I've said for a while now that it will be interesting to see the exurbs with grass in the streets. Anybody who thinks these places will survive the next century is kidding themselves. They are built on a couple of premises which are being challenged and overturned by the day.
1) Oil. We have already probably hit peak oil. These suburbs are actually getting it coming and going at the moment because while the current economic crisis has meant a drop in petroleum consumption, a phenomenon which will give a short reprieve to Western civ and its attempt to move beyond oil, the same crisis is speeding up the process of decline that will only make the exurbs' problems worse.
2) Consumerism. I'm convinced that the unspoken theme underlying this whole downturn is the end of American consumer culture. We have built a society on massive debt and disposibility (sp?) and there are few symbols more apt for this than the exurbs. Homes nobody lives in for more than a decade, usually far less, meaning that the mortgage never gets paid off. This is coming to an end and a simpler, more frugal and responsible way of life returning to take its place. We are essentially rolling the clock back to a time when the exurbs were prairies and dove hunting fields. This does not bode well for these neighborhoods.
That being said, I'm not convinced that New Urbanism offers much of a solution, but rather a whole new set of problems. For one its callous disregard for the poor and working class communities the "burbclave" mixed use condo developments displace leads me to suspect a "third worldization" of our urban spaces--rich folks in the city center, poor folks in the burbs. Associated with this is a kind of low intensity liberal ethnic cleansing where minority majority neighborhoods are being razed to make way for predominantly white New Urbanist developments. And it is my experience that the amount of housing sharply decreases with the introduction of New Urbanism to an area, as older, sprawling neighborhoods are destroyed to make way for newer, more compact developments.
Furthermore mixed use develoments essentially represent the building of for-profit, privately owned cities. In west Plano, TX you can go to the Shops at Legacy and it looks like a city, you feel like you are in New York or New Orleans or even parts of Austin--there are businesses and homes and pedestrian thoroughfares. It is a city, but it is wholly owned by private capital. The result is that if anyone wants to say, busk (play music or perform for spare change), pass out leaflets, put on a small demonstration of some sort or otherwise do the crazy things that make cities so vibrant and free you will be run out on a rail by private security. They may even call local cops out. If this trend continues there may come a time when private contracts trump the constitution in pretty much all of the neighborhoods where people actually live. Local government will be determined by
Well, I did this up to pass along links. Check out these New Urbanist-skeptic posts at my friends and my new blog The Deliverators. Here are some posts up your alley:
By our admin Robert about Portland's "white metropolis": http://deliverators.typepad.com/deliverators/2009/
01/portland-white-metropolis.html
And by me as a response to that one: http://deliverators.typepad.com/deliverators/2009/
01/a-quick-thought-regarding-the-portland-
post.html.
If you know of any sites consistently skeptical of New Urbanism, please pass them along to my email: AndrewDobbsTX@gmail.com. Also, if you like what you see we'd love to trade links with you!
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