Posted on 03/14/2009 7:56:54 AM PDT by dennisw
The downturn accomplished what a generation of designers and planners could not: it has turned back the tide of suburban sprawl. In the wake of the foreclosure crisis many new subdivisions are left half built and more established suburbs face abandonment. Cul-de-sac neighborhoods once filled with the sound of backyard barbecues and playing children are falling silent. Communities like Elk Grove, Calif., and Windy Ridge, N.C., are slowly turning into ghost towns with overgrown lawns, vacant strip malls and squatters camping in empty homes. In Cleveland alone, one of every 13 houses is now vacant, according to an article published Sunday in The New York Times magazine.
Thirty-five percent of the nation's wealth has been invested in building a drivable suburban landscape, according to Christopher Leinberger, an urban planning professor at the University of Michigan and visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution. James Howard Kunstler, author of "The Geography of Nowhere," has been saying for years that we can no longer afford suburbs. "If Americans think they've been grifted by Goldman Sachs and Bernie Madoff, wait until they find out what a swindle the so-called 'American Dream' of suburban life turns out to be," he wrote on his blog
So what's to become of those leafy subdivisions with their Palladian detailing and tasteful signage? Already low or middle-income families priced out of cities and better neighborhoods are moving into McMansions divided for multi-family use. Alison Arieff, who blogs for The New York Times, visited one such tract mansion that was split into four units, or "quartets," each with its own entrance, which is not unlike what happened to many stately homes in the 1930s.
Richard Florida, argues that dense and diverse cities with "accelerated rates of urban metabolism" are the communities most likely to innovate their way through economic crisis.
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
It's not as cool as some people think.
I say we sell em to the mexican immigrants and move to warmer weather in Mexico. Then build a wall only allowing cute senioritas thru.
Which relates to the subject of dying suburbs how? Cleveland's outer suburbs are doing just fine, and growing.
This sounds like a heavy dose of hopey-changey wishful thinking on the part of a loopy-lefty writer.
Which relates to the subject of dying suburbs how? Cleveland’s outer suburbs are doing just fine, and growing.
This is just prep work for when our benevolent govt forces us back into the cities
We live in the city as well and deal with such things as well (minus the wild dogs). It sure is nice to have a grocery store 2 blocks away and work a whopping 20 blocks away though. I don’t know the size of your city but Portland is only a medium sized city so it is sort of cozy.
I was gonna say, WTF does Cleveland have to do with this? Also, other “master planned” communities such as Irvine, CA, etc., are doing quite well despite housing prices tanking. Hell, I live 90 miles north of Boston and they can’t build houses up here fast enough for the libtards to commute down there, poor bastards.
And believe me, Elk Grove California is not a ghost town. This article is pure liberal B.S.
I hope this moron is in one when the food deliveries stop, and the drugs run out.
Every few months these "Predictions" appear.
In deference to the family friendly nature of FR, I will use extreme self-censorship, and not begin to scratch the surface of my true contmept for this position except to say that I would live naked in the woods like a beast, before I would move to a Democrat-infested, filthy crime-ridden, crumbling corrupt open sewer of a rat warren terrorist-magnet.
The liberal has hated the suburbs forever. They vote Republican and have high standards.
Yep...just another a trial balloon from the MSM / DBM socialistmarxistcommunist faithful.
1) Equalize incomes, close the "gap" between rich and poor.
2) Drastically reduce carbon emissions, even if it means crippling the economies of the West,
3) End suburban sprawl, centralize human populations and let nature take back the outlying areas.
By setting in motion an economic crisis and by making "good use" of that crisis, these goals may all be achieved. I think it was all deliberate.
You can find crime, slums, empty homes, empty schools, and empty Wal-Marts in every urban city...yet somehow a few foreclosed homes in the suburbs marks the death of suburbia?!
Oh please...
So diverse Detroit is innovating. Who knew?!
There goes the articles credibility. I was going to ask the same question.
This sounds like a heavy dose of hopey-changey wishful thinking on the part of a loopy-lefty writer.
Yup.
It’s a Democratic Party interest group perfect storm. In this (forced urbanization), the interests of the unions, the environmentalists, and the racebaiters—who otherwise have wildly diverging and conflicting priorities—converge.
Right. I guess they just wanted to throw a little more doom in there, even though it was irrelevant.
There is nothing wrong with a suburb, it’s just the illogical way they are designed where nothing connects to anything, and it’s impossible to do anything without a car.
Cities don't innovate. They are just run by the children and grandchildren of the thugs who always ran them. How can they innovate unless they are cleaned up at the top? And that cannot happen because the parasites are embedded like ticks, and have built political machines.
If a city were a dog, it would be easy...worm medicine.
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