Death of new suburbs? Greatly exaggerated.

This blog has given plenty of space to the new theory that the bursting of the housing bubble, rising gas prices, traffic congestion and overbuilding spell trouble for newly built, far-flung suburbs. The case was best made, and maybe first made, in an essay by Christopher Leinberger in the March isssue of Atlantic magazine titled "The Next Slum?"

Now the counter-argument. Defending the vibrancy, or at least the staying power, of suburbs, Joel Kotkin writes in today's L.A. Times, "Suburbia's not dead yet."

Highlight: "Not so fast," Kotkin writes. "The 'out of the suburbs, back to the city' narrative rests more on anecdote than demographic or economic fact. ... Even with economic growth slowing, many suburbs, exurbs and smaller towns, especially those whose economies are tied to energy, are continuing to do better than most cities in terms of job creation and population growth."

More: "The problem for many cities is that they lack the jobs for people to move close to. Since the 1970s, the suburbs have been the home for most high-tech jobs and now the majority of office space. ... Of the 20 leading job centers in Southern California by ZIP Code, none are downtown."

True enough. One small quibble: The more relevant argument, I believe, is specific to newly built, far-flung suburbs on the fringes of large metro areas. (Example: Temecula, which nearly doubled in population in the past decade and now faces a pretty big foreclosure problem). Kotkin's piece is a defense of the economic health of suburbia in general and not these newer exurbs in particular. But the point he makes about the relative lack of downtown jobs is particularly relevant to Los Angeles.

Your thoughts? Comments? E-mail story tips to peter.viles@latimes.com
Photo credit: Sandler O'Neill & Partners

Comments

[tealeaf]

Until this region establishes a credible mass transit system, the outlying areas will suffer. The problem becomes more complicated since LA/OC doesn't have a focal point for jobs (as emphasized in the article). I am struggling to find a comparable metro area... we are sprawled because of our love affair with cars and sheer magnitude of people, which precluded the need for mass transit.

Now it's biting us right in the proverbial arse.

[the big lebowski]

Well, that's Kotkin's thing: "Suburbs forever! Down with downtown!" He's been the cynic towards the vitality of urban LA for years.

[E]

So basically downtown is toast as are the exurbs (not suburbs).

Sounds about right.

[Laker]

I think this whole article is referring to suburbs as in SFV, Burbank, Pasadena. NOT riverside, san bernadino, corona and Parris.
For him if you work in down town, and live more than 10 miles away, you are a commuter from a suburb....
So, I agree that areas like SFV are not dead and will not be dead. They are 100 times better places to live than in downtown.
However, IE and high desert area ARE dead.
This article fails to understand that many of the IE and high desert area are leaving California in droves. The cost of living here is crazy. They can't afford to drive to LA for work, but they also can't afford to rent in LA...
LA is losing tons of jobs, and there will be some serious out migration from the state.

[Nelcisco]

the problem hasn't been overbuilding during the bubble, its been about overpriced real estate. There's a foreclosure problem because of unaffordability which is why we had the financing we did.

suburbs are still an ideal way of life for a working man and woman to raise their children since the creation of the highway system after WW 2. We know by now that city life is not very condusive for families for obvious reasons (schools, crime, etc)

[Truth2Pwr]

Well, the best case in my opinion for the survival of the deep suburbs is the increase in home-based and/or virtual employment opportunities. The digital age has made it unnecessary for many of us to commute to a centralized workplace and the energy crisis has strongly dis-incentivized it. On the other hand, many of those inland locales are the last place on earth that anyone would want to spend all of their time (or even some of it) so their demise may be merely forestalled as the virtualists migrate to more remote, less expensive, and far more climatically desirable places like Paso Robles or the PacNW.

Bottom line, nothing's gonna save Stockton or Palmdale (nor should it) but that doesn't mean everybody's going to be clamoring to shell out for a loft downtown so they can promenade amongst the living dead pushing their newspaper filled shopping carts either.

[sandiegan]

Duh.
Many suburbs are doing fine.
Many others may dry up and blow away.

Just as many zip codes in bubbly CA are doing fine while others have cratered.

Lots of convenient extrapolating of cherry-picked local conditions to prove points writers/posters/bloggers/pundits/pols want to prove to make the hay they want to make.

50 years ago flight to the suburbs decimated many cities, but others fared better.

50 years from now, the results of this latest experiment will be clear. At the moment, no one knows for sure.

However, there are major economic/social shifts going on at the moment.

One thing cities have going for them over suburbs: people know where the bad neighborhoods are and can avoid them.

In a new suburb, you really don't know if your street will end up being a new Mayberry or whether it will end up being the next Meth-bury.

[FairEconomist]

Several points:

First, and most importantly: the quibble is not a quibble. Leinberger forecasts tens of millions of excess suburban housing over the next two decades. That's not a forecast for the abandonment of suburbia, it's a forecast for the abandonment of a *minority* of suburbia - in all probability the exurbanish bedroom communities. To say some suburbs will remain remain is no argument against Leinberger (it is an argument against Kunstler.)

Second, the relatively good performance for suburbs in 1970-2000 is basically irrelevant to what we're facing. It was not until late 2007 that people began to consider that cheap oil was gone forever, as indicated by SUV prices and reductions in driving. Yes, when gas is a dollar a gallon lower-density suburbs work well but says little about when gas is $4/gallon and likely to climb.

A third factor, not considered by either side, is changes in fashion. Large lawns and constantly driving the kids around are not inherent human preferences - they are learned in our society by always being presented as "normal" and "preferable". In the 1800's, people liked big, intricate houses and thus we see Victorians in many older cities. But, in the Panic of 1893 and its aftermath, those houses often ended up abandoned because people couldn't afford the work it took to keep them up. People started thinking of Victorians as abandoned ghost houses, and big intricate houses became undesirable even for those who could keep them up. People wanted small, cozy, low-maintenance bungalows instead.

I suspect a similar result awaits the suburban ranch house. They are a lot of work to keep up (mostly in the form of the constant commuting to everything and the need to drive kids everywhere since even young teenagers can't get around on their own.) I expect the abandoned monster-inhabited suburban community will be a staple of horror fiction in 20 years, and people will actively *want* places that are close to everything.

The aging of America will also tend to drive people back to the cities. A car-dependent community is a bad place to grow old. Right now people are afraid of crime, but that's mostly because they haven't caught up to the fact that in many places crime has left the inner cities for the suburbs. But that's already starting to change as I see people referring to outer suburbs as "meth lab land" and the like. The foreclosure storm will really accelerate this.

[el_guapo]

If you can't afford the increase in gas prices and you bought a house in the exurbs because it cost less, how does that translate into buying a house in the city - where it's more expensive? Just to save on gas money?

Think about it. Lets say you drive 30K miles a year. Gas went from $3 a gallon to $5 a gallon. That's a $2 increase (I'm calculating the increase because nobody was making the argument for exodus at $3 a gallon). Let's say you drive a 10 MPG gas hog. That's 3000 gallons a year times the $2 increase. 6K annually - or $500 a month. This hurts - no doubt (and it's not tax deductible). But, considering that a mortgage in LA is certainly more than $500 more, why move? Far more likely, IMO, is trading in the Suburban (probably pennies on the dollar) for a more economical car. It is far easier to do, by the way, than to sell your house in Temecula and buy another one in LA, when you are cash strapped. Buy a Civic for your commute and be done with it.

If it gets to $10 a gallon, then I think the theory makes more sense/ cents.

[anonymous]

Death, yes. Half built and foreclosed properties do not a master planned community make. The people who are now trying to live there don't see the upscale community they bought into. They see very poorly maintained repos, stores going bankrupt (they were fueled by the HELOC madness) and bums taking up residence in the vacant homes. Crime, my friends, will drive these people out too. Ghost town. Same sad story in all the big foreclosure markets.

[Steve]

I honestly feel downtown LA will be a ghost town before suburbs. Who the hell wants to live and work downtown besides single yuppies who got screwed buying over priced condos. If anything the jobs will continue to move out to the suburbs away from downtown.

[Jeremy R]

1) West LA is not a suburb, its part of the city
2) What area of LA has more jobs per square mile than downtown. Downtown squeezes 450,000 in like 6 sq miles. The west side squeezes the same amount in like 20 sq miles.

[srla]

Peter, the whole "suburbs as slums" prediction continues to strike me as a bit of an elitist urbanite fantasy. Sure, there was tremendous overbuilding out in Temecula and Murrieta, especially in the unincorporated areas controlled by Riverside County. The residents of those cities should be outraged at the county for recklessly approving tens of thousands of housing permits during the bubble years without regard to impact on either infrastructure or future demand.

But nonetheless, more affordable housing prices in that region will likely help attract businesses to the area. Not everyone will want to move their families into urban centers, nor are there enough jobs in our urban areas to support such a trend.

Furthermore, while the current spike in gas prices is hurting many, there is little reason to think that this situation is permanent. In the medium to long term, higher oil prices will lead to increased oil production utilizing existing and emerging technologies. High fuel prices will also likely spur a move toward more fuel efficient vehicles, as was the case in the '70's.

The net result will most likely be a drop in gas prices in real terms. It might take 5-10 years to get there, but it is unlikely that there will be any mass exodus from the suburbs to the urban core in the mean time.

[Giacomo]

Finally, someone is making some sense.

Those of you who want to live in the heart of a city, have at it. But stop trying to convince the rest of us that it's in OUR best interest to live crowded together in your utopian vision.

[syscom3]

FairEconomist , millions of people voted with their feet and moved out of the city to live their own homes with lawns.

And it will continue to be that way. And I have no clue what you are talking about regarding the driving time around my city to get to places. I bet it takes me a shorter time to drive my daughter to a park 5 miles away, than for your hypothetical parent taking mass transit to a similar sized park in the city.

[Riverside McMansion Owner]

For those of you factoring in rising gas prices, consider this:
1) My drive time from the widely disparaged "IE" to Irvine has been cut by at least 50% recently.
2) A result of my smoother drive is better mileage (in spite of my higher speed).

The higher gas prices, mitigated by better mileage and much less time on the road, has made my location more palatable!

[russell]

The reason the region is so sprawled has to do with the original electric trains, not the automobile. it is also the largest metropolitan region on the world, and the largest dense region in the country.

[geomath]

------The more relevant argument, I believe, is specific to newly built, far-flung suburbs on the fringes of large metro areas. (Example: Temecula, which nearly doubled in population in the past decade and now faces a pretty big foreclosure problem). Kotkin's piece is a defense of the economic health of suburbia in general and not these newer exurbs in particular.------------

I agree, and I see this around Philadelphia as well. There are plenty of jobs in the NEARBY suburbs, meaning places within about a 20-mile radius of the city. But there aren't plenty of jobs in far-flung exurbs. Employers are not clamoring to move a good 90-minute-plus drive from city centers, not in L.A. and not anywhere else.

[INland Empire]

This article fails to understand that many of the IE and high desert area are leaving California in droves. The cost of living here is crazy. They can't afford to drive to LA for work, but they also can't afford to rent in LA...

Interesting. Haven't seen anything about people leaving in droves in any mainstream media. Or anywhere else. Doesn't appear so here and on the fwy. Gasoline and food seem to be cheaper here. Maybe not by much some some. House prices are definately cheaper and you get a lot more in terms of size, features, lot size etc.
Some folks on this blog make things sound like all the jobs in the world are in a downtown area. A lot of those jobs are for administrative assistants, retail clerks, fast food, medical office workers, etc. Guess what - they have those kind of jobs everywhere. They also need staff of all kinds such as financial personnel at hospitals here. People work at schools, colleges, insurance companies and other places just as they do in any other area. People work at Ontario airport and at March ARB (yes, military but there are lots of civilian jobs there as well) just as they do at LAX. No there aren't as many jobs in the IE, but there aren't as many people either.

[Hank Venture]

I think it is amazing that people from philly have heard of temecula.

[FairEconomist]

In a city with mass transit, you can *walk* to a park. And the big win is that your daughter can walk there on her own. Moms don't have to spend their lives chauffeuring.

The desire for lawns is learned, not innate. What's going to happen to a lot of suburbs in the next decade will do a lot to unlearn the desire for lawns. Most Victorians weren't abandoned either, but in 20 years they went from the height of desirability to blight.

[FairEconomist]

500 dollars a month is affordable for middle/upper middle class families But it's not affordable for somebody making $15/hour. Current prices make outer suburbia borderline unaffordable for the lower middle class and the working poor, and without them to be clerks and waiters the cost of living there will go up a lot for all the upper middle class residents already dealing with a $500 per month hit.

Now the NONworking poor will do great in those cheap houses, and they'll need them as they get gentrified out of the cities. Hope you like having the neighbors everybody was running away from when they moved to the suburbs in the 70's.

[tealeaf]

Riverside McMansion Owner,

It's summer. Come on back when the school season kicks in.

The actual impact to the freeways due to gas prices (year over year) is a decline of about 1.2% (in LA Times 2 weeks ago).

Let's say you're right and the Irvine trek stays smooth. You must seriously despise that commute if you're willing to plunk down an extra $400 a month to fill the fridge (on account of inflation) PLUS ye olde Fastrak payment.

[kosher krab]

I can't agree that the suburbs are a better place to live and raise kids - when our mcmansion neighborhood in Santa Clarita started to get tagged up and we saw more paleta men on the corners and gangsters hanging out we high tailed it to north east la. Van Nuys? Chatsworth? Same social ills, less cultural life, more traffic.

[Giacomo]

Pundits with political and social agendas (like James "Death of the Suburbs" -- it was always a crock.

Kunstler and Paul Erlich) make poor scientists because they have huge blind spots. As elitists, they really don't understand commonly-held values (having already dismissed them, with contempt). Their utopian visions blind them to potentially mitigating factors.

BTW, all this backpedaling to redefine "suburbs" and "exburbs" to fix the new, compromised apocalyptic theory -- it's amusing.