Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
...the suburban experience (majority white neighborhood, majority / plurality white schools, fewer low-income folks)...
No wonder I have been avoiding the "suburban experience", the best thing about my neighborhood is the variety of people from all walks of life.
But I expect even many of those that live in the suburbs would not identify with your depiction of "the suburban expirence" since many suburbs are now very racially and economically diverse.
Alex, a bit of news from "home." It sounds very much like the American thinking that you disparage.
"Urban sprawl in Europe: The ignored challenge", a paper issued by the European Environment Agency & European Commission Joint Research Centre. You can Google it for a copy.
Excerpts:
* In Europe, cities have traditionally been much more compact, developing a dense historical core shaped before the emergence of modern transport systems. Compared to most American cities, their European counterparts still remain in many cases compact. However, European cities were more compact and less sprawled in the mid 1950s than they are today, and urban sprawl is now a common phenomenon throughout Europe. Moreover, there is no apparent slowing in these trends. The urban areas particularly at risk are in the southern, eastern and central parts of Europe are particularly at risk.
* Global socio‑economic forces are interacting with more localised environmental and spatial constraints to generate the common characteristics of urban sprawl evident throughout Europe today. At the same time, sprawl has accelerated in response to improved transportation links and enhanced personal mobility. This has made it possible either to live increasingly farther away from city centres, while retaining all the advantages of a city location, or enabled people to live in one city and work in another.
* Historical trends, since the mid‑1950s, show that European cities have expanded on average by 78%, whereas the population has grown by only 33 %. (WOW -- didn't know that!) A major consequence of this trend is that European cities have become much less compact. The dense enclosed quarters of the compact city have been replaced by free standing apartment blocks, semi-detached and detached houses. In half of the urban areas studied in the Moland project, more than 90 % of all residential areas built after the mid‑1950s were low density areas, with less than 80 % of the land surface covered by buildings, roads and other structures (Figure 2). Only in 5 of the 24 cities, all in southern or central parts of Europe, were more than 50 % of new housing areas (built since the mid‑1950s) densely built-up.
* Clusters of compact cities are also evident in the former socialist countries of central and eastern Europe. The compact urban form and high densities mainly reflect the strong centralised planning regimes and substantial reliance on public transport that prevailed during the communist era (Ott, 2001; Nuissl and Rink, 2005). Today, these cities are facing the same threats of rapid urban sprawl as the southern European cities as the land market is liberated, housing preferences evolve, improving economic prospects create new pressures for low density urban expansion, and less restrictive planning controls prevail.
* The attractiveness of living in the centre of cities has fallen, while the quality of life associated with more 'rural areas' including city suburbs, being closer to nature, has increased. (How American!) These factors present a planning challenge for small municipalities attempting to maintain their populations and attract small and medium-sized enterprises.
* In the 1950s, most shops were small and located in the middle of residential areas, and the majority of the population did their shopping on foot. Today, major out-of-town shopping centres are the dominant form of retail provision, which together with the surrounding parking areas occupy vast areas of land only accessible by car.
* When travel costs fall below a certain threshold and income reaches a certain level the rate of sprawl quickens, and
unsurprisingly sprawl is more common in regions where incomes are high and commuting costs are low(Wow-- Sounds like Johns Creek!) (Wu, 2006).
* Throughout the EU, countries they have the responsibility for land use zoning. Competition among municipalities for new income generating jobs and services is great,and many municipalities can be tempted to relax controls on the development of agricultural land and even offer tax benefits to commercial and industrial enterprises to invest in the municipality. Competition of this nature between municipalities fuels urban sprawl. (Sounds like metro ATL!)
*More and more people in Europe regard a new house, ideally a semi-detached or detached house in the suburban/rural areas outside the city, as the prime investment to be made in their lifetimes.(How non Millennial of them!)
* The built-up environment is also considered unattractive because of poor urban planning, with areas lacking green open space and sports facilities. (I thought Europeans were urban planning gods!)
* (Dublin) Another push factor is the small size of apartments in the city centre, forcing families with children needing more space to move out of the city where houses prices are lower and housing more affordable.Personal housing preferences also play an important role as rural living is the Irish housing ideal (Michell, 2004).(Pfffh, because they don't know any better, obviously!) This preference is realised in single-family houses in open countryside with the benefits of the proximity to the capital or other urban areas. The realisation of this ideal is greatly facilitated by the planning regime which imposes few constraints on the conversion of agricultural areas to low-density housing areas.
* (Madrid) Other factors driving the decentralisation process include increased mobility based on a substantially
improved transport network, including new toll motorways, three motorway rings around the city, and new
and improved metropolitan and train connections. (What...more car-centric roadways? Madrid must be filled with white conservatives!)
* (Madrid) More and more people must go further out from the centre to find affordable housing, forcing an ever-growing number of people to commute by car. These socio‑economic drivers have promoted an intense decentralisation process in the Madrid region involving both population and economic activity, with a number of territorial impacts, population and employment redistribution, very high rates of housing growth, and the appearance of new urban hubs served by large, decentralised shopping and entertainment malls (López de Lucio, 2003). Today Madrid is a sprawled region, a process that has occurred within the context of a weak spatial planning framework (Munoz, 2003; López de Lucio, 2003; Fernández-Galiano, 2006). The problem of planning is common to a large number of European urban regions, in which the regulatory capacity of municipalities cannot match the enormous forces reshaping the territory (Fernández-Galiano, 2006). (Or maybe they are ignorant of the alternatives!)
A few points in response to some themes I've seen in the responses:
1. I don't begrudge anyone their lifestyle choices, nor do I especially care what others like. If the pattern of development described were manifest in particular suburbs--certain places one could move to if one so desired, they wouldn't attract much criticism.
However, it starts to matter - and become a topic worthy of societal discussion - when we build nothing less than a whole country of non-places this way. We do, after all, share the country and the public realm that its existence notionally implies.
There is a widely disseminated idea out there that this is the organic outcome of widespread social preference, a democratic coming-together of the citizenry in a consensus on how they want to live in the land of the free. As evidence, boosters of the phenomenon point to the fact that the majority of new building embodies the paradigm I lambast.
It's just not true, though. In my experience, a large percentage of Americans simply aren't familiar with what the alternatives would look like. More importantly, there is enormous accumulated evidence that sprawl is an engineered policy outcome to some degree. One need not be a kooky conspiracy theorist to see that it's astronomically easier to get additional road-building approved (and subsidised with matching federal funds) and that there are lots of perverse legal and economic incentives for greenfield cookie-cutter subdivision development versus urban infill.
Does that mean that everyone really clamours to live in urban settings deep down inside? Of course not. Some people genuinely like suburbia as I've described it--one can find abundant evidence of that in this discussion thread. However, I do not at all buy into the notion that there is such an overwhelming consensus in favour of that mode of life that almost all inhabited areas of the US are built to suit. For the most part, there just aren't many alternatives; it's amazing what humans can adapt to and put up with. Zoning committees, planners and government agencies have made sprawl an easy inertial default for a variety of historical reasons. That's how this has turned into a broad quality of life issue that merits broad critical discussion.
2. To those who say I'm young and cannot presume to have insight into the psychological priorities of others:
Perhaps not. However, FWIW, I am 30, married, and have three young children. We live in a ~1200 sq. ft. 2 BR apartment in Midtown quite happily. I have never understood why having children implies or necessitates a move out into the boonies.
3. The title of the article is indeed poorly formulated: "sprawl" would a better object of critique than "suburbia" per se. And indeed, almost all cities in the world--quite healthy ones--have suburbs of some description. The fact that they're suburbs per se certainly isn't the essence of what makes the sprawling American version untenable.
-- Alex
Good points. Honestly, I don't assume that you can't understand my point of view because I am a little older. However, I do understand that there will definitely be some generational differences due to a variety of factors.
I applaud the fact that you are able to successfully maintain yourself, your wife and 3 young children in a 2 BR, 1,200 sq. ft. apartment. My wife and I only have 1 young child and we are already busting out of our 2,000 sq. ft. suburban home *lol*. I don't think that it would be impossible to live in a smaller space, but of course my wife and I finished college and started our careers back in the "Buy a house as soon as you can!"/"Don't have your wife and kids in an apartment!" era. I know that some people hate the m-word, but I can acknowledge that millennials were conditioned differently and have no problem with either sticking to smaller houses in the city or bypassing homeownership altogether.
No wonder I have been avoiding the "suburban experience", the best thing about my neighborhood is the variety of people from all walks of life.
But I expect even many of those that live in the suburbs would not identify with your depiction of "the suburban expirence" since many suburbs are now very racially and economically diverse.
It is ironic and amusing to me that for all the professed love of diversity ITP, the OTP suburbs have arguably the greatest diversity.
We are largely segregated by race and income residentially in the US. However, the litmus test on integration, especially for white people, is school enrollment. White children are 2x more segregated in public schools and vastly more so in private schools than the overall white population. CoA like every other major US city has hyper segregated schools and a very large portion of white families opt of public schools for private schools. You don't have school age children. People talk a big game when they don't have school age children. But school enrollment data prove that few people live what they preach when it's time to enroll their children in school. I'm not saying that you won't if you have children. But I'm a good bit older than you and have a much longer perspective on this.
I grew up in a neighborhood that has been nationally hailed as a model of racial integration since the 1960s. The dirty little secret is that white families abandoned the neighborhood public schools when black families moved in and for the past 50 years have sent their children to private schools or public and now charter schools outside the neighborhood. The same pattern exists in major cities all over the country. White folks sure do love us some diversity as long as it doesn't involve more than an acceptably limited number of poors, blacks and Latinos in our schools. I'm not arguing that I'm better than anyone else. I'm just tired of urban liberals patting themselves on the back while behaving exactly like everyone else.
I'm just tired of urban liberals patting themselves on the back while behaving exactly like everyone else.
And while making snide comments about "white conservatives" having the same preferences. (Not that I care, as I don't identify "conservative." I just get tired of the stereotyping that doesn't seem to go both ways.)
I LOVE having the debate about public education with a European expat friend who talks a big game about diversity but absolutely insists that her child cannot get a good education anywhere but Pace.
It must be hard seeing all these families moving back into the city for those obsessed with thinking suburban living is the only option.
Did anyone here say they wanted it to be only option? I think most people here said they are glad there are multiple options to serve different choices/tastes/needs.
The element of school quality in relation to the geography of sprawl is an important one, since a big part of how this catastrophe formed in the US is accounted for by postwar white flight in the context of integration. In other words, yes, the schools are better in the suburbs, and that's part of the problem that needs discussion.
Yes, it is certainly true that this phenomenon has been exported and is making insidious inroads elsewhere--especially in the developing world. However, it's certainly a matter of degree. What W. Europeans would consider poorly planned sprawl. in the median case, does not come close to the egregious violations upon humanity visited by East Cobb.
My experience has been, however, that on their worst day, profoundly second and third-tier European cities and towns are infinitely more navigable and livable than the vast majority of the US. Hopefully they'll remain that way.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
