Mortgage Crisis Helps Dense,Walkable Neighborhoods

[dsjeffries]

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/06/16/suburb.city/index.html
Is America's suburban dream collapsing into a nightmare?

(CNN) -- When Shaun Yandell proposed to his longtime girlfriend Gina Marasco on the doorstep of their new home in the sunny suburb of Elk Grove, California, four years ago, he never imagined things would get this bad. But they did, and it happened almost overnight.
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Suburban neighborhoods are becoming refuges for those outpriced in gentrifying inner-cities.

"It is going to be heartbreak," Yandell told CNN. "But we are hanging on."

Yandell's marriage isn't falling apart: his neighborhood is.

Devastated by the subprime mortgage crisis, hundreds of homes have been foreclosed and thousands of residents have been forced to move, leaving in their wake a not-so-pleasant path of empty houses, unkempt lawns, vacant strip malls, graffiti-sprayed desolate sidewalks and even increased crime.

In Elk Grove, some homeowners not only cut their own grass but also trim the yards of vacant homes on their streets, hoping to deter gangs and criminals from moving in.

Other residents discovered that with some of the empty houses, it wasn't what was growing outside that was the problem. Susan McDonald, president of a local neighborhood association aimed at saving the lost suburban paradise, told CNN that around her cul-de-sac, federal agents recently busted several pot homes with vast crops of marijuana growing from floor to ceiling.

And only a couple of weeks ago, Yandell said he overheard a group of teenagers gathered on the street outside his back patio, talking about a robbery they had just committed.

When they lit a street sign on fire, Yandell called the cops.

"This is not like a rare thing anymore," he said. "I get big congregations of people cussing -- stuff I can't even fathom doing when I was a kid."
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For Yandell, his wife and many other residents trying to stick it out, the white picket fence of an American dream has faded into a seemingly hopeless suburban nightmare. "The forecast is gloomy," he told CNN.

While the foreclosure epidemic has left communities across the United States overrun with unoccupied houses and overgrown grass, underneath the chaos another trend is quietly emerging that, over the next several decades, could change the face of suburban American life as we know it.

This trend, according to Christopher Leinberger, an urban planning professor at the University of Michigan and visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, stems not only from changing demographics but also from a major shift in the way an increasing number of Americans -- especially younger generations -- want to live and work.

"The American dream is absolutely changing," he told CNN.

This change can be witnessed in places like Atlanta, Georgia, Detroit, Michigan, and Dallas, Texas, said Leinberger, where once rundown downtowns are being revitalized by well-educated, young professionals who have no desire to live in a detached single family home typical of a suburbia where life is often centered around long commutes and cars.

Instead, they are looking for what Leinberger calls "walkable urbanism" -- both small communities and big cities characterized by efficient mass transit systems and high density developments enabling residents to walk virtually everywhere for everything -- from home to work to restaurants to movie theaters.

The so-called New Urbanism movement emerged in the mid-90s and has been steadily gaining momentum, especially with rising energy costs, environmental concerns and health problems associated with what Leinberger calls "drivable suburbanism" -- a low-density built environment plan that emerged around the end of the World War II and has been the dominant design in the U.S. ever since.

Thirty-five percent of the nation's wealth, according to Leinberger, has been invested in constructing this drivable suburban landscape.

But now, Leinberger told CNN, it appears the pendulum is beginning to swing back in favor of the type of walkable community that existed long before the advent of the once fashionable suburbs in the 1940s. He says it is being driven by generations molded by television shows like "Seinfeld" and "Friends," where city life is shown as being cool again -- a thing to flock to, rather than flee.

"The image of the city was once something to be left behind," said Leinberger.

Changing demographics are also fueling new demands as the number of households with children continues to decline. By the end of the next decade, the number of single-person households in the United States will almost equal those with kids, Leinberger said.

And aging baby boomers are looking for a more urban lifestyle as they downsize from large homes in the suburbs to more compact town houses in more densely built locations.

Recent market research indicates that up to 40 percent of households surveyed in selected metropolitan areas want to live in walkable urban areas, said Leinberger. The desire is also substantiated by real estate prices for urban residential space, which are 40 to 200 percent higher than in traditional suburban neighborhoods -- this price variation can be found both in cities and small communities equipped with walkable infrastructure, he said.

The result is an oversupply of depreciating suburban housing and a pent-up demand for walkable urban space, which is unlikely to be met for a number of years. That's mainly, according to Leinberger, because the built environment changes very slowly; and also because governmental policies and zoning laws are largely prohibitive to the construction of complicated high-density developments.

But as the market catches up to the demand for more mixed use communities, the United States could see a notable structural transformation in the way its population lives -- Arthur C. Nelson, director of Virginia Tech's Metropolitan Institute, estimates, for example, that half of the real-estate development built by 2025 will not have existed in 2000.

Yet Nelson also estimates that in 2025 there will be a surplus of 22 million large-lot homes that will not be left vacant in a suburban wasteland but instead occupied by lower classes who have been driven out of their once affordable inner-city apartments and houses.

The so-called McMansion, he said, will become the new multi-family home for the poor.

"What is going to happen is lower and lower-middle income families squeezed out of downtown and glamorous suburban locations are going to be pushed economically into these McMansions at the suburban fringe," said Nelson. "There will probably be 10 people living in one house."

In Shaun Yandell's neighborhood, this has already started to happen. Houses once filled with single families are now rented out by low-income tenants. Yandell speculates that they're coming from nearby Sacramento, where the downtown is undergoing substantial gentrification, or perhaps from some other area where prices have gotten too high. He isn't really sure.

But one thing Yandell is sure about is that he isn't going to leave his sunny suburban neighborhood unless he has to, and if that happens, he says he would only want to move to another one just like it.

"It's the American dream, you know," he said. "The American dream."

[TheArtist]

Not really happening here. Our suburbs are not that far out and the economy is still doing fairly well.

However if we had some decent sized walkable districts that people could see as good examples of that type of lifestlye, I think that alone would start to change peoples attitudes. Most people around here only know suburban living, its all they understand, its the automatic default mode. I think that once Brookside begins to flesh out more and people see what its like to live in such an area, they will change their attitudes and notions about where they live.

A lot of people that move to Tulsa and the Tulsa area end up in a suburban type neighborhood simply because there isnt anything else to choose from. What few beginning, urban areas we do have just dont feel right, not everyone wants to be a "pioneer". They want an established neighborhood, one that is a certainty, not a... "well in the future this could be". Brookside is starting to get that, walkable, urban district feel to it. But its very small and doesnt have a whole lot to choose from living wise yet either. It will get there. However the anti development/ anti change crowd seem to want to stifle that area from changing too much. The real key is to get something going in and immediately by the downtown area. Brookside and Cherry Street can only grow so much with the way things are zoned there. None of your basic, midrise, apartments or condos for instance can go in those areas.

[MichaelBates]

quote:Originally posted by TheArtist

However the anti development/ anti change crowd seem to want to stifle [Brookside] from changing too much.

Can you blame them? It's a healthy neighborhood as it is, with a range of housing types within walking distance of a business district. Why would they want it transformed into something completely different?

[midtownnewbie]

quote:Originally posted by MichaelBates

quote:Originally posted by TheArtist

However the anti development/ anti change crowd seem to want to stifle [Brookside] from changing too much.

Can you blame them? It's a healthy neighborhood as it is, with a range of housing types within walking distance of a business district. Why would they want it transformed into something completely different?

Progress?

[midtownnewbie]

Here's another article on the same subject:

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200803/subprime

[Red Arrow]

quote:Originally posted by midtownnewbie

Progress?

All progress is change.
Not all change is progress.

[OkieDiva]

Sidewalks in midtown? Progress.
Thriving independently-owned and community-minded businesses? Progess.
Rehabilitating decrepit houses or replacing them with new homes that have similar lot lines and complement the Brookside cottage asthetic? Progress.


Street projects that have zero or negative impact on pedestrian traffic? Change, not progress.
Empty storefronts and national chains? Change, not progress.
Plopping a Tuscan-style McMansion next door, with its exterior walls two feet from my bedroom window? Change, not progress.

[midtownnewbie]

quote:Originally posted by Red Arrow

quote:Originally posted by midtownnewbie

Progress?

All progress is change.
Not all change is progress.

If we want our city to be thriving 25 years from now, I'd say it is progress.

With no change, there can be no progress.

[hoodlum]

the scenario described in the initial story has been forecast for years but no one listened.

[TulsaFan-inTexas]

quote:Originally posted by midtownnewbie

Here's another article on the same subject:

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200803/subprime

Very interesting. I do believe the pendulum is beginning to swing the other way. It's about time. The current energy crisis is forcing people to think rationally in many ways.

[hoodlum]

the scenario described in the initial story has been forecast for years but no one listened.

[Red Arrow]

quote:Originally posted by midtownnewbie

quote:Originally posted by Red Arrow

quote:Originally posted by midtownnewbie

Progress?

All progress is change.
Not all change is progress.

If we want our city to be thriving 25 years from now, I'd say it is progress.

With no change, there can be no progress.

Ahhhh! Nothing quite like the refreshing smell of a summer shower on hot concrete or an oily asphalt road. We don't need no stinking fresh mown lawns or trees or flowers, except in the 1/4 acre park shared by thousands, with trash and cigarette butts all over.  Water run-off: No problem, just build more storm sewers. Concrete jungle too hot? Just turn down the airconditioner a bit.

Why pick on Brookside? How about taking some of the huge surface parking lots downtown and building the mid rise condos that "everyone" wants. They would be right next to the real action. If public transit cannot keep up with development, build some high rise parking garages for a few years. Aerial views of downtown show a lot of misused space.

Progress is in the eye of the beholder.  I am not against the high rises.  Just put them where they are wanted without forcing them on a still viable neighborhood that doesn't.  All I see in attempting to change Brookside to rows of highrises is that downtown is hopeless (Or maybe too expensive? Sound like the excuse for suburban sprawl?) so let's make a new inner core downtown somewhere else. Seems like highrise sprawl to me. Downtown would still be empty.

I don't live anywhere near Brookside, nor do I have any finacial interest there. I see a neighborhood that needs a little fixing in some spots. It doesn't need a wholesale makeover when there is plenty of room elsewhere.  

Go ahead - shoot. I just put on my body armor.

[SXSW]

I see Uptown, the area south of downtown, northwest of midtown, and just east of the river as a potential place where dense residential could be built.  There are already highrise condo and apartment towers there and that area could be very desirable because of its location in between Tulsa's three greatest assets: downtown, midtown (which includes Brookside/Cherry Street/Utica Square), and the river.  If only Coury would've built that 20 story tower back in 2001 that could've started a boom there.  Oh well, better late than never...

[Red Arrow]

Another potential reason to be picky about where to build high density housing is the infrastructure. Not roads but sewers, water supply, and electricity. I can see it now, signals in rows of mid rise apartments: "Flush / Don't Flush".  It would be the "road widening" issue of the future.

[waterboy]

quote:Originally posted by SXSW

I see Uptown, the area south of downtown, northwest of midtown, and just east of the river as a potential place where dense residential could be built.  There are already highrise condo and apartment towers there and that area could be very desirable because of its location in between Tulsa's three greatest assets: downtown, midtown (which includes Brookside/Cherry Street/Utica Square), and the river.  If only Coury would've built that 20 story tower back in 2001 that could've started a boom there.  Oh well, better late than never...

I can't figure out where you're describing. Not being snarky, but these references to downtown, midtown, uptown being mixed in with shopping areas is confusing. Especially since there is no definitive boundaries for them. Everyone just assumes they know where they are cause they live in them but really they are still pretty judgemental in nature.

Is it too late to research and note these neighborhoods by their given names or major street boundaries then group them? Its makes more sense when you refer to Tracy Park, Morningside, Hillcrest, Lewiston, Riverview, Swan Lake etc. I shudder every time I hear someone tell me they live in Maple Ridge but their home is really in Terwilliger or Sunset. Each of those areas was developed during different phases of Tulsa growth and reflect those times with different styles.

I think you are describing the area between 21st to 26th just east of Riverside or perhaps Riverview but not sure. Each of those areas went through a similar process in the sixties of teardown/rebuild with higher density housing replacing them that we are seeing now.