lines—are America’s emerging slums, characterized by poverty, crime and other social ills. Treating those ills is complicated by the same qualities that once defined suburbia’s appeal—seclusion, homogeneity and low population density.
The trend isn’t altogether irreversible. By committing to developing mixed use neighborhoods with access to mass transit—and by not building any more suburbs—we can reshape the residential landscape. Still, the transformation from suburban dream to suburban nightmare in many areas is all but inevitable.
The Atlantic has also looked at the idea of suburban slums; read that article here.
DISCUSSION: 3 Comments
Allison Arieff has also written a couple of interesting pieces for the Times on how to save the suburbs (or not). Read the comments too… they’re both entertaining and enlightening. You can find them here.
We should, of course, develop more transit-friendly and medium-density, mixed-use suburbs. But there’s also a lot that can be done with these existing developments and housing stock by rethinking how they should be organized. E.g.,-If there are going to be lots of poorer families in outer suburbs and exurbs, they’re not all going to get good public transit, but there’s no reason that community organizations can’t focusing in a much more thorough way on ride-sharing programs-By loosening or rethinking zoning laws, these developments can become mixed-use. Plenty of people who would be willing to start up corner stores, taquerias, pubs, day care centers, etc. in large (or even not-so-large) subdevelopments, but that’s not an option now, for the most part
we could deconstruct the suburbs and reuse the materials for urban renewal projects. but then again, i may just be saying that because i hate suburbs.