Little Boxes, Big Slums
So what happens when McMansions all over the country are downgraded in status and price to the dollar menu? According to an article in The Atlantic, it means we’re witnessing a huge shift in where Americans are choosing to live. The piece, by Brookings Institution fellow/Arcadia Land Company honcho Christopher B. Leinberger, racks up fact…
So what happens when McMansions all over the country are downgraded in status and price to the dollar menu? According to an article in The Atlantic, it means we’re witnessing a huge shift in where Americans are choosing to live. The piece, by Brookings Institution fellow/Arcadia Land Company honcho Christopher B. Leinberger, racks up fact after fact to support the theory that the suburbanization of the U.S. has run its course:
For 60 years, Americans have pushed steadily into the suburbs, transforming the landscape and (until recently) leaving cities behind. But today the pendulum is swinging back toward urban living, and there are many reasons to believe this swing will continue. As it does, many low-density suburbs and McMansion subdivisions, including some that are lovely and affluent today, may become what inner cities became in the 1960s and ’70s—slums characterized by poverty, crime, and decay.
Leinberger argues that as cities have increased in cachet over the past decade or so, builders have gone gangbusters on the suburbs, leading to overdevelopment in non-urban areas and huge price premiums in our cities. One demographer he cites forecasts a “likely surplus of 22 million large-lot homes forecasts a likely surplus of 22 million large-lot homes (houses built on a sixth of an acre or more) by 2025—that’s roughly 40 percent of the large-lot homes in existence today.” There are plenty of good reasons to believe cities—and manufactured, urban-esque “lifestyle centers” outside of cities that include walkable streets and retail clusters—will only continue to grow in popularity. For example, Leinberger notes that by 2025 there will be an equal number of single-person households as families with children. The whole article is well worth a read, though it oddly doesn’t address the possible racial ramifications of a suburbia-as-slum/cities-of-gold cultural shift. Still and all, it’s a sobering look at how the McMansion developments of today may be the poverty-stricken badlands of tomorrow.
The Next Slum? [The Atlantic]
Photo by bob.
“Actually human beings were meant to live close to together in colonies. Similar to modern day cities.”
That is totally absurb. First of all, today’s cities with 8 million people bear no resemblance to historical “colonies.” The closet thing to a historical colony is a rural village or a dense suburb. Certainly not a huge city.
Second of all, anyone who has taken Psych 101 knows that Human beings thrive two things–contact and privacy. The place that makes people happy is where they can experience both. And that depends on the person. I’d bet that for most people it is the suburbs, where they can have privacy at home and contact with friends and neighbors.
Leinberger hates the suburbs and desperately wishes they go away. And there we have it: erroneous over-generalizations driven by bigotry. Nothing new, really.
The reality is much sadder. New York City’s population would’ve fallen if not for immigration: native-born Americans continue to abandon the city. White flight still technically continues, although for all practical purposes it has nearly stopped: NYC’s white population declined only by several thousand in 2000-2006 (as opposed to the losses of close to a million a decade between 1950’s and 1990’s). Black flight has become a new reality. New York is becoming less black and white, more Hispanic and Asian.
New York City added 85 thousand people, NYC’s suburbs added almost 280 thousand between 2000-2006. Almost all new office space being built in this country today is built in suburban office parks. Several new skyscrapers in New York do not really measure up.
It is not the McMansion-dominated parts of suburbia that are becoming slummified. Quite the opposite: it’s the old, dense, 1950’s suburbs that are closest to the city. The middle class moves farther and farther away from the urban cores. They live in the suburbs (ex-urbs now, really), they work in the suburbs, and they entertain themselves in the suburbs.
There are fewer than 10,000 gentrified brownstones in Brooklyn, I’d suppose. There are several million suburban homes in the greater NYC area. Keep things in perspective. You, brownstoners, are a tiny fringe group, not a trend. The trend is clear: American population has become even MORE suburbanized over the last 5 years.
And, with that, I’d say Manhattan below 96th, barring a crime wave of some sort, is on its way to almost total gentrification.
“It is unnatural to live in a fishbowl with people all around you.”
Actually human beings were meant to live close to together in colonies. Similar to modern day cities.
Not isolated with just their family unit as in the burbs.
“It is unnatural to live in a fishbowl with people all around you.”
Actually human beings were meant to live close to together in colonies. Similar to modern day cities.
Not isolated with just their family unit as in the burbs.
Are you people talking about McMansions of about suburbs? Seems like you’re combining the two topics.
Personally, I despise McMansions. I have no problem with the size, but I hate the way the developers flatten the terrain and plop the houses down. My cousin has a 70’s contemporary in the far burbs that is nesteled into a rocky hill in the woods and it is the sweetest house I’ve ever been in! You feel completely connected to the woods and the rocks. It was build by a developer, but back then they had some respect for the land.
As for the suburbs, I’d love to have a nice old house with a few acres. People talk about ‘isolation’ but to me that is privacy. It is unnatural to live in a fishbowl with people all around you. Everyone needs some personal space. That’s another problem with McMansions–they’re on top of each other.
“diet of doritos and diet coke!” so true lol
the special beauty of the mcmansions is that while you may be the lord and lordess of your manor, your subjects are literally FEET from your windows.
often within shouting distance to your window. better to keep an eye on them to make sure they are sticking to their diet of doritos and diet coke!
Highrises have flat roofs. What’s the big deal? Maybe the brainiacs from yesteryear firgured out a slight pitch and drain works fine and plus with a flat roof you can add a roof deck and enjoy the view.
Preservationista;
Now here is something we can agree about! Your e-mail is dead on. Nothing like going to visit the “Lords of the Manor House”, and watch your nose turn blue because they can’t afford to heat the place.
Benson