what will suburbia look like in 40 years?

notreally

notreally

1,000+ Posts
interesting article from nytimes.

what is the future of suburbia?

they talk to a few panelists. a couple are real doom and gloom extremists, but others have interesting theories on what will happen. i have been thinking that most everything will move back to the city, but when you think about wealthy suburbs like southlake, westlake, etc.... there is no way poor people will ever live in those towns/neighborhoods in mass. the houses are too big and expensive, even in 30 years.

so i think it will be a mix. some suburbs, like richardson and Plano close to 75 for example, are prime to be taken over by the poor. but in other areas this simply isn't going to happen. we will find an energy source (electric, natural gas, whatever) that will somehow enable us to continue to live in these areas. we are far to resourceful not to find a way to continue to be a country defined by our consumption.
 
Never, ever underestimate how much money rich people will spend to seperate themselves from everyone else.

If only rich people live in Southlake, that is where other rich people will move to.
 
If we go with the drill, drill, drill energy policy the Suburbs will indeed beome a wasteland of sorts. Simply because the benefits of the suburbs were always schools, affordability and bigger land/house for the money. The "opportunity cost" was time in the car commuting.

Now that cost is becoming a lot more with higher gas prices. I forget what show I saw the other day, I think perhaps on the PBS evening new hour? This one woman basically ended up selling her home for about half what she paid for it (california I think) because she simply could no longer make her budget work because of the rising price of her commute and food inflation.

The far our suburbs have ALWAYS been the most sensitive to price declines in the market place. High gas prices only add to the potential downward pressure on housing prices in these areas, which could indeed change the face of the suburbs around the nation over time if our country doesn't focus on alternative energy transportation modes that make living far away from your job as affordable as it has been for so long.
 
The burbs will be full of people who don't have to commute to work, like boomers (if any survive that long) and those workers who telecommute.
 
I think Richardson is among those that will actually improve, because of (1) its proximity to a major direct route to the central business district (~15 miles, close compared to most suburbs), (2) a strong, forward-thinking city government that has helped keep neighborhoods strong and fostered a pro-business environment leading to the creation of the burgeoning Telecom Corridor, and (3) strong neighborhood involvement compared to most older inner-ring 'burbs. Richardson (particularly the west side) is also blessed with a large stock of well-built 50s ranch homes which have gone up in value as younger owners come in and renovate.

The suburbs I worry about most are those with a large amount of cheaply-built, aging 70s and 80s housing stock that is quickly being taken over by investors and renters. Irving, Garland, parts of central and eastern Plano and even Lewisville and Carrollton/Farmers Branch are already experiencing this. An analysis of the real-estate market confirms this, as houses in many of those 'burbs are dropping in value month over month.
 
well that discussion was a whole lot of nothing.

What drove the growth of suburbs was not highways or cheap gas it was the lack of good city schools. I don't see that changing anytime soon.
 
I've decided that I don't like poor people.

hookem.gif
 
The nature of our economy has changed. It's service and information based.

Thanks to technology:

1) Many white collar workers can work remotely - they can work from home

2) Businesses don't have to be located close to one another - they can move their offices to the suburbs



Consider the center of the advertising industry used to be NYC - "Madison Avenue." Agencies wanted to open an office there because that was where the large clients with the big budgets were.

Now agencies from throughout the United States serve many of those accounts.

One of them, Crispin Porter + Bogusky is headquartered in Miami. They've done work for Burger King, Volkswagen, Coke Zero, Microsoft, American Express and others.

One week they worked from home to wait out a hurricane and found they were more productive. The creative director, Bogusky, used that experience as the basis for opening a second office in Boulder, CO -- because he decided Miami was no place to raise his son.

So here's a company -- one of the most highly regarded ad agencies in the country -- that is dispersed among two states serving clients that are dispersed around the country.
 
Interesting perspectives.

I think it's safe to say the future will be a combination of many of these ideas. I think the balance will change, but we will always have an equilibrium between urban and suburban. Soaring gas prices will upset the current equilibrium, but we will find it again rather than abandoning the suburbs altogether.

There will be a return to the city center, but on the other hand, many people are not going to raise their families in an urban apartment that costs the equivilent of $3000+ today.

The strongest suburbs will be those with local economies, therefore it is my opinon that the 75 corridor will do just fine...aybe some of those box stores will have to be torn down and replaced with office space. The suburbs that suffer will be those that consist of only housing.

I agree about the telecommuitng. Look at where technology has brought us in the last 25 years...its to the door where telecommuting is truly possible. Now where will the next 25 years take us?

I like the chances of my little town of Melissa. It has an progressive city plan, it's on the 75 corridor, and it potentially could be on an extention of DART. As one of the authors was saying, Melissa needs to grow as a village and not a suburb.
 
That was a waste of time. It would have been more credible if they had just said, "we found a bunch of guys who dislike suburbanites and we wanted to give them a forum to sound off".
 
Suburban schools will begin to get worse. Already heard from many people that Cypress Fairbanks is starting to go downhill for some of their schools. And Cy-Fair is, I believe, the 3rd largest school district in Texas now.
 
Perhaps the better question is what makes downtown Large City USA relevant? Dallas would definitely be a great place to pose the question. There is absolutely nothing special about living in or near downtown Dallas. If you do not work in that area, why would anyone choose to live there?

There is no longstanding culture, exceptional parks, truly historic areas, etc. IBy and large, it is an arbitrary downtown, at this point.
 
For the record, I'm not a fan of suburbs but I do know American demographics and what they want. That's part of my job.

Anyway, big city schools districts are by and large a disaster nationwide. I'm sure there are good individual schools but most are awful. No one will want to be the first to move their kids in there. They'll trade a 20 mile commute for a good school district every time.

Sure, I'd much rather live in the M Streets than Plano but I'd never in a millon years send my kids (if I had any) to DISD. I could send them to private schools but that's an additional $30K per year I'd have to come up with per kid.

As much as we all hate the suburban, big box retail lifestyle, that's what American wants and that's where they are for a whole list of reasons.
 
For the short term, you will see some poor people moving out of the urban core due to the "revitalization" of the urban core.

Dumpy apartments are being torn down and $1.5m brownstones are replacing them.

Poor people move out because they have no choice. Aging apartment complexes outside the core take them because they are 25% vacant. Things quickly spiral downward from there.

Then the brownstones get old. And cheap. Some guy buys up a block of them, converts them all into 4 dumpy apartment units each.

And the cycle repeats itself ad infinitum.

Welcome to the wonderful world of real estate.






smokin.gif
 
you see, that is where suburbs like lewsiville,richardson, plano, garland, are in big trouble (see skillman street), but other suburbs like melissa, colleyville, etc. have an advantage.
 
I don't think the cost will drive people to move in as much as the time of commute. I think people, at some point, we realize their time is way more valuable than having an extra 1,000 sq ft that they never get to use because they take for ever to get to and from work. If you have ever had a <10 minute commute, you can't imagine anything more than 20 minutes.

If telecommuting picks up, why bother being exiled to the suburbs? Why would anyone care to live an hour from Chicago? Might as well move to San Antonio or Birmingham - you'll go to downtown Chicago as much as if you lived in the Suburbs and you'll have a huge standard of living advantage.
 
Suburbs is a very general term. This is going to vary everywhere. In Austin the areas that were once suburbs are now very much considered central Austin. Then newer suburbs were built around them. You could consider Pflugerville and then Round Rock as suburbs and now growth is headed towards Hutto and Georgetown.

Plus not everybody lives in the 'suburb' and drives to the 'city'. Many of the suburns become their own cities that have jobs for the locals there. Businesses move out for cheaper land and suburbs follow them there. Problem often is that people move out further to be able to afford a home vs. living somewhere near where they work. Or they change jobs that ends up being farther from where they live.

Then not all suburns are were the rich live. Some are nicer richer suburbs sure. Others offer cheaper homes for people that can afford them.

The only problem I see is that there isn't always a mix of housing in certain areas. If somebody say works near downtown Austin but can't afford to live close by without renting.
 
i tend to agree that the suburbs that develop their own local economy and resources will be better able to survive and compete for middle/upper class residents. those that were built as satellites of bigger cities (especially those further out the city centers) are going to find that nobody wants to live there because of transportation cost. I'd imagine the exurbs will be the ones that experience the most drastic downturns.
 
As far as transportation goes, don't underestimate the fuel economy of a fully loaded bus. I think that in the short term (40-50 years), buses will be very important. Now, as electricity becomes more and more expensive, heating and cooling costs for stand-alone, cheaply built homes will become astronomical and force people to live in larger buildings.
 
How about, I don't like crowds and feeling like a cow or a sheep if you prefer that analogy. I already live 30 miles from Dallas, and in the next 5 years or so, I will probably move further out. I don't like crowds and the people that it attracts.

Telecommuting is changing the business environment, in 20 years over 50% of the white-collar work force will office out of the home.
 
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