Posted on 02/23/2005 3:23:06 PM PST by srm913
Nowhere land
As US towns sprawl into the countryside, creating anonymous zones dominated by soulless malls, one of Britain's leading historians asks if it could happen here Tristram Hunt Sunday February 20, 2005
Observer Take a ride along the I-10 out of Phoenix, Arizona, and witness the birth of a new civilisation. Under the arching desert sky, cotton fields are being transformed into condominiums; cactus wilderness into master-planned communities. This year some 60,000 new homes will spread out along the valley landscape. Similar developments are underway across America: in Florida, ancient citrus groves are coming down for housing lots; in North Carolina, poultry farms provide prime real estate; and in Ohio, fields that once grew soya beans now sprout fresh homes.
From coast to coast, the United States is undergoing a historic shift in its century-old balance between town and country. A growing population is eschewing the old urban centres and traditional suburbs for the brave new world of exurbia. This is the cultural landscape of modern America: not the downtown conviviality of Cheers, but the soulless anomie of Desperate Housewives; not the urban chic of Friends, but the sprawling southern California of The OC.
This startling decentralisation constitutes as significant a dispersal of people and power as the march west of the 19th century. And it is a transformation with profound consequences for city, suburb and countryside. As Britain's planners struggle to implement the government's latest housing quotas, exurban America provides a salutary lesson of just what we could be in store for.
The facts are dramatic. Between 1982 and 1997, the population of the United States grew by 17 per cent, while the extent of urbanised land grew by almost 50 per cent. City densities collapsed as residents exchanged downtown districts for suburbia.
Beyond the statistics, exurbia has to be seen to be believed. Living in Phoenix over the last six months has been to experience a new urban world as significant as Paris in the 1890s or London in the Sixties. This is a terrain in brutal transition: the boomburbs circling the edge of the metropolis only recently existed as country towns or rural settlements far away from the urban fringe. Today, they are experiencing some of the fastest growth in the nation, as the once distant city envelops them within a super-sized conurbation. Every two weeks, Phoenix's perimeter extends by another 60 metres.
What hits one first about exurbia is its ugliness. Laid out by competing developers, disparate 'cookie-cutter' housing developments (often christened with faux Wild West prefixes such as Vale, Ranch or Stable) wander into the distance, devoid of any master-plan. Self-contained behind electronic gates, each house seamlessly resembles the others in a conveyor belt of McMansions. Behind the walls, uniformity is enforced by a strict system of covenants, conditions and restrictions that outlaw individual alterations to homes and gardens.
Each house comes complete with garage-room for SUV and 'compact', while six-lane highways link the 'resorts' and 'communities' to the ubiquitous golf course and nearby freeway. Walking is confined to planned-out parks (to which one drives), while public transport is usually voted down by residents as either wastefully expensive or surreptitiously socialist. After a closely fought referendum, Phoenix, a city of 3.5 million (roughly half the population of London), has only just agreed to a light-rail system.
Lining the roads are the strip malls - or 'stretch malls' - and big-box discount stores. Vast Wal-Marts jostle with Home Depots, Best Buys and cavernous fashion outlet stores. Then come the megaplex cinemas and fast-food drive-thrus. Despite the cutesy, homely image these corporate leviathans project (Wal-Mart has 'associates' not employees), there is no capacity for independent retailers in the high-volume mall economy. Apart from undermining 'main street' stores and outlawing organised labour, what these malls also demand is car parking space some 10 times the shop floor. To walk from the edge of a mall car park to the storefront is a significant journey in itself, while forgetting your car's position can add hours to the day.
Yet, across the barren sprawl, these consumer pleasure grounds ('shoppertainment' is the marketing buzz-word) constitute the social hub of the community. The designer of the first American mall, an Austrian émigré named Victor Gruen, modelled his Fifties plaza on the 19th-century Ringstrasse where pre-war Vienna enjoyed civilised Sunday promenades. Gruen envisaged the mall as a celebration of that urban spirit and the civic space it endowed. Disappointingly, the founding impulse has not sustained itself: little sense of a Viennese public sphere can be detected during a desul tory amble past JC Penney, Sunglass Hut and Foot Locker. Meanwhile, at our local mall, loitering is specifically prohibited by public bye-laws.
However, such is the speed of development that these malls - having eaten into virgin countryside - rapidly fall into disuse. Aided by a welter of federal subsidies securing investors against depreciation, developers find it far more profitable to commission an entirely new mall than to renovate the present. In 2002 alone, half a billion square feet of retail space - the equivalent of some 4,000 dead malls - were left empty.
What sanctions this frenzied sprawl is the weakness of US local authorities. Dependent upon sales taxes for the funding of city hall, councillors are all too ready to accede to the blandishments of a Wal-Mart or strip mall in expectation of future tax revenue. This invidious choice quickly descends into a municipal beauty contest, with each authority vying to lure retailers with the promise of costly incentives. Particularly desirable are the enormous auto-malls that generate extensive sales taxes with minimal pull on the public purse. Inevitably, this fragmented, competitive system of local government makes for chaotic planning, with well-funded developers holding the upper hand.
And when councils are brave enough to halt the retail juggernaut, the corporations try to take over the council. In Inglewood, California, the Wal-Mart group spent more than $1m proposing a referendum putsch to overturn a planning decision and, in the process, exempt itself from local zoning, planning and environmental laws.
The furious rate of sprawl only adds to the dislocation permeating exurbia. 'There are no centres, no recognisable borders to shape a sense of geographic identity,' writes the exurban connoisseur David Brooks. It is a polycentric universe where the rhythms of the day are oriented around drives to the shopping mall, housing subdivision, gym, church or work. There is no downtown or inner-city; few civic landmarks or historic signifiers. Through the highways of Phoenix's boomburbs, Walgreens follows Burger King follows Kmart follows Starbucks. It is all too easy to lose oneself within this landscape of commercial banality: do we turn off at the Safeway or Petsmart? When the New Jersey Devils ice hockey team won the prestigious Stanley Cup in 2003, so absent was any sense of urban fabric they held their victory parade in a parking lot.
Underpinning the real estate and retail boom are the new jobs in out-of-town business parks. Over 90 per cent of office space built in America during the Nineties was thrown up along the edgeless cities that cling to interstate highways. Thanks to IT, many of these 'technoburbs' are capable of operating entirely independently of the central business district. Detached socially, physically and economically from the city, they resemble amoeba-like commercial agglomerations rather than any recognisable urban form. The corporate glue that once held together the city centre has vanished to the interstate exit.
In turn, they have spawned the modern psephologist's favourite demographic: 'office-park dad'. Successor to 'soccer mom', the OPD is 25 to 40, married to a working spouse, employed in a white-collar (often high-tech) job, and destined to spend a lot of time in his car.
And it was the office-park dads who delivered the White House to the Republicans. For if the industrial city was the breeding ground of progressive politics, exurbia represents the amorphous heartland of George W Bush's conservatism. A study by the Los Angeles Times revealed that 97 of the 100 fastest-growing counties in the US supported President Bush, providing him with a decisive 1.72m vote advantage over John Kerry. 'These growing areas, filled largely with younger families fleeing urban centres in search of affordable homes, are providing the Republicans a foothold in blue Democratic-leaning states,' reported the authors.
For exurbia is a deeply conservative place. Given the wide range of recreational interests shown by its residents, it would be wrong to characterise it as bland. There is more to it than the real estate and roses of American Beauty. But it is a profoundly individualistic terrain purposefully lacking the ingrained social fabric of class, race or clan. Instead, its churning cycle of new residents can live out the autonomous American dream. In Arizona, many of the master-planned communities that encircle Phoenix have refused to pay local school rates. Wealthy, independent and introverted, these high-end communities weaken the tax base and gently undermine social capital. No wonder Brooks celebrates exurbia as 'a conservative utopia'.
Such mobile, often newly married, residents were precisely the constituency which Bush's election strategist, Karl Rove, so successfully wooed. Great efforts were expended in fostering a Republican infrastructure, through churches and other conservative circles, within expanding communities devoid of the usual forms of civil society. The social spending required by cities was exchanged for family-friendly, exurban tax cuts. And it paid off. Those queuing late into the evening at spruce, suburban polling stations on election night were the eager new face of American conservatism.
Unfortunately for the Democrats, this conservative majority only looks set to grow still further. For one of the more remarkable facts about exurbia is its fertility rate. In a movement known as 'natalism', those decamping to the zoomburbs are choosing to buck the US birthrate by conscientiously raising large families. With close encouragement from the church, many residents are reviving the traditional evangelical emphasis on the sanctity of domestic life.
According to analysis by Steve Sailer in The American Conservative, the 19 states with the highest white fertility rates went Republican. John Kerry, on the other hand, carried the 16 states with the lowest rates of conception.
Should this exurban America come as a surprise? Not entirely. Since the Seventies, the US has been a suburban nation with a majority of its population living between city and country. It was this confident, consumer civilisation which provided the dominant image of post-war Americana, from The Graduate to the novels of John Updike. Similarly, the politics of Washington have for a long time been determined in the coffee shops, parking lots, and school yards of Middle America.
But what these 20th-century metropolitan suburbs maintained was a strong relationship with the city, through commuting, leisure or sport. As predominantly domestic neighbourhoods lacking businesses and entertainment, they strengthened the commercial and cultural attractions of the civic core. Exurbia plays no such role: it is marketed and embraced as a self-sustaining, anti-urban way of life. Those who flee to exurbia seem determined to leave behind the cultural detritus of city life: the minorities, alternative lifestyles, the sense of civic responsibility.
All of which is profoundly damaging for the downtowns. Even as crime falls and culture revives, US cities are continuing to shed residents. Those left behind are often the migrant and low-income communities. Phoenix is currently regenerating its urban core on the back of a vibrant arts scene. But there are few prosperous neighbourhoods or young families to sustain it. They're building their futures miles out of town in the ready-made communities of Power Ranch, Surprise and Anthem.
The countryside fares no better. Currently, some 105 acres an hour of US farmland are being withdrawn from agricultural use. And over half of that acreage is going straight into new housing developments. At the same time, increasing amounts are eating into America's ancient wilderness. In Florida, the Everglades ecosystem is struggling for survival in the face of massive domestic construction. Meanwhile, the Bush administration blithely opens up federally protected parklands. And only once you have driven through the myriad miles of sprawl simply to buy a loaf of bread do you realise the fundamental political necessity of keeping petrol prices low. Whatever the geo-political cost.
This sprawling of America makes recent British debates on planning all the more peculiar. For it appears we are on the verge of jettisoning our historic safeguards and pursuing an equally disastrous route. Beginning with a 1998 report from the consultancy firm McKinsey advocating the relaxation of planning controls, there has emerged an influential chorus of lobbyists demanding the destruction of our regulatory system. The Housebuilders' Federation, the automobile and construction conglomerates, along with the supermarkets - led by Wal-Mart (now in control of Asda) - have been at the forefront. Their cause has been joined by Treasury economist Kate Barker, who has argued for an extra 120,000 new houses each year, on top of the annual 140,000 fresh builds.
Interestingly, her asphalt agenda has enjoyed endorsements from the political right and left. Ferdinand Mount, former policy adviser to Margaret Thatcher, has suggested the dissolution of green belt in order to entice the urban working class out of inner-city council estates and into some kind of home-owning, allotment utopia. Similarly, Polly Toynbee has condemned our 'strict planning laws' and 'senseless protection' of agricultural land. 'It's time to let the land go, send the price of housing tumbling and make everyone a property owner,' she explains. And it is a suggestion which appeals to many worried about housing low-paid, public-sector workers, as well as retaining neighbourhood communities in the face of spiralling house prices.
Britain could, of course, have opened up its fields a long time ago and gone the way of Phoenix or Atlanta. It certainly looked that way during the inter-war years, as house building churned up the country at alarmingly low densities. But in 1947 the Attlee administration initiated what has rightly been termed 'one of the most powerful systems of land-use planning ever introduced in any country'. The Town and Country Planning Act saved our cities and countryside from the prospect of never-ending sprawl. City limits were defined by green belts and extra growth was channelled into New Towns. It was this pioneering legislation that carved out the perimeters of our modern rural-urban divide. And now fashionable voices want to do away with it.
Unfortunately, they are not being answered forcefully enough by government. John Prescott's predict-and-provide allocation of house-building figures threatens a dramatic extension of suburbia. Meanwhile, plans for accelerated development in Ashford, Stansted, Milton Keynes and now Southampton-Portsmouth (which used to be two distinct cities) will pump prime the subsidy-rich South-East, diverting funds from existing suburbs and post-industrial downtowns. Equally worrying, the government's vision of a 'growth corridor' along the M11 motorway seems to most observers a classic recipe for sprawl.
Traditionally, British policymakers are all too easily drawn to American innovations. But, my time in Phoenix has shown the United States pursuing a model we desperately need to avoid: depopulating downtowns, ravaged countryside, unsustainable energy consumption, social and racial segmentation and a sprawling exurbia that is retreating unrelentingly into the future.
· Tristram Hunt is a visiting professor at Arizona State University and author of Building Jerusalem: The Rise and Fall of the Victorian City (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
I get out to Silicon Valley from time to time, and...I'm sorry, but I think the whole region is ugly as dirt. Those houses are so drab, and San Jose at night is like the last place God made. I gotta admit, though...those Fry's electronics stores are the Bomb!
I much prefer adobe and ranch style housing in the US. My dad is building a cabin out near Lake Mono in California/Nevada (not sure where the border is).
In England we have Wimpy Homes. They are even worse than mcmansions. They are made of orange bricks and fall apart after a few decades.
I think Exurbs are a-s ugly places myself, where every restaurants a chain and idiot developers make it impossible to drive between shopping centers. Nevertheless, the fact that these are often the best places young families can afford, combined with the fact that people actually like living there, reflect that fact that we as Americans actually have choices as to where to live, rather than being forced by the government to live in projects.
There are some nice parts of Palo-Alto still but Cupertino and San Jose are just horrid. Sunnyvale is just wierd. There is nothing but rows of houses.
Great point, kingsurfer.
Has anyone seen Harry Potter, with those jampacked row houses?
Just for the record, some of us like living in the cities where the housing is built well, with high ceilings for cooler air circulation in the summer. Some of us like being close enough to church to hear the bells ring. Some of us like public transportation to go to the ballgame. Love of the suburbs is not universal.
There are drawbacks, but it beats sitting in traffic on highways.
Yeh. They are reffered to as Wimpy houses. They used to be hosues for poor people but with the property explosion here it is not uncommon for houses like that to go for $500k in London.
Wyoming's population may not be declining, but it sure isn't growing much. I'm of the opinion that Wyo could use a little "urban sprawl." Maybe then I could make a good living there.
…but the sprawling southern California of The OC.
As for the rest of the article, I can only say “So what?”
He does have a point, for all the restirictive urban planning laws we have, we still produce soleless crap...and unecessarily so. That really is a criticism of the US that is worthy of some reflection.
Just looks at the Evil Spawn of Frank Loyd right that populated west coast developments in the 1970s (The Rambler or Ranch house). Hell has T1-11 siding.
However, compare what $300K buys outside of Phoenix compared to Manchester.
Tristam doesn't like it that these dang Americans have a house and a yard they could never afford in England.
Full Disclosure: Yeah, I miss Minnesota. You wanna make something of it? :-)
Yeah....go back if you don't like it here!
(from a 40+ year AZ native!)
read later
I'll never understand folks who spend a mint on a huge house with no frigging land. And live cheek-by-jowl with their neighbors.
In the mid seventies, I lived in Europe and bought a flat for my company in downtown London. Two years later, we sold it and had so many Arab applicants bidding for it, it took 3 months to sell it.
Today, because of what started back then, a normal Londoner, will have to live about 50 miles outside the city to find affordable housing. SAD
This Tristram dude touched a nerve in my book; I love the Kansas exurbs.
Do you guys live in the 'burbs?
"Give the people what they want," the developers say. But what if what the people want is something bad? "Market rules," they reply. "Who are you to judge what's bad?" A student of history, I reply, but nobody is listening.
And so the cycle begins: we build our brave new suburbs far from the crime, taxes, minorities and traffic of the city and move there. Of course, we need dry cleaning, tacos, and 24-hour gas, so these come with us, as do the people that work in them. Soon, the crime, taxes, minorities and traffic in the new places are as bad as they were in the city, so we bulldoze another thousand acres of land and build another suburb even further out. Move to Shinynewburg and escape the traffic, the crowds, the minorities and the stress of where you live now! Repeat until there is no more land left.
I fail to see how this cycle benefits anybody--except the developers, car dealers, mortgage lenders, and oil companies, of course.
And what happens to the suburbs we're building now when the traffic, taxes, and minorities catch up with them? Look around you. The suburbs of the 2000s will fall to ruin, just as the suburbs of the '50s, '60s. '70s, and '80s have and are. In time, the cardboard houses will collapse and the gated communities will become slums: no business = no tax revenue = no streets or schools. If the residents of the old suburb are lucky the whole place will be bulldozed before the gangs move in. Meanwhile, Shinynewburg residents are demanding a new superhighway to make the ninety-mile commute into the city easier -- and they'll get it, too.
This situation is unsustainable in the long run. The gods of the copybook headings will cach up with our urban flight eventually, and when the crash comes, it won't be pretty. Of course, that day won't come for decades. So go ahead, America, pave it all over.
I live 2 hours north of Phoenix, and for the last 24 years have had the experience of seeing my once "quiet little redneck town" turn into its northernmost suburb. Initially I was filled with a great deal of "Cape Codism", but as Phoenix grew at an acre an hour, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, I began to regard it with the kind of awe usually reserved for tsunammis, monstrous volcanic explosions and other impersonal but magnificent phenomena of nature. No Brit alive and a not inconsiderable number of Americans can conceive of this rate of growth. (For you Brits, when I was born (1949), Phoenix was the size of Bath and Wells.)It's well beyond simple good or bad, it is, as I said, a phenomenon of nature.
For those of you who wish to visit the lovely Grand Canyon, my exurb is Flagstaff, a "cloverleaf town" of 50,000 at the junction of I-17 and I-40. We have legendary high prices and rates plus a hefty "bed, board, and booze" tax to spare you the burden of feeling that you have imposed on our legendary Route 66 "hospitality." Smokers are not welcome anywhere and clerks and waitresses are underpaid and surly. We host the usual stripmall amenities and there is nowhere to eat above the Outback Steakhouse register. Smart locals shop in Phoenix.
(I wish I had time to tell you tales of old Flagstaff, which specialized in fanbelt and shock absorber scams but I need to post this before the thread grows much longer.)
God bless America.
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