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. The apparent inverse relationship between sprawl and social mobility obviously reinforces the case for “smart growth” urban strategies, which try to promote compact centers with access to public transit. But it also bears on a larger debate about what is happening to American society.
Yes the cities will become Detroit, but the Suburbs will still be wealthy.
That's not what's happening in Atlanta though. The "urban" neighborhoods in the center of the city are gentrifying and whitening. In contrast, virtually all of the suburbs to the south and east of the city are already majority black, and "black exurbia" keeps spreading further and further out.
There is a strong black middle class in Atlanta, so the southern suburbs will never turn into a continuous swathe of ghetto. But the prices in some of them are dirt cheap already, and crime has been steadily rising. Still, it's fair to generalize that it will have a rich white core, rich white suburbs to the north, and poor, minority-dominated suburbs in every other direction.
It's also plausible that , given time, the cities themselves will become too expensive, and the process will revert back to an escape back to the suburbs, in search of cheaper housing. An endless cycle..
Yes the cities will become Detroit, but the Suburbs will still be wealthy.
If the cities are sprawled out they will become like Detroit while the suburbs that embrace smart growth will be wealthy. The suburbs that don't will be even worse than Detroit.
It isn't about suburbs or cities. It is about smart growth and good transit. Those that have it will thrive those that don't won't.
It's also plausible that , given time, the cities themselves will become too expensive, and the process will revert back to an escape back to the suburbs, in search of cheaper housing. An endless cycle..
Suburbs that embrace smart growth and connect to the city through public transit will thrive with cities. Suburbs that don't do this will become spread out ghettos.
It's also plausible that , given time, the cities themselves will become too expensive, and the process will revert back to an escape back to the suburbs, in search of cheaper housing. An endless cycle..
The original move to the suburbs was only in part about cheaper housing. It was also about how crowded and dirty the cities were. Given family sizes are likely to remain small, cities will not be crowded the way they were in 1950. And they're liable to never be smog-filled to the same degree again.
It is true, however, that cities could easily become unfashionable again. That said, cities never really fell out of fashion in most of the world excepting the U.S., so if anything I think we're seeing the U.S. head back to the normal global pattern.
It found the same thing of sprawl being a factor, but it's only one. There's a lot of other places where sprawl occurs, but it's only in the South where the rate is significantly different. Class segregation and lack of transit certainly plays a part, but it's not the only thing going on. Perpetually poverty syndrome is just more engrained in Southern culture than anywhere else in the United States for whatever reason.
Suburbs that embrace smart growth and connect to the city through public transit will thrive with cities. Suburbs that don't do this will become spread out ghettos.
You must be an advocate of Agenda 21. That is to suck the life and money out of the suburbs, via high taxes and oppressive regulations, and put it into infrastructure for pack n stack cities. The suburbs will become uninhabitable, so people will be forced to move back to the cities. Favored mega-corps will take over agriculture, and strangle small farmers all the more.
Dumb growth for a dumb populace that allows this.
Cities that embrace sprawl and fail to improve it will be the future Detroits.
The thread title is a bit leading and hyperbolic.
The problem with Smart Growth plans is not with the plans, but with how the public and the pundits perceive those plans. It doesn't just mean density, with everyone living in 30-floor apartment blocks, but that's the way opponents have marketed it. Somehow, building with people in mind and putting density where it makes sense, around transit corridors, get's left out of the conversation.
Another problem of public perception is the association with any horizontal expansion with the perjorative idea of sprawl. I doubt if we copied and pasted the outer neighborhoods of SF on to San Jose, outside the growth boundary, anyone would rationally call that sprawl; it would be dense SFH growth that is both pedestrian-friendly and primed for transit.
Not all vertical growth is smart, not all horizontal growth is sprawl.
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