Think high gas prices will spur a back-to-the-city movement as people vie to get closer to work? Think again, says Joel Kotkin, the dean of debunkers of that and other geographic pseudo-trends.
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. By 2000, only 22% of people worked within three miles of a city center in the nation’s 100 largest metro areas.And from 2001 to 2006, job growth in suburbia expanded at six times the rate of that in urban cores, according to an analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics [data] by the Praxis Strategy Group, a consulting firm with which I work.
Read the rest of Suburbia’s not dead yet.
While it is true suburbia has gained quite a bit of employment over the last 30 years, you cannot discount the continued draw of the central business district for employers. Currently downtown Chicago has an office vacancy rate of 12.9%, while the suburbs at at 21.5% which is among the nation’s highest. The suburban office market cannot compete with downtown Chicago when it comes to attracting young talent. Proximity to where the “creative class” live and an alternative to commuting by car drives forward-thinking companies downtown. Just look at United, BP and others that have shunned the burbs in favor of downtown. While the suburban office market in some cities without a strong core (Phoenix, Dallas, etc.) may continue to dominate employment concentrations, Chicago is not in that category.
It’s a bit ridiculous to declare the suburbs dead when that is where most of the growth and prosperity is. But it’s also ridiculous to compare today’s trends to the trends in the 1970s. White flight was just getting into full swing in the 1970s, and the temporary oil price spike in the days of the embargo wasn’t a significant enough jolt to change that.
I am a bit of a suburb hater, but agree that the death of the suburbs could be bad for everyone. If single-family homes on a patch of land are no longer feasible for most Americans to afford, that would be a huge decrease in our standard of living. And even the most die-hard urban dwellers don’t want a crowded city like you’d find in the third world.
The demographics of the metro area are in a state of flux. Many working and middle class suburbs are seeing a huge influx of minorities and whites running scared. The ex-urb periphery may be nearing a point where they are just too far away from the city center.
And what will happen with our agin population? The north shore seems stable, but demand has pushed real estate prices so high in that area that a new supply of young homeowners will have a hard time breaking into the market (for instance, the median home price in Wilmette is close to $600K while the median household income is only around $115K). Will the north shore become a retirement community with a handful of wealthy young families? What about the Gold Coast?
I’m not surprised by this, but I think it’s a mistake to look at these trends an issue of city/suburbs, instead of walkable/driveable and old/new.
Plenty of old suburban downtowns, from Forest Park to Arlington Heights, have been revitalized in the last decade for the same reason Chicago has-good transit, lots to walk to, people wanting less space, etc.
A couple with jobs in the northwest corridor that lives in an Arlington Heights condo and walks to errands, shopping, transit to the city and NW corridor, etc. is better suited for the oil shock than they would be in, say, Belmont Cragin, Scottsdale or Pill Hill.
UptownR,
The median family income in Wilmette in 2005 was $133,777, just about enough for the median family to afford the median priced home. And, that’s well below the starting salary for a young lawyer in a major Chicago law firm.
$600k is affordable housing for far more than a “handful” of people, and it’s not a price point tht makes one wealthy. It’s far lower than the median home prie in every solid lakefront community in the city. Wilmette’s a pretty attractive place for families, and that $600k buys a much nicer home in Wilmette than it does in good areas in the city.