It's hard to generalize here. Chicago has over 200 suburbs and it really varies by suburb. Many inner ring suburbs are remaining quite wealthy while others seem to be on the decline. Same thing with outer ring suburbs. All I can say is the ones with more modest housing are more at risk. The western suburbs of River Forest and Maywood are separated only by a forest preserve but are in stark contrast to one another.Originally posted by Blide
More people living in poverty in the suburbs happens because their income is low NOT because they're "underwater" in their house since the poverty rate is a specifically calculated statistic from the federal government -- the US Census Bureau or the Dept of Labor I think. Most of this increase in poverty in the suburbs is likely from job losses.
I don't deny that there are many people living in suburbia who are having hard times financially, but there were people like that before the "Great Real Estate Crisis of 2008". Nobody cared about the divorced mother of two preschoolers who had to sell her tiny Cape Cod home and move into an apartment near the city line because her part-time job and sporadic child support didn't cover her mortgage, taxes, and insurance. Nobody cared that the local garden apartment complex was filled with couples, families, and roommates who needed 2,3 or 4 jobs to cover the rents. Now that people who live in the big new homes with granite countertops and media rooms, who trade in their SUVs every 2 years, and who have spent the last 2 decades wallowing in their innate superiority over people who can't afford "the good life" are hurting financially, it's suddenly a big deal. All the Chicken Littles run around screeching that somehow this signals the end of suburbia.
I just don't buy it. It may be the end of some kinds of suburban development, but the suburbs are not only too large and diverse to disappear, there are too many of us to fit into the city limits. Besides, we are Americans, and, as I've said before, sprawl is us. It will take much more than an economic recession to change an ethic or idea that's been a part of American culture since the very beginning of our existence.
I think that this is very true. Even within suburban towns, conditions vary. One of my brothers and his wife live in Amherst, one of Buffalo's "best" suburbs, but they live in a small house on a busy street with most of the surrounding houses being rentals. Their lot backs up to an older apartment complex that has lots of Section 8 (subsidized) tenants, students, etc. It's NOT what one thinks of when a local says "Amherst", but they bought it so that their kids could go to the Amherst schools. Most homes in Amherst sell for $150,000+. Theirs might be worth $60,000-75,000 (I really have no idea. I actually like their house and lot, but their location just sucks!)
Well, I'm guilty of typing while multitasking and shorthanded my answer, and I agree with the 'underemployed' assertion (how could I not?). Speaking of things that are a 'part of us', and what led up to this mess is the American Dream of owning a house. We are transitioning - maybe - to a time of temporary jobs. Having a boat anchor you can't sell to be more mobile to chase a temporary job is part of the problem, which I failed to articulate previously and continue to shorthand out of necessity.
No.. it means exactly what it says... although the Wonkette article is meant to be humourous.. not statistically defensible. It's stat, however, is based in someting other than humor. Poverty in places designated by the US Census as suburban has increased by an absolute value of over 5.3 million since 2000, an increase of 53% (compared with 26% in the cities). In 2000, 49% of the poor lived in suburbs. That percentage has increased to 55% This means that for the first time since statistics were kept, the majority of the poor now live in burbs (as opposed to cities and, in early times, to rural areas). This statistic is devastating no matter how you look at it or how you cut it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/25/us...mmunities.html
Nobody here has made a claim that there are no longer any rich suburbs or the suburbs are dying. But, in my business (planning) trends matter, from a policy perspective. In at least some measure, our job is to monitor such trends and critically evaluate their implications... not to ignore them in favor of our "gut" or our feelings or emotions or ideologies. Such changes do mean something. I don't know what this one means, and I have insufficient data to form a hypothesis, but, by the mere fact that the change appears to be statistically significant, it does mean something. I can use reasoning to take a guess at what such a hypothesis might be... and I believe it has to do with things like the mortgage and foreclosure crisis and its impact on consumer indebtedness, changing suburban demographics, income elasticities of housing demand, structural changes in the employment market, and a half dozen other reasons. but which one or which combination, and in what proportions, I lack information to even begin to form an opinion about at this point.. and so do all of us. This is new data, it is statistically significant and it needs to be evaluated as more information becomes available. Until this happens, we'll just have to rely oj the humorists at Wonkette to keep us entertained/.
And yes, this is only one of a dozen or so indicators pointing to severe structural changes occurring in US housing markets and the economy in general today. All told, a pattern is starting to form.. and its implications are, for the urban economist in me, at least, very very scary.
Last edited by Cismontane; 27 Oct 2011 at 11:31 PM.
Wealth doesn't create poverty.
Productivity creates wealth!
Wealth can be increased by the increase in productivity of machines.
Wealth can be increased by the increase in productivity by increasing the skill level of the individual.
Africa has much in natural resources, but little wealth.
America has much wealth because it increased its productivity by machines and skilled labor.
The Middle East was poor for generations, but now has wealth because it produces oil that other nations buy.
Suburbs tend to be places where the wealthy can afford to live.
Cities tend to be the places where the poor can afford to live.
Except that the cities are NOT "where the poor live". They're places where, in a number of cases in the US, a lot of poor people live in isolated portions of. Other parts of the cities are very wealthy. What are rents like in Manhattan right now?
Furthermore, suburbs were created for a variety of reasons. Some are high dollar enclaves of wealth. Others are exurban slums. Look at the famed suburbs of Detroit. You know, the ones they've been trying to replace with things like farms. Do those strike you as particularly wealthy? "Drive until you qualify" was the mindset in many places, and that plan is highly dependent upon stable cost of travel.
Currently there seems to be a trend of central city areas experiencing more gentrification, and suburbs experiencing some decay effects. This is hardly rampant or universal by any stretch of the imagination, but it is noticeable as a shift.
Also, though it is quite the odd turn which Streck has invoked:
i'm not a Marxist by any stretch of the imagination - I consider his scholarship to be composed of an excellent and ground-breaking economically-minded analysis of the causes of the French Revolution, accompanied by a ludicrous crashing non-sequitur of a conclusion. However, I do admit that some of the latest Tea policy directions I see seem startlingly Marxist from the opposite end, in that they seem engineered to try to bring about a revolution akin to the French Revolution (of the sort which Marx believed would immediately predate his freakishly unsustainable utopian Communist society) in as rapid and as bloody a way as possible.
One of the observations accompanying this, though, is the fact that the means of production have been, to a large extent, vacated from America. By your own analysis, this bodes ill for the economic health of the country. It would generally, by your statements, indicate that the American working/middle class, as they are deprived of the means to be productive, should be considered "poor"; the wealthy class in the U.S. are often increasingly defined by those who are able to shift capital into the ownership of production outside of the country. The "Wealth" is in various parts of Asia, now, and increasingly in South America and Africa. (I intentionally avoid the question here of whether this is a "good" thing.)
I think demographics play a big role in the shift from a suburban culture to an urban culture. The majority of people who are in the generation now in their 20’s, 30’s and 40’s will probably never own a suburban home. If they own a home now it is most likely an apartment or townhouse in or near the urban core, or a home in the older inner ring of pre-war suburbs. This generation of people is most likely to have just one child or have no kids at all. This generation values a culturally rich and sustainable lifestyle over the bigger-is-better lifestyle of the previous "me" generation. The result is we are starting to see a relative shift in land values with urban core areas increasing in value relative to the suburban areas. The ever increasing costs of transportation and the fact that many baby boomers (now in their 50’s and 60’s) are becoming empty nesters and are looking to down-size also puts further downward pressure on suburban housing prices. This drop in suburban housing prices should come as no surprise to anybody. Perhaps the housing bubble crisis of 2008 was just the last hurrah of the suburban real estate developers getting rid of whatever they could to whomever they could before they shut down their suburban practices and reconfigured their companies to deal with the new urban paradigm.
With that is mind we must remember that wealthier people have more choice in where they choose to live. Poorer people have less choice. Historically wealthier middle-class people have chosen to live in the suburbs rather than the urban core meaning poorer people were generally relegated to the core. However the societal shift of the new generation has resulted in the urban core becoming more attractive to the middle-classes, meaning it is more in demand and thus more expensive. The flip side of this is there are now more opportunities for poorer people to move to suburban areas. Right now there is a big mixing going on with poor people and wealthy people inhabiting both the core and suburbs. However if the trend continues there will be a complete flip over the next few decades and the core will be the exclusive neighbourhood with the poor people relegated to the suburbs in many cities.
I think the previous two posts point out something important to this discussion - that the US is a very diverse place with different circumstances in different places. So, we shouldn't be trying too hard to make generalizations about all "suburban" development - suburbanization has been ocurring since the mid to late 19th century all over the country, so I don't think there is any one pattern that relates to all. JusticeZero's point about fringe development of low cost homes is very much the pattern we see here in my current fair city. As an affordable housing developer in a soft market right now, we are competing more and more with market rate homes and the vast majority of these are on the edge of the city. Why? Because there is very little out there and land is cheap, so the developer can make a more affordable product (many also skimp on quality). Of course this means that those that buy out there, many of whom are looking to "step up" to a new home in a new subdivision and may be reaching to be there, must also contend with transportation costs. We try to sell our infill homes by educating prospective buyers about these costs, but the attraction of owning your own home and slice of yard is very enticing to people. Over time, at least some of these places have descended into some pretty sketchy areas, compounded by the fact that patrolling out there really stretches the police thin and so it tends to get ignored and the problems worsen (organized crime, meth cooking, things like that have been some of the problems they are facing with those bad elements intimidating residents in some cases). This isn't the case for all of these edge developments certainly, but it is for some.
At the same time, I grew up around the Philadelphia area and lived both in the City and outside. For the most part, the suburban Philly areas are far more expensive than at least parts of the city and, in contrast to here, there is plenty on the edge of value - access to stores and basic necessities, parks, commuter transit, etc. This makes those areas, even though they are far from the core, much less dependent on the city center than where I now live. One could easily live out there, work in the area and never have to go in to Philadelphia at all. Its a much more decentralized economy. Also, the suburb that I grew up in was established in the 1880s as a refuge for wealthy Philadelphians looking first for a place to summer and later for full-time residence. My parents bought our home in 1968 from the original owner who had built it in 1917 (well, the wife anyway - the husband had died years earlier). The diary of the owner/builder John S. Albert was left at the house and showed that even at the time he designed and built the residence, he was an engineer working in Philadelphia and taking the train to work daily. The area is dominated by large lots and large houses and its hard for me to imagine this area ever becoming affordable to lower income folks when you consider that there are stores, public transit and a significant job base nearby.
The purpose of life is a life of purpose
I note the following article:
http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2xoQkL...n-east-london/
Ikea is now getting into the business of developing suburbs
A professor once said that you can never compare Manhattan to any other city in the US.
In most US cities the highest concentration of poor people is in the city proper, not the surrounding suburbs. Baltimore, Philadelphia, Buffalo, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Columbus, Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Atlanta and the list goes on are all places where the city proper is poorer, and in many cases, significantly poorer than the surrounding suburban jurisdiction. All these cities (save possibly Detroit) do have their wealthy enclaves but more closely resemble situations where a small and affluent upper middle class colonize parts of the city and the rest of the city is predominately poor. Center City Philadelphia and Chestnut Hill versus South Philly or North Philly. North Baltimore versus East and West Baltimore. North Kansas City versus the southside Country Club district.
What's currently going on (and has been going on for quite a long time) is that the cities are continuing to lose population as more and more of the poor migrate to suburban areas, much for the same reason as the middle class did earlier - for better schools and job opportunities. The suburbs aren't becoming poorer and the cities richer, it's just that the suburbs are becoming more diverse.
Changed it a bit to highlight a common fallacy.
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Give a man a gun, and he can rob a bank. Give a man a bank, and he can rob the world.
I can't speak to the cities you named, but your statement is untrue in the much of the west. For example and as previously noted, San Diego's core neighborhoods vary in poverty rate by sector from the poorest (southeast) to the wealthiest (northwest), as is a common pattern in the US. Beyond the core neighborhoods, the second ring follows the same pattern with the exception that the north sector has pockets of poverty not reflected in the character of the core (center city and first ring). Beyond that is the industrial belt and beyond that are the third ring suburbs, which are relatively affluent in most (but not all sectors). Beyond that third ring, socioeconomics start getting worse pretty darn quickly in pretty much all sectors. Moving through the outermost ring, counterclockwise, from the north, Oceanside, Vista, and Escondido are by no means affluent and have deep concentrations of poverty, Poway (northeast) is relatively affluent, Santee, Lakeside and Lemon Grove are working class and poor, and, moving further southeast and south (with the exception of Otay Mesa/East Lake) it gets progressively poorer.
In LA, the only sector that can reliably be said to have increasing affluence beyond the first and second rings, as one heads out toward the suburbs, is the south/southeast (toward Orange County), unless you count the beach.
I largely agree with this scenario for most of the country, but the West has a different development pattern, and that, in itself, underscores the diversity of the American landscape. I will also add that in some parts of the East and Midwest, especially in the Rust Belt, especially in those states that do not allow cities to annex neighboring suburban areas, cities are emptying out, starting with the poorest neighborhoods. Entire neighborhoods in cities like Buffalo, Cleveland, and Youngstown have been abandoned -- literally emptied of residents as the working poor and lower middle class people have escaped to the first ring suburbs where they can own or rent in safer neighborhoods with better schools while the poorer people from the abandoned neighborhoods have moved into outer neighborhoods. The number of upper middle class and wealthy people moving back into restored/rehabbed downtown lofts/apartments and gentrified city neighborhoods doesn't come close to the number of people moving out of these struggling cities.
Perhaps the rise of poverty in the suburbs is simply inevitable given the overall increase in the rate of poverty and the apparent trend of the wealthy(ier?) among us returning to the urban core. The poor have to live somewhere and if it's relatively cheaper to live in the suburbs...
Anyway, the local paper ran a couple of articles on this very topic just this weekend.
http://www.tampabay.com/news/busines...cle1200128.ece
http://www.tampabay.com/specials/201...tives/poverty/
http://www.baynews9.com/article/news...-the-poor-live
At times like this, you have to ask yourself, "WWJDD?"
(What Would Jimmy Durante Do?)
I think that's much of it. That nation has added 11 million poor people since the end of 2007. They have to live somewhere and it is the 'burbs that have experienced the greatest population growth in the decades prior.
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