Death of Suburbia declared prematurely

[DrT]

Good article from The Economist magazine.

Two factors that will keep fueling the growth of the 'burbs:
1. housing that people, especially workers, can afford
2. Cheap land for business to set up, with willing workers already there
because of #1.

With business and workers out in the burbs, the commute downtown can be bypassed.




The end of the dream?
Aug 14th 2008 | MORENO VALLEY
From The Economist print edition

The suburbs have been hit hard by the housing crisis. But reports of their death are exaggerated

“KEEP your house” reads the handwritten sign on a chain-link fence some 60 miles east of downtown Los Angeles. It is an advertisement, although it could be the attitude of an overstretched buyer who owes the bank more money than his home is worth. Many people in Moreno Valley have simply walked away from their properties. As abandoned lawns turn brown in the desert climate, the fallout spreads. It is no longer a matter of saving individual houses, but a whole city.

Until recently Moreno Valley was one of the fastest-growing cities in America. It lies in the Inland Empire, a two-county region in southern California that is so called largely because it is difficult to know how else to characterise such a sprawling expanse of detached homes, strip malls and warehouses. Between 1990 and 2007 the Inland Empire’s population grew from 2.6m to 4.1m—the equivalent of adding a city the size of Philadelphia.

As in other regions now suffering from a rash of foreclosures and falling house prices, such as south Florida and Nevada, rapid growth is itself largely to blame. Moreno Valley had the misfortune to swell at a time of lax lending practices. Whole neighbourhoods were built on cheap credit and inflated expectations—palaces for the middle class. Around Camino del Rey, on the city’s southern edge, huge Spanish-style houses with three-car garages sit empty. The city’s population growth appears to have gone into reverse. Moreno Valley’s high schools expected to enrol 9,850 pupils last year. They fell short by 780.

Fewer people with less disposable income is bad news for shopkeepers. The Moreno Valley commerce centre (a strip mall, despite the grand title) has six vacant units in its main building. Stores along Alessandro Boulevard, the city’s main drag, have been occupied by Pentecostal churches—a sure sign of low rents. John Husing, an Inland Empire economist, says the housing slowdown has scared off financial-services and civil-engineering firms, for the moment at least.

A bigger economic threat is just coming into focus. The Inland Empire is America’s warehouse: goods, mostly from China, are sorted and assembled there before being distributed across the country. Until recently increasing trade could be counted on to prop up the economy. Traffic through the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, America’s two biggest by container volume, levelled off only briefly during the early 1990s recession and continued to grow in 2001. Now it is declining. In June imports through the two ports were 15% and 12% below last year’s level. Moreno Valley’s office-vacancy rate is already the highest in the region.

All this would be a shock to any city, but it is particularly startling in a place used to double-digit percentage increases in tax revenues. Moreno Valley has been forced to tap its reserves to make up a $7.1m shortfall. That may grow, says Bob Gutierrez, the city manager. State politicians are still trying to close an enormous hole in California’s budget, which is now seven weeks late. When it comes, the budget is likely to involve a raid on local finances that will put places like Moreno Valley further in the red.

Despite the gloom, a few souls are rather cheerful. Public-transport advocates and planning groups such as the Congress for the New Urbanism have seized upon the crisis in far-flung regions like the Inland Empire as evidence that sprawl is no longer viable. “The frontier of endless mobility that we’ve known our entire lives is closing,” wrote Bill McKibben, an environmentalist, in the Washington Post. At last, the urbanists predict, Americans will return to city centres. They will swap their sport-utility vehicles for public transport and begin to act more like well-behaved Europeans.
Some of these cheerful forecasts appear to be coming true. Across southern California, use of the skeletal rail network is rising. Property prices are indeed holding up fairly well in older neighbourhoods near the coast. It can be difficult to convince people in Beverly Hills or Santa Monica that the state has a housing crisis. But the growing price gap between such burghs and places like Moreno Valley can be read in two ways. It is both a sign of the suburbs’ plight and the thing that is gradually renewing their competitive edge.

The Inland Empire’s housing market did not collapse because people chose not to live in sprawling suburbs. They clearly did, hence the huge growth there. The problem was that buyers could not really afford the houses that were being built. Now they can. Mr Husing reckons 39% of residents can now afford the average property—up from just 18% in 2005. House-builders are at last creating smaller homes, and a few buyers are returning. Now the task is to ensure that neighbourhoods are not snapped up by slumlords. The nearby city of Grand Terrace has done that in part by levying a small tax on renting.

Places like Moreno Valley retain two enormous advantages over traditional cities. They have lots of cheap, available land and a pool of workers keen to avoid the ever-lengthening commute to Los Angeles and Orange County. When it comes to attracting businesses, these two factors outweigh high petrol prices. The city of Ontario, which contains the Inland Empire’s main airport, already has more than two jobs for each home. Greg Devereaux, the city’s manager, reckons it will eventually have more than three.

Bill Batey, Moreno Valley’s mayor, is frank about the city’s present problems. When asked about its future, though, he brightens. Pointing to a large aerial photograph on the wall, he outlines plans for a new warehouse, a cluster of medical offices and a lot more houses. There is plenty of empty space in the photograph; indeed, there is a huge expanse of bare earth directly across the street from city hall. The frontier is not closed yet.

[Audiomuse]

I hope the process speeds up

[rst22]

don't get your hopes up. just because urban cores are being revitalized doesn't mean sprawl is going to end any times soon. we still have massive populatiion growth caused by massive immigration and more people have the technology to work from home. the only thing that will stop sprawl is natural barriers and shortages of water but don't be surprised if the entire central valley is paved over in 50 years.

[mhays]

That's why states and metros need to control growth through zoning.

[Seattlelife]

Originally Posted by mhays

That's why states and metros need to control growth through zoning.

[STLCardsBlues1989]

Hopefully people begin moving back into cities.

I don't blame families that moved to suburbs. Cheaper housing and better schools are a big draw. But hopefully people will begin to move back to cities. With gas prices like they are it'd be hard to keep up.

And suburbs are not always cheaper anymore. St. Louis has many cheap homes in the city in nice neighborhoods, but any families there would probably prefer private schooling, which does cost a bit.

[rst22]

Originally Posted by mhays

That's why states and metros need to control growth through zoning.

I agree but in places with heavy growth and high demand there isn't the political will except in "progressiv" places like Portland.

[mhays]

True. Also it's more difficult to draw a line around a metro when there are a million towns outside the line, each of which has the right to grow. In Seattle, Portland, etc., a lot of what's outside the line is farmland or wilderness, and it's much easier to slow the growth there.

[hoosier]

Schools will improve when wealthier, more educated people move back to the cities. White flight destroyed urban schools, and blacks are blamed for it.

[rst22]

Originally Posted by hoosier

Schools will improve when wealthier, more educated people move back to the cities. White flight destroyed urban schools, and blacks are blamed for it.

screw that. you lefities blame whites for everything. bussing is what drove the white families out. they wanted to move to send there kids to better schools not sacrifice them to some multi-cultural utopian dream.

[klamedia]

And the black families only wanted their kids to get a good education the same ones that the white kids were getting in their lily white schools that we all (black, brown and purple) helped pay for. Bussing was the most radically delicious idea that America ever had the balls to attempt. I guess those white parents who overturned that bus with little black kids and showed up in front of schools yelling and cursing at black children as they arrived probably didn't think so.

[Mr Man]

Originally Posted by mhays

That's why states and metros need to control growth through zoning.

It would be nice if states had zoning powers. Local level zoning has many problems associated with it. Often times NIMBYism gets in the way of quality developments that think outside the box. At the end of the day, the developer is forced to result to sprawling subdivisions and strip malls which confirm to the existing zoning.

Just look at this quote for the purpose of zoning in one community:

to avoid undue concentration of population by regulating and limiting the height and bulk of buildings; the size and open spaces surrounding buildings; to establish building lines; to divide the city into districts restricting and regulating therein the construction, reconstruction, alteration and use of buildings, structures and land for residence, business, industrial, and other specified uses and to limit congestion in the public streets by providing off-street parking of motor vehicles.

Yuck! Please bring on state and metro zoning as long as they correct the misguided principals followed by many local governments.

[Kwame]

Originally Posted by klamedia

And the black families only wanted their kids to get a good education the same ones that the white kids were getting in their lily white schools that we all (black, brown and purple) helped pay for.

[rst22]

Originally Posted by klamedia

And the black families only wanted their kids to get a good education the same ones that the white kids were getting in their lily white schools that we all (black, brown and purple) helped pay for. Bussing was the most radically delicious idea that America ever had the balls to attempt. I guess those white parents who overturned that bus with little black kids and showed up in front of schools yelling and cursing at black children as they arrived probably didn't think so.

no, some parents don't like their kids getting beat up and their learning being dissruptive. your from LA look at what happened to all the public schools. many were great 30 years ago and now are horendous.

[mike7743]

Originally Posted by rst22

screw that. you lefities blame whites for everything. bussing is what drove the white families out. they wanted to move to send there kids to better schools not sacrifice them to some multi-cultural utopian dream.

what a pathetic post, dude looks like you're posting in the wrong forum. you might want to register over at Stormfront. your angry friends there are waiting.

[Kwame]

Originally Posted by rst22

no, some parents don't like their kids getting beat up and their learning being dissruptive. your from LA look at what happened to all the public schools. many were great 30 years ago and now are horendous.

ignorance.

[bayviews]

Originally Posted by DrT

Good article from The Economist magazine.

Two factors that will keep fueling the growth of the 'burbs:
1. housing that people, especially workers, can afford
2. Cheap land for business to set up, with willing workers already there
because of #1.

With business and workers out in the burbs, the commute downtown can be bypassed.




The end of the dream?
Aug 14th 2008 | MORENO VALLEY
From The Economist print edition

The suburbs have been hit hard by the housing crisis. But reports of their death are exaggerated

Sprawl is a very wasteful & unsustainable pattern, with places like Moreno Valley & some of the Central Valley metros taking sprawl to extremes.

Yet the reality is that hundreds of thousands of LA residents left for these places owing to a competition for very limited housing in increasingly crowded neighborhoods.

The collapse of the real estate bubble in these edge sprawls will ensure that with lower pricetags, they will be filling up again with another wave from LA.

Its good that LA city & some other SoCal urban suburbs are finally building "up" rather than just "out", increasing density. But the demand for urban housing lags a long way behind the supply.

[mhays]

Sure, existing units should fill up in most cases.

But new sprawl won't pencil as easily. Despite cheaper land, construction costs will be too high relative to market values.

As the lower-middle earners take deals farther out, their transportation choices will be interesting to watch. Park-n-rides (formal or informal) will be popular to the extent there's bus service. We'll also see way more carpooling -- possibly an explosion, with new organization systems to help people along.

[BlAcKnIgHt08]

Originally Posted by rst22

no, some parents don't like their kids getting beat up and their learning being dissruptive. your from LA look at what happened to all the public schools. many were great 30 years ago and now are horendous.

Statements like this is what get you beat up by black kids. I love how everyone assumes blacks instigate everything,but sometimes whites are the ones to start stuff by quickly stereotyping and being smart-asses. Do you think us black like being mocked all the time??? Constantly made the butt of jokes in shows, even in the news(FOX!)

[WeimieLvr]

Originally Posted by BlAcKnIgHt08

Statements like this is what get you beat up by black kids. I love how everyone assumes blacks instigate everything,but sometimes whites are the ones to start stuff by quickly stereotyping and being smart-asses. Do you think us black like being mocked all the time??? Constantly made the butt of jokes in shows, even in the news(FOX!)

EVERYONE doesn't assume it...and I like to think that most people don't group humans by such statements as "blacks instigate everything" or "whites are the ones..." because that type of thinking is just as bad as the post you responded to. When will some people realize that our skin color doesn't bind us together nearly as much as LOTS of other factors...