I bought my first car when I moved from a big city with stellar public transit to a smaller city that epitomizes sprawl. In the small city, the public transportation options are scarce (and, mostly, inefficient and unpleasant…unless you enjoy sitting beside a drunkard with no bowel control), and the urban planning (largely new) is some of the poorest (and ugliest) I’ve seen. The cheaply built homes that have sprung up on the city’s fringes were constructed the quick n’ dirty way, without forethought. Developers failed to consider the implications of such far-flung construction, and, driven by dollars, probably didn’t care. Until recently, this trend held true in many suburbs, nation-wide.
Greedy developers have grubbed the last of the land that surrounds many such sprawling “urban” centers, and countless Americans commute an hour or more to-and-from their suburban McMansions daily. However, with the real estate market turning ugly, developers seem to have slowed their progress. People, it seems, are starting to take the hint that living in the ‘burbs and beyond just isn’t sustainable—not for their planet or their lifestyle.
A recent article in the Atlantic Monthly, entitled “The Next Slum?”, takes a comprehensive look at this trend, and as we’ve discussed here before, examines the link between suburban sprawl and the rash of home foreclosures. According to the Atlantic, more people are moving out of the ‘burbs and into big, walkable cities with efficient transit. People have changed their perception of cities as being big and dangerous. In the current market, they’re eyed as prime real estate; vital, bustling hubs where you can walk a block to work or wheel your groceries home in a pushcart. Meanwhile, the ‘burbs—especially those that lack livable streets—are on the decline. Sub-prime foreclosures are turning such subdivisions into slums and ghost towns.
From the Atlantic Monthly:
At Windy Ridge, a recently built starter-home development seven miles northwest of Charlotte, North Carolina, 81 of the community’s 132 small, vinyl-sided houses were in foreclosure as of late last year. Vandals have kicked in doors and stripped the copper wire from vacant houses; drug users and homeless people have furtively moved in. In December, after a stray bullet blasted through her son’s bedroom and into her own, Laurie Talbot, who’d moved to Windy Ridge from New York in 2005, told The Charlotte Observer, “I thought I’d bought a home in Pleasantville. I never imagined in my wildest dreams that stuff like this would happen.”
Meanwhile, crime is down in most big cities, like New York, which has seen a significant decline in crime over the last decade, thanks largely to the city’s Broken Windows laws (which effected a zero-tolerance policy for petty crime).
The Atlantic article also notes that real estate “premiums have arisen not only in central cities, but also in suburban towns that have walkable urban centers offering a mix of residential and commercial development… People are being drawn to the convenience and culture of walkable urban neighborhoods across the country—even when those neighborhoods are small.”
Arthur C. Nelson, director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech, offers more proof that sprawl is unsustainable. His research forecasts a surplus of 22 million large-lot homes by 2025 (40 percent of which are already standing), reports the Atlantic.
The future for the ‘burbs looks bleak: It’s likely that people will continue to flee vast sprawl for the city, and that these new developments will fall by the wayside. Abandoned McMansions may turn into crack dens, and residents of Pleasantville, no longer sweet and wholesome with its picket fences and two-car garages, will drive in droves to find safety in more urban, livable, walkable communities, where drive-thrus are obsolete and parking for their S.U.V.s is impossible to find.
Photo via flickr by Dean Terry.
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I’m buying one of those belts because they are awesome!
That sticker doesn’t say zero per gallon but says 9/10 of a cent per gallon. So, by these two stickers we can determine how many miles per gallon. So lets assume that we are getting a bean burrito from taco bell for 59 cents, then we can travel 53 miles per 59 cents or 0.90 miles per cent. Now since the sign says 0.9 cents per gal we take 0.90 miles per cent times 0.9 cents per gal and we have 0.81 mpg. Which really sucks. That is if we use equivalence.
Anyway, why do people think 0.00 9/10 = 0?