“Young American families are increasingly ditching suburban life for city living,” says Leigh Gallagher, author of the new book The End of the Suburbs. Gallagher tells Reuters what’s driving the trend. (Click here.)
But listen carefully to the interview: it’s the suburbs “as we have come to know them.” Not the same.
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Insightful point: “The (suburban) house is tangible; you can see the house. You can’t see the lost time, all the hours you are going to spending in your car, all the negatives you can’t really touch and feel.”
But if the ‘suburbs’ can provide what the city offers – particularly walkability (go to 2:39) – then we get the phenomenon evident in the ‘Kotkin suburbs’* – those inner-ring communities, developed before Motordom destroyed the streetcar fabric, that still have centres, a range of densities and are connected to the urban core with transit.
(*The sort of neighbourhoods praised by author Joel Kotkin, whose defense of the suburbs is taken to be anti-urban. It’s the kind of place where he “rides his bike” in the eastern San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles.)
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More on this issue coming up on January 20:
SUBURBAN SPRAWL: Innovative approaches to managing suburban sprawl in Canada.
Date: Monday, January 20, 2014
Time: 8 – 11 am
Location: Segal Building, SFU, 500 Granville Street
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A new report issued by Sustainable Prosperity identifies the immediate and long‐term hidden costs of sprawl. The report represents a strong call to action for municipalities, asking them to adopt new policies and legislation to encourage efficient, healthy and resilient high‐density neighbourhood growth.
This panel event will use the findings of this report to address:
- How is sprawl subsidized by Canadian cities?
- How do we finance new expectations for development?
- Can the Vancouver model of urban planning be expanded to include suburbs?
- What policies will ensure that cities are not left with the tab after development charges are spent?
- What incentives successfully motivate developers to build in central areas?
- How can we make density attractive?.
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CUI/UDI Members: $95 / Non‐Members: $130
This could also be a course exclusively for municipal and provincial politicians of ‘both sides of the fence’. I have found the knowledge of most of them of these types of issues to be non-existent, abysmal or cursory to say the least. Be nice to make it compulsory for them. But….naaaah….
What makes sense in a dessert city with 45 degree heat in the summer or -25 in the winter may not make sense in the Lower Mainland.
Who wants to ride a bike or walk in Texas or Phoenix or many southern US states ?
Ditto in Edmonton or Saskatoon in the winter ?
So, with land prices very low in a Las Vegas, Texas or Georgia suburb, it totally makes sense to build roads and suburbs aimed at drivers. It may not make sense in Langley, though. Different weather, different building pattern.
btw: e-cars don’t work in cold climates. So much of the “sustainability” talk is academic, not aimed at the real world.
The suburb, and the gasoline car will be without for 100 or more years, less in some regions like Lower Mainland, San Francisco or Manhattan, more in others, like Edmonton, Saksatoon, Dallas, Atlanta, Phoenix or Las Vegas.