
The Suburbs Will Die: One Man's Fight to Fix the American Dream - e15ctr0n
http://time.com/3031079/suburbs-will-die-sprawl/
======
pnathan
I don't like suburbs.

Why?

\- I don't like the constant driving to get anywhere.

\- I don't like the malls, the big box stores, the "clone" button that seems
applied across the landscape.

\- I don't like the giant roads carving their way around, splitting
communities.

\- I don't like the squandering of resources on lawns! individual houses! low-
density housing!

I can say, with confidence, I'd like to live in a place where I own my house,
where I have some property to do with as I please, where children can play
nearby on grass, and where I don't sweat getting rent raised. On the other
hand, I can easily see own a very small piece of land and having access to
some neighborhood commons as part of a community.

~~~
aaron-lebo
I'm a child of the suburbs and have since moved to the city so take this with
a grain of salt.

I enjoy the malls, the big box stores, and the clones. Why? I know that pretty
much anywhere I go I can get a consistent experience. I can go the local mall
and almost anything I can want or imagine is available, which at some level is
fascinating. What's more, as cliche as all these places ares, there is a bit
of a shared experience for almost everyone.

I enjoy driving on the giant roads, or strolling through the quiet suburbs
with headphones on without fear of some incident. I like not hearing people
and cars all the time.

I like the city for other reasons; I enjoy the history, the character, the
feeling of life, but the suburbs have their place, there is a reason they
exist. They aren't perfect and they are the harbingers of some negative social
trends, but they aren't as horrible as HN likes to act.

~~~
pnathan
> I enjoy the malls, the big box stores, and the clones. Why? I know that
> pretty much anywhere I go I can get a consistent experience. I can go the
> local mall and almost anything I can want or imagine is available, which is
> some level is fascinating. What's more, as cliche as all these places ares,
> there is a bit of a shared experience for almost everyone.

I don't understand this. That is not because you're not lucidly explaining it.
It simply does not fit into my head how this is desirable. :) But that's ok. I
think _Different places should look and feel and act different_. I think that
making a consistent experience absolutely destroys the unique culture and
history of places, replaced by "the style from headquarters", and "the history
of Walgreenmartsafewayco". It really repels me.

For really getting away from people/cars, I believe that the forests are
appropriate. Ideally, no paths, no trails, just.... _away_.

Anyway. My anti-suburb rant over for the day. :)

~~~
lliwta
> I think that making a consistent experience absolutely destroys the unique
> culture and history of places

To be fair, the unique culture of the place used to be "industrial farming
corn field" is most cases. It's not like anyone is tearing down 100 year old
neighborhoods to build big boxes to serve suburbs (actually, the suburbs are
far more likely to save those places than destroy them).

~~~
pnathan
> unique culture of the place used to be "industrial farming corn field" is
> most cases.

Ha, yes. But - thought experiment. What if, instead of another 'burb with
winding streets, it started out by defining a downtown core kind of setup: 4-6
story buildings with retail storefronts and apartments above. Put the 'extra'
space into a commons area, plus maybe a mini-park possibly with original area
flora and fauna. So your 1/4 mile x 1/4 mile place gets a _lot_ more dense and
has a lot more to offer within an easy 10-minute walk. Bonus points if you
figure out how to build a "tool shed" local workshop to replace the ubiquitous
garages. :)

~~~
gangstaplot2
I would live in something like this happily, but for one thing: I have three
large dogs. Without a yard, it's a lot of work, and I'd hate to think I
couldn't keep a few dogs around.

------
ufmace
My skepticism of suburbs has mostly been about how the long distance and
personal car dependence they create tends to isolate people and households.

Build a suburban "gated community" for safety, give everyone a huge lawn that
they're obligated to constantly maintain, don't allow any commercial buildings
in because they're considered ugly, and you get an environment where it's
pretty tough to get anywhere without a car. Add in the poor pedestrian
infrastructure, intimidating high-speed traffic, and some irrational fear of
how anybody under 18 out of eyesight of a parent for a second is about to be
kidnapped, and you get a neighborhood where everyone seems actively
discouraged from knowing anything about their neighbors. Seems to me that this
is what creates the unsafe environment that everyone was trying so hard to get
away from.

It's interesting to read that many suburbs may also be logistically
unsustainable.

~~~
modoc
Your vision of a suburb has very little to do with the reality of my suburban
existence. It's like someone from the country talking about the horribly
dangerous ugly city with its filthy air, roving gangs shooting strangers, and
huge rats running in the streets.

I'm not saying suburbs are perfect, but you've basically thrown up a stack of
strawmen here.

~~~
potatolicious
I dunno, I grew up in the suburbs and ufmace summed it up pretty well. My
neighborhood wasn't explicitly gated, but the meandering streets with a
million dead-ends may as well have been a wrought iron gate.

It's pretty obvious to everyone that the nonsensical street layout was
designed to keep everyone but residents out.

Every house had huge lawns, and because the houses were all built as part of
the same subdivision development, they were all roughly the same age. This
created a _lot_ of keeping up with the Joneses, where one neighbor getting a
new roof meant a cascade of people getting new roofs. One house got a paint
job and suddenly the whole damn fuckin' street is painting houses.

Getting anywhere without a car is nigh impossible. The neighborhood, despite
being upscale, lacked sidewalks (I guess they never thought anyone would need
'em, the residents ain't poor after all), and once you leave the neighborhood
you face a 5-lane arterial where the unofficial speed limit is 50mph and
drivers have no conception of pedestrians. The sidewalks are wide enough for
one person - if you're unlucky enough to meet someone coming the other
direction you get to do a silly dance around each other so nobody has to step
into 50mph traffic.

Crossing this street is also nigh impossible until well after I moved out of
that place. There are pedestrian crosswalks painted in, but good luck getting
any of the drivers to stop for you. Thankfully as of a few years ago they
installed a real honest to God traffic signal. Small victories.

Anyways, long rant, but ufmace's "nightmare" suburb does exist. I grew up in
one.

~~~
tptacek
Worth mentioning that the meandering streets that annoy people in the suburbs
are a classic Christopher Alexander architecture goal. Minimizing cross-town
high-speed car traffic is intended to make areas more walkable, shifting the
balance from automobiles to humans.

Obviously, suburbs categorically fail to accomplish the strategic goal behind
creating windy streets; it's almost impossible to live in one without a car.
Suburban city planners probably were not inspired by Alexander. But they are
safer places for kids to play in the streets than Chicago blocks, where
residents often lobby for speed bumps to deal with speeding cars.

Suburbs bad. Windy streets? Maybe not so much.

------
bane
I will absolutely trade my ridiculously sized house in the burbs (within
walking distance of a bank, grocery, bike store, gym, Tae Kwon Do school,
movie theater, two salons, 3 doctors and 3 dentists and a psychiatrist, a mix
of about a dozen local and chain eating options, an optometrist, high-end toy
store, dry cleaners, wine store, 2 ice cream parlors, and a 5 minute drive to
more local ethnic food than you can shake a stick at soon to get a local
library, and dozens of miles of bike and hiking trails and three large
swimming pools) for an equivalent sized domicile of my choice in my choice of
neighborhoods in Manhattan tomorrow if he wants to make that trade.

After which, I'll probably sell that place in Manhattan for the $30-40 million
I can get, buy another house back in my old suburb and a vacation house in
Southern Spain and retire/angel fund my choice of startups till I die.

~~~
Brakenshire
If you are in reasonable walking distance of all those things, and it pleasant
to walk to them, I would say almost by definition you don't live in a suburb,
or rather, that is not the kind of place that people are complaining about.
You must be just as horrified as anyone else at the prospect of living in a
subdivision where you are miles away from anything apart from houses, or where
you literally cannot walk to town, or from one shop to another across the
road, because of a lack of pedestrian access.

~~~
bane
Let's just say modern suburbs are quite different than they used to be.
There's been lots of lessons learned and as a buyer, I won't buy in an area
that's not at least of this style.

Is it as convenient as a dense city? No, but my standard of living makes the
affordable parts of most cities look like tenement housing in comparison.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy cities as much as the next person. But economics
is a major problem that cities have to overcome. Equivalent housing in a city
is one or two orders of magnitude more expensive. Cities are great for lots of
things but I don't use most of those things more than ever once in a while
even while living in a city. May as well live someplace nicer the other 90% of
the time and take the the easy access public transport in when I really want
to see a museum or go to a concert or whatever.

------
transfire
1\. Require higher standards. Infrastructure needs to last decades, not years.
We used to build things that well. There is no reason we can't again. Then the
big bucks we pay up front would be worth it. Unfortunately we have been moving
in the opposite direction, to fill the coffers of cheap fat cats.

2\. Zoning laws must change. It is ridiculous the a suburban family has to
drive to the Super Walmart for a gallon of milk. When I was young there was a
local convenience store just down every street (and not just crappy junk
filled 7-11s).

3\. Trains. Apparently they are cheap enough to get immigrants to their jobs,
but too expensive for middle America? The B.S. around trains needs to end, and
a new age of private passenger rail promoted. If you don't beleive me (b/c
you'd rather believe political talking points) you best get a'Googling.

4\. To go along with the trains, why is my municipal airport all but useless?
Is anyone else getting tired of ever bigger airports and ever smaller seats?
Who decided airports needed to be malls and that all flights needed to herd
people into a handful of national feed lots? I figure at this rate airports
will have indoor roller coasters within the next 20 years. What we need to do
instead is transition to point-to-point flights on mass produced jets.
Currently jets are all hand made. Good grief!

5\. And ditch that 9-5 business. It's time we split the work and go 8 to 2 and
2 to 8. More jobs, business are open longer, and yet fewer people on the
roads.

My 5 cents. Penny for your thoughts?

~~~
gohrt
> When I was young there was a local convenience store just down every street
> (and not just crappy junk filled 7-11s).

Do you think _zoning laws_ prevent 7-11 from selling milk, or do you think
7-11 sells what the market buys?

------
bubbleRefuge
From the perspective of someone who was pushed to the burbs due to better
schools and facilities for kids, one thing I notice is that urban apartment
complexes here in the states don't have the playground facilities that you
find in big cities in developing countries. For example, when I visited the
city of Sao Paolo Brazil, I stayed in an upper middle class apartment complex
which had land at the base of the building walled off into a private park
which had a hybrid soccer/basketball court, playground facilities, pool, and
plenty of space for kids to run wild. Don't see that here in the states (
except pool ).

------
cwal37
Reading on the topic:

The Geography of Nowhere:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Geography_of_Nowhere](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Geography_of_Nowhere)

The City in History:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_City_in_History](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_City_in_History)

~~~
humanrebar
Here's an hour of an economics professor talking to Charles Marohn about
Strong Towns:
[http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2014/05/charles_marohn.html](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2014/05/charles_marohn.html)

------
LordKano
I like the suburbs.

I like that I have about 1/6 of an acre of land that my house sits on.

I can grow a garden. My children have a safe yard to play in. I have a nice
warm and dry garage in which I can perform my automotive repairs. I can
barbecue without choking my neighbors with the smoke from my grill. I can play
loud music late at night and not bother everyone nearby. I have trees from
which we get organic, pesticide free fruits.

Suburbs will never die, as long as there are still people like me.

The author's epiphany seems to have come from the realization that despite his
engineering background and his status as an "expert", he still didn't know as
much as the hoi polloi about what was best for their neighborhoods but he
still didn't learn the correct lesson.

The problem was caused by other "experts", to whom the state deferred for
determining the standards in the first place. Every town is different. Every
town has different needs. Forcing them to all use the same plan has
consequences, even if he was not able to see them.

Widening those streets and removing those trees only encouraged people to
drive faster and caused more accidents and deaths. It was a bad idea to help
people drive faster through residential neighborhoods. Were he not so enamored
with enforcing external standards, he might have been able to see that.

------
Zigurd
Recently a researcher at Toyota predicted that self-driving cars would
perpetuate suburbia and enable more driving. A door-to-door ride in my own car
would be far faster than riding the Boston area commuter rail, which has an
inconveniently sparse schedule, and then the Red Line into Cambridge. The only
reason to take the commuter rail is to avoid the chore of driving. The diesel
locomotives are not cleaner or more efficient.

~~~
pouetpouet
Nobody knows. Robotaxis are a bit like carsharing, they change the economics.
A private ownership car bears a lot of fixed costs, and each mile get cheaper.
Once you own one, you are likely to use it all the time. With pay-as-you-go
robotaxis the incentives are different. Going car-free will be easier.

Self driving cars will relieve downtowns/walkable places from dead parking
space. That means more destinations reachable by foot/bike. Why use a car when
you can use your feet?

Self driving cars also means that roads will be safer for pedestrians and
cyclists.

Congestion won't go away. Now you can read/work/play in your car, but that's
about it.

Last but not least, sprawl is still unsustainable in terms of infrastructure.

~~~
Zigurd
I suspect local economics dominates the issue. Even the ticky tacky hundreds-
of-townhouses-all-the-same sprawl into the garlic fields (are there still
garlic fields?) south of San Jose will not feel any pinch from... what? San
Francisco is full and Silicon Valley spews wealth. San Jose should benefit
from higher density and more urban cultural life, but it's not going to make a
dent in demand. If the money is there, the sprawl will remain. Conversely, if
it isn't, there won't be any urban revitalization.

------
CalRobert
Unfortunately if you don't want to live in an environment like the one this
person helped build, it seems necessary to be either extremely rich or
comfortable with high crime rates, or willing to leave the country entirely.

~~~
cwal37
That's not really accurate. Suburbs have a lower overall amount of crime, but
you need to think about relative rates of crime based on the number of people
living in an area.

Here's a simple study that discusses a lot of that:
[http://proceedings.esri.com/library/userconf/proc00/professi...](http://proceedings.esri.com/library/userconf/proc00/professional/papers/pap508/p508.htm)

Personally, I found it pretty easy to live in two different college towns
(less than 100k pop), not own a car, and enjoy relatively walkable areas. Then
I moved to TN for work and got laughs in the interview when I asked about
public transportation. I imagine the suburban reflex kicks in strongly for
some people once they have a kid or two.

~~~
SilasX
While I'm on board with the suburb criticism, I'm not sure that "per capita"
is the relevant metric here. I'm concerned with the number of crime incidents
_per unit area_ , over the areas where I will most be. Is there a reason I
should prefer one metric over another?

~~~
ObviousScience
Because if you're in the area that a crime is going to occur, but it's only
going to happen to k of n people in the area (with k usually equal to 1), you
have a lower than certain chance of being involved?

For an example, if you're on a block there's 100% going to be a robbery in the
next 5 minutes, if there are also 200 other people on that block, then you
still only have a 0.5% chance of being robbed.

Essentially, because so many crimes only involve a single (or relatively few)
victim(s), your odds of being involved need to account for how many other
people are around you, and not just the odds that it will happen in the same
area as you.

Your measure of "per unit area" doesn't account for the fact most people
aren't going to be involved with the crime (eg, robbed), but will all be in
the same impacted area.

So, essentially, it over-calculates how likely you actually are to be the
victim of a crime. Per unit area is only useful if you want to know how close
you're likely to be to a crime being committed, and not how likely you are to
be the victim.

~~~
SilasX
>Because if you're in the area that a crime is going to occur, but it's only
going to happen to k of n people in the area ...

>...Your measure of "per unit area" doesn't account for the fact most people
aren't going to be involved with the crime (eg, robbed), but will all be in
the same impacted area.

I think those assumptions are where I disagree. a) I care about (not) being
near crime, and b) crime doesn't randomly sample across the set of all people,
but makes me have to avoid certain times, places, and activities.

~~~
ObviousScience
> I care about (not) being near crime

I would rather be around more crime, but victim to less of it. Your analysis
trades the potential for being a victim more often to be around less total
crime, which is why I think it's somewhat suspect. Perhaps that really is a
trade you're willing to make, but I'm dubious.

> crime doesn't randomly sample across the set of all people, but makes me
> have to avoid certain times, places, and activities

Again, per capita measure is more important for figuring out if you should
avoid an area than the crimes per area metric. (Also left out of this
discussion is the distribution of offenses committed, which is paramount I'd
argue.)

An example from where I live: there's higher crime per unit area at 9pm (it
varies by time) at the mall downtown than the gas station/bowling
alley/billiards room complex where the gang members loiter in the south end of
town. (I looked up police numbers, because you made me curious.) But I know
which one I'd rather be at based on the distribution of types of crimes and
the per capita numbers. Hint: it's not the gas station.

This is a good example of higher numbers of people hiding a lower rate of
victimization per person: there are literally hundreds of times more people
downtown than at the gas station, so a marginally higher crime per area rate
means I'm actually less likely to be involved in a crime. (Given how little of
the mall you can see at once, I likely wouldn't even know it happened.)

So let me ask you: what is it you think that the crime per area figure gives
you that crime per capita doesn't?

------
cpwright
I question the logistical challenges here. If it is truly not that dense, why
bother with sewers at all. My little slice of suburbia has no sewers, instead
all of it is septic (and where I grew up cesspools). It's 100% on the owner to
maintain.

Also, why bother spending money to widen streets. Let the streets stay as they
were when they were first built. If you're going to go off trying to bring
everything up to code as of now, instead of code when it was built, there will
be never ending expenses.

I wonder if really the property taxes are just too low in this particular
town. I pay 2-2.5% of my homes value in taxes each year, and my town/school
district have to budget prudently, but are able to pay their bills and not
rack up unsustainable debt.

The only two departments I really care about are sanitation, and highway. Even
sanitation can be eliminated with private garbage as many other towns have. I
do however expect the town to pave and plow my street. Beyond that, everything
could be accomplished with user fees.

------
recalibrator
The only ones who truly profit from urban sprawl are land developers. They
wipe out forests and wildlife to make a quick buck on cheap low-density
housing.

 _The taxpayer foots the bill_ to have the grid and city services extended for
these suburbs.

So the taxpayer loses, nature loses, and the losers who bought these ugly
disposable houses are losers. Only the land developers profit.

~~~
gohrt
> The taxpayer foots the bill to have the grid and city services extended for
> these suburbs.

The taxpayer is who gets the services.

------
zavulon
I read the entire article, and I guess I missed it - what's the proposed
solution?

~~~
rayiner
One of the things that isn't talked about, my guess is because urbanists also
tend to be liberals, is reforming welfare policy. States have largely
succeeded in, and the federal government has condoned, treating cities as the
primary welfare distribution organ. Public housing is mostly built in the
cities, most federal school aid goes into the cities, etc. This concentrates
the social problems which welfare attempts to remedy in the cities, and has
the impact of driving families out of the city when they have kids.

For example, until very recently, San Francisco had a policy of randomized
school assignments. The idea was to limit the economic segregation of schools.
Such policies are ultimately counter productive, because all they do is drive
wealthier families, and their tax dollars, out into the suburbs. Peoples'
egalitarian ideas tend to come crashing down when their kids are involved.

~~~
tptacek
I'm dubious. Urban centers suck down huge welfare dollars, but that's what
you'd expect because they have huge populations.

If you read a list of all the federal welfare programs, the only one that
sticks out as predominantly "urban" is Section 8. Section 8 is a big program,
but it's a rounding error compared to Medicaid, SSDI, and the EITC, which all
flow equally to rural areas. Even the food stamp program, which benefits rural
households, eclipses HUD and Section 8.

As for education benefits: if you break Title 1 grants down per pupil, it's
not the case that the urban states uniformly get more money than the rural
ones. North Dakota, for instance, appears to get almost twice as much per
pupil as California.

~~~
rayiner
The data is hard to analyze on this point, because the government has a very
different definition of "urban" than I think we're using in this thread. In
particular, it tends to lump what we think of as urban areas and suburban
areas into one "urban" category.

New York State has 19.7 million people. New York City has 8.4 million people,
or about 43% of the state's population. But it has 61% of the state's total
medicaid recipients:
[https://www.health.ny.gov/statistics/health_care/medicaid/el...](https://www.health.ny.gov/statistics/health_care/medicaid/eligible_expenditures/el2013/2013-cy_enrollees.htm).

------
Mz
I am an environmental studies major who wanted to be an urban planner. I gave
up my car a few years ago. At the time, I was living in The Deep South. There
was a bus stop a ten minute walk from my apartment and another one in front of
my office building. No bus went directly from one to the other.

By car, it was a 7 minute drive. On foot, it was a one hour walk. By bus, I
think it would have taken about 2 hours. I walked and caught rides and was
usually at work in about 15 or 20 minutes.

Our modern concept of suburbs was born just after WW2. We had 4 years of dual
income, no kids families saving up to half their income and unable to have
kids due to the men being at war overseas. WW2 was immediately preceded by The
Great Depression. As their reward for defeating evil, Americans just wanted a
house of their own. There wasn't enough housing to meet the demand and the
nation came together as a whole to create policies and financing mechanisms
whole-clothe and we began throwing up Levittowns all over the place.

Decades later, our demographic has changed and we remain prisoners of policies
born overnight to service the preponderance of nuclear families. We have a lot
fewer nuclear families with SAHMs and small kids yet our entire world, so to
speak, is aimed at creating a dream for a generation that is dying out. (My
father fought in WW2 and he died last fall. He was just short of his 89th
birthday.)

I now live in San Diego county. Transit and density here make it almost like a
little slice of Europe, but with better weather. I think I will eventually be
able to get the life I want, without a car.

I wish this man all the best in the world. He has quite the uphill battle
ahead of him.

------
cpursley
After having spent a month in Russia, another large country with significant
distance between cities, it appears they have solved the problem. Instead of
building out, they've built dense vertical cities where everything you need is
within close walking distance. And around 40% of Russians have a dacha, or
'summer house', located in enclaves within pubic transit distance from their
city where they can stretch their feet and/or work the soil.

My guess at the reasons Russian cities developed this way is due to central
planning and costs to build and maintain roads. Now, I'm not advocating
central planning. The reasons suburbs exploded were due to the subsidization
of once unaccessible land by the federal government via interstates. Take away
the pricing distortions from land and we'll have to build up. A solution to
this is market based - sell of the interstate system and let users fund them.

------
pmorici
When I think of the suburbs I think of each house having it's own well and
septic system. Gas, electric, and phone are the only provided utilities and
they come from private companies not a local government. This article seems to
be talking about something different more like a low density city with city
provided sewer and water.

~~~
9999
I'm not sure why you were downvoted, some suburbs are exactly as you describe.
Perhaps the vast majority are not like that in the US?

~~~
ch4s3
The vast majority have sewer systems. When you cluster a lot of houses into a
smallish area, septic tanks become problematic.

------
pavedwalden
When I imagine this borrowing pattern repeated across every town in America, I
start to wonder how this affects the economy. Does anyone know how large a
share of the American financial sector all of this municipal borrowing
accounts for?

------
wainstead
Kunstler says it quite well too:

[https://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_sub...](https://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_suburbia)

------
towski
It's the economy, stupid.

------
bayesianhorse
If you want to live the American dream, go create a start up in Europe...

