As we see oil surging towards $140.00 a barrel and gasoline prices reaching unprecedented levels; transit services reporting huge increases in ridership because people can’t afford to drive as much as they used to; housing markets drying up to the extent that some developers are offering “2-for-1” sales; tent cities sprouting around American cities, crowded with former homeowners who have lost their homes in the subprime mortgage crisis; thousands of renters evicted from homes that had fallen into foreclosure; Ford and General Motors closing factories, vowing to dramatically curtail or eliminate the production of SUVs, thereby throwing thousands out of work; credit drying up, making it difficult for people to get home and car loans; and the U.S. economy lurching into recession
--- it is difficult to escape the conclusion that something quite profound is happening all around us. It is as if everything is spinning out of control, and we are all getting a sense that, "this is what the 21st century will be about - a great unraveling of some things long taken for granted."
In such a time, what was once heresy becomes common wisdom, and the unthinkable becomes the new normal. Case in point: the emerging mainstream consensus in the mass media that Suburbia has no future.
Consider CNN's recent report that "the American Dream is collapsing into a nightmare". As thousands of suburban properties become abandoned, it appears that gangs are moving in. And it's not just the subprime debacle to blame: rather, it's a combination of
"changing demographics [as well as] a major shift in the way an increasing number of Americans -- especially younger generations -- want to live and work. Instead [of suburbia, homeowners] are looking for "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 Atlantic Magazine also weighed in on this phenomenon and speculated that suburbia does have a future – but only as the Next Slum:
"Arthur C. Nelson, director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech, has looked carefully at trends in American demographics, construction, house prices, and consumer preferences. In 2006, using recent consumer research, housing supply data, and population growth rates, he modeled future demand for various types of housing. The results were bracing: Nelson forecasts a likely surplus of 22 million large-lot homes (houses built on a sixth of an acre or more) by 2025—that’s roughly 40 percent of the large-lot homes in existence today.
For 60 years, Americans have pushed steadily into the suburbs, transforming the landscape and (until recently) leaving cities behind. But today the pendulum is swinging back toward urban living, and there are many reasons to believe this swing will continue. As it does, many low-density suburbs and McMansion subdivisions, including some that are lovely and affluent today, may become what inner cities became in the 1960s and ’70s—slums characterized by poverty, crime, and decay."
In response to such gloomy scenarios, The Toronto Star recently opined that it's time to start retrofitting suburbia to prepare for an urban future, that it is the "only alternative:" "Every day it becomes clearer and clearer that the suburban model so beloved by Americans and Canadians doesn't work. In fact, the need for change has reached a critical moment, a point of no return."
While it's encouraging -- if sobering -- to see in mainstream news sources what was only a few years ago the stuff of planning students' papers, "peak oil" DVDs and blogs it's important to remind ourselves that media (some of them anyways) are years ahead of industry and government in this realization. Things move slowly in city-building: topsoil is only now being churned for subdivisions approved years ago.
Never mind radical change: many city politicians remain paralyzed on even the most basic of steps away from the old paradigm. For example, in my own city of Winnipeg -- even with gasoline prices escalating daily – city hall still can't decide if rapid transit is a good idea – despite debating the issue since 1976!
What will change that picture? Perhaps when enough voters suddenly find they can't afford their remote homes or the cars needed to supply them there will come a political point of no return, when people will demand radical changes in the way their cities and suburbs are built and provisioned.
