
The Persistent Economic Advantage of America’s Suburbs - jatsign
https://www.citylab.com/life/2019/03/cities-economic-performance-data-suburbs-urban-research/584284/
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ab71e5
I don't get it, doesn't this just say that more rich/educated people live in
the suburbs than urban areas? How is that an economic advantage or
'outperforming' urban neighborhoods?

I thought it has been shown that suburbs cost a lot more per capita in public
services like roads but this is heavily subsidized by more the efficient urban
areas.

~~~
dougmany
>Richard Florida is a co-founder and editor at large of CityLab and a senior
editor at The Atlantic. He is a university professor in the University of
Toronto’s School of Cities and Rotman School of Management, and a
distinguished fellow at New York University’s Schack Institute of Real Estate.

The article is written from a Realtor's prospective.

~~~
trgn
Richard Florida coined the term "creative class" and was one of the big
boosters of the idea that the young cool people would not only move to the
city when they're young and eager (same as always), but also would decide to
stay there as they grow older (new in the late 90s), effectively transforming
the urban environment. The wealth of this middle-aged creative worker with
disposable income would then trickle down to the service class. He described a
model for urban renaissance that was essentially reducing a city to factories
of entertainment and opportunity for yuppies. He really shaped the
conversation. But as reality is more nuanced than that, he's trying to find a
new tack. Smart guy.

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helen___keller
>The once cut-and-dried distinctions between city and suburb have blurred and
no longer explain the actual places we live

I think this should be expanded on. If you live in a place where people
commute to the urban center on a daily basis, then you are a part of that
city's urban fabric, even if you are not "in the city".

The distinction between "urban" and "suburban" is mostly superficial based on
the forms of housing common in each location, the modes of transportation
commonly used, and the culture of each location. This is even evident in day
to day speech, if you are traveling and meet someone who asks where you are
from, from my experience you say the name of the city you live near, not the
name of the adjacent suburb or township you live in.

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gipp
How is that "superficial"? You listed some of the most economically and
culturally impactful factors for a settlement.

~~~
helen___keller
Fair. Maybe a better description is that the differences between urban and
suburban were manufactured by public policy.

The forms of housing were manufactured by zoning law, home owners
associations, and master plans for communities of houses with big lawns.

The forms of transportation were manufactured more or less as a direct result
of the housing forms above. Walking, biking, and transit aren't as viable in
the land of suburban sprawl (and during the decades of expansion of the
suburb, public transportation money mostly aimed at motorist-friendly projects
like expressways)

The cultural (and socio-economic) differences were manufactured by horrifying,
now-illegal, 20th century policies, namely redlining and racial covenants. The
OP's description that suburban and urban are "blurring" is a result of several
decades of recovery from these policies.

By superficial what I meant is that without these forces manufacturing a false
dichotomy of "urban" vs "suburban", we would likely have a much more blurred
spectrum of housing & neighborhoods.

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dahfizz
Everything you mention is a byproduct of one factor: density. Density of
people determines housing and economics and transportation and everything else
that makes a suburb different than a city. And while I agree that there is a
continuous spectrum there, the dichotomy is anything but false. The noisy,
dirty, cramped city might as well be on a different planet from the quiet,
disperse suburbs 30 minutes away. The lifestyles and experiences of the two
places are very different.

~~~
helen___keller
Of course there's a difference between city center and city boundary. Of
course some places are loud and some are quiet.

But the point I'm trying to make is that "noisy, dirty, cramped" isn't a
singular fact of urban life - in fact, there are plenty of places relatively
high density that are none of those. Even in the USA, there are neighborhoods
like Brookline in the Boston area. Brookline is relatively dense (the streets
near the light rail system anyways), but also quiet, clean, safe, and
residential. The main problem is that it's expensive, very expensive -- which
is understandable because there are so few neighborhoods built like it, so
it's a very desirable place to live.

You mention "worlds apart from the quiet, disperse suburbs 30 minutes away",
but this is also a product of urban planning. Here's what a neighborhood 30
minutes away from Osaka city hall by train looks like:

[https://www.google.com/maps/@34.6176119,135.520036,3a,75y,14...](https://www.google.com/maps/@34.6176119,135.520036,3a,75y,144.18h,91.22t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sMmIsYvY57W5kibf-p3bYrQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656)

Quiet, dense, Residential. A mix between single family homes, tightly packed,
and mid-rise apartment complexes. High standard of living, but affordable to
the middle class (330~ usd per sqft from my understanding)

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troyvit
"Across the board, suburban neighborhoods have higher incomes, higher home
values, higher shares of college grads, and higher shares of professionals
than urban neighborhoods. And suburbs do better than urban areas even when we
compare neighborhoods in the same quartile of status."

I think though that part of the problem is that housing in the suburbs is more
expensive to begin with, so only people with a lot of money can afford to live
there. If you have more money you'r emore likely to be a college grad and a
"professional" (whatever that means). It's not that suburbia makes you rich,
it's that you have to be rich to live in surburbia. There isn't an economic
advantage to living there, you just have to be richer to live there.

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api
Housing in the suburbs was more expensive in the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s,
but that is no longer true in many cities. Excluding the most affluent suburbs
higher quality urban real estate is often more expensive. Suburbs closer to
city centers are also generally more expensive unless they are in poor
condition.

I've wondered if the suburbs might not have been a major driver of American
middle class growth in the late 20th century for a really simple reason:
expansion fueled by automotive transit allowed people to escape the law of
rent and the tyranny of landlords and the property market.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_rent](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_rent)

Eventually this expansion reached practical limits due to commute times and
energy costs, so now we are back to the way it was before.

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RcouF1uZ4gsC
> I've wondered if the suburbs might not have been a major driver of American
> middle class growth in the late 20th century for a really simple reason:
> expansion fueled by automotive transit allowed people to escape the law of
> rent and the tyranny of landlords and the property market.

Nice insight. I know in Silicon Valley, people are not nearly as wealthy as
the could be given their salaries because maybe 1/2 their monthly income goes
to housing.

~~~
api
The Bay Area is the most absurd large scale property market in America, but
it's really just the most extreme case of a disease found almost everywhere.

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stcredzero
"Subdivisions" \-- Rush, 1982, _Signals_

    
    
        Sprawling on the fringes of the city
        In geometric order
        An insulated border
        In-between the bright lights
        And the far, unlit unknown
    
        Growing up, it all seems so one-sided
        Opinions all provided
        The future pre-decided
        Detached and subdivided
        In the mass-production zone
    
        Nowhere is the dreamer
        Or the misfit so alone
    
        ...
    
        Any escape might help to smooth
        The unattractive truth
        But the suburbs have no charms to soothe
        The restless dreams of youth
    

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subdivisions_(song)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subdivisions_\(song\))

~~~
cpursley
Ahead of their time :)

~~~
stcredzero

        Growing up, it all seems so one-sided
        Opinions all provided
        The future pre-decided
        Detached and subdivided

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jellicle
The article seems to want to say "suburbs cause wealth" but only provides data
for "rich people live in suburbs".

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Maximus9000
This article is all about money. What about life?

Suburbs are depressing. I find myself both happier and healthier in walkable
communities near city center.

~~~
sonnyblarney
If you have 4 kids, it might be different.

All of my siblings have kids ands live in the burbs, and it's jus easier: they
have larger, boring homes, but easy access to schools and the grocery store.

Parkland: they all play sports and there are actual places to play them.

The couldn't care less about not being near the museum.

I think they would like maybe to be able to 'walk places' but that's one thing
they give up.

It's also very green and closer to the countryside.

It's a little more banal but I really do think when you have kids, it's all
about that, and so a lot of other things have less priority.

~~~
thousandautumns
I agree, and I think the discussion of suburban vs urban doesn't focus on it
enough. As a single (or at least, childless) person, the city absolutely is
much more appealing to me. The moment I had children the city became much less
desirable than the suburbs.

Unfortunately, cities, particularly American cities, are not ideal for
families.

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obelos
It would be interesting to see how age factors into this spread. During this
study's timeframe at least, older people have had more opportunity to accrue
wealth and have children (who have also had more time to go to college). In my
anecdotal experience, most of the urban influx has been from younger people.

~~~
ghaff
The most detailed data I’ve run across in recent years suggests the
urbanization trend is mostly about college educated 18-35 year olds moving to
a relative handful of dense urban cores. (Though anecdotally the same thing is
happening on a smaller scale in many cities that have small gentrified cores.)

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cagenut
"during the four-decade period spanning 1970 to 2010."

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jtbayly
“...a period that overlaps with notions of the resurgence of America’s urban
centers and the decline of its suburbs.”

~~~
ghaff
That sentence seems odd. NYC was about to go bankrupt during that period.
Boston was losing population and employers into the 1990s. The current new
urbanism renewal is mostly overstated and applies to a thin slice of
demographics and locations but it’s also very recent—less than 20 years old
for the most part.

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crowdpleaser
Is it any surprise?

I don't want to be accused of being a racist so I can't move into affordable
urban neighborhoods with too many 'underrepresented minorities'. I like peace
and quiet, you don't find that in the city. I like driving more than
walking/bicycling/taking the bus so I live in a place that makes it less of a
hassle to own the cars. And I care for my safety and my property, I'd be an
idiot to move to the cities near me that care more about being nice to
criminals than protecting property owned by the working class.

And yeah, the suburbs are advantaged. I saved money to live there, I want my
kids to have the most advantages possible, I've instilled enough discipline in
them that they're able to learn and grow at school. I've been in city schools,
they're full of kids pissing away the opportunity to learn and interfering
with the learning of other students, how can someone succeed when their
classmates are cranking that soulja boy?

~~~
helen___keller
>I don't want to be accused of being a racist so I can't move into affordable
urban neighborhoods with too many 'underrepresented minorities'

???

~~~
crowdpleaser
[https://www.sacbee.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/erika-d-
smi...](https://www.sacbee.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/erika-d-
smith/article219312260.html)

Improving a blighted neighborhood is racism. If I were to displace a minority
from “their” neighborhood, I would have done a racist act.

