Married to the Wrong Place

image courtesy of Nate Hood

I often write about what makes great places.  I try to provide insights on what makes places great and what makes places not so great.  It generally boils down to this.. Places built around people that are highly walkable tend to be great.  Places built around cars, not so much.  Places that try to accommodate both are hit or miss but usually fall into the miss bucket. 

Now, I know a lot of this is personal preference but just take a look at look at home values and vacation destinations to discover the magic of place.  In a 2009 study on walkability, Walking the Walk, houses with above average walkability were seen to command premiums of about $4,000 to $34,000 over houses with just average levels of walkability in the typical metropolitan areas studied.  Additionally, the study saw between a $500 and $3,000 increase in home values for each point increase in Walk Score.  In our own metro area, the same place/walkability premiums exist and can be evidenced in neighborhoods such as Virginia Highlands, Inman Park, Decatur, Historic Roswell and eventually Avalon.

Vacations, another high ticket item where place seems to matter, also show a distinct preference for destinations that deliver great experiences .  Vacation destinations are almost always either walkable urban environments or places that bring us closer to nature, and it is apparent that the ‘burbs just don’t provide either very well.  Unless you’re visiting a friend or family, you probably aren’t headed to suburbia for vacation.  There just isn’t any ‘there’ there.  People crave places with personality and will pay a premium for it.  

Building better places was an important discussion 5 or 6 years ago when we were in the throws of the Great Recession but it’s even more important now as we are seeing a building recovery, dare I say boom, in North Fulton.  The unfortunate thing is that we are still building the same crap devoid of personality and lacking any true future.  Will Windward be the next historic district in Alpharetta? Why are we still throwing up commoditized subdivisions dominated by front loader garages that pretend to be walkable but yet connect to nothing?  Why do we still tolerate sucky architecture from builders looking to make a quick buck?

In my opinion, the problem revolves around our obsession with economic efficiency and our love affair with the short term.  When we add on to our suburban street network, we fail to see how that will impact our commute in 5 years when more vacant or under developed land is developed.  We purchase a home using borrowed money planning to sell it within 5-10 years hoping for a quick profit.  We think that a quality interior will somehow fix the shallow and cheap exterior.  We are blinded by the mortgage interest credit.

In our short sightedness, we have built an environment that only a mother (or homeowner) can love, a world full of non-places whose sum is less than the value of its parts.  The fact of the matter is that we are building places that have few redeeming qualities save that fact that you can buy and sell them.  They won’t stand the test of time... 

Nate Hood, a fellow urbanist from Minnesota, recently made just this point when he posted his engagement photos online.  The satirical photo shoot highlights just how ridiculous our suburban landscape is in a series of shots in front of driveways, empty lots and cul-de-sacs.  Nate’s website says it all; “Engagement photos are either urban or rural. They are either a former factory or a leafy meadow... Never the subdivision. Never the cul-de-sac.  We wanted to capture the ambiance of the American Subdivision”

What a sad sad place we have created when our homes and neighborhoods are a punchline for a witty couple who recognizes the hilarity of our suburbs.  Like it or not, we are married to the places we build.  Like a spouse, don’t expect to change places.  Once built, we have to accept them for what they are.  When the traffic gets bad, realize that you married that traffic when you chose to live in a car oriented world.  When you have to drive the kids everywhere, don’t think you’re going to change that zoning code so things can be closer together.  When you want to ride your bike, go ahead and strap it on the SUV and drive it over to the greenway because you’re married to a place where riding on the streets is akin to risking your life.  But, maybe you’d be better off.. or maybe you just need to get a divorce and move to a real place that will truly truly stand the test of time.  One that is capable of growing with you as your needs and preferences change.  

For those of us who can’t get a divorce from our places, we need to focus on building more real places and quit pretending that the suburbs as we know them are the answer.

Buffalo and the Future Suburban Poor...

I recently had the opportunity to attend CNU22 the annual conference for the Congress for the New Urbanism.  This year it was in Buffalo, NY.  The most common question when I told my friends that my geeky passion was taking me to Buffalo was something like ‘why Buffalo?’  Well, it has great bones and lots of warts.  It’s exactly the kind of fixer-upper New Urbanists love.

At the beginning of the 1900’s, Buffalo was home to more millionaires per capita than any other city in the country.  Population peaked at around 580k in 1950 and has fallen by roughly 55% since as the industries that made it one of the richest cities in America died or moved away.  At this point, you may be wondering what Buffalo has to do with Roswell and North Fulton.  Well, it all comes back to a tour that I took while I was there.

Our second stop was at the Sacred Heart Cathedral on Emslie St.

The controversially named Tour de Neglect took about 75 wonky planners, architects and urbanism enthusiasts through the economically devastated East Side neighborhood to showcase what happens when once vibrant places become slums.  At one point, East Side was a thriving neighborhood with one of the largest Polish and German populations in the nation.  Since the 1950’s the combination of economic stagnation and white flight have reduced the population of what is Buffalo’s largest neighborhood geographically by almost 90% and the racial makeup has gone from almost 100% white to almost 100% African-American.  To say that 75 mostly white, relatively well-off out-of-towners riding bicycles through this neighborhood was awkward puts it lightly.  Thankfully, we had well connected and well known guides.

This is the type of place that people reading the CurrentHub would rarely end up.  If they did, it’s likely the result of a wrong turn or a volunteer project.  But, it made me wonder if the northern burbs of Atlanta face a similar fate?  

The fact is that suburban poverty is rising at a significantly faster rate than the city core.  According to the Brookings Institute study ‘Confronting Suburban Poverty in America,’ Atlanta had the 4th fastest increase in suburban poverty between 2000 and 2010.  In Cobb county, 6.5% of residents were poor in 2000 but by 2010, that number was 12.6%.  At the time of the study, 87% of metro Atlanta’s poor lived in suburbs and about 79% of the people receiving housing vouchers lived in the burbs.  This makes sense as 85% of the affordable housing in the metro area is located in the suburbs.  This arrangement imposes huge burdens on people living on little or no income which makes one wonder if it is truly ‘affordable.’

When looking at East Side, I see a neighborhood that actually could eventually recover.  It has good bones and great places and it’s easy to bike and walk.  However, The way Atlanta has built its suburbs around the car makes me less optimistic.  According to AAA, the annual cost of owning a single car is just over $9,000.  Even reducing that by driving a cheaper car, our poor, who are being forced to drive by our dispersed landscape, are being hit with a huge financial burden as a percentage of their income.  If you can’t afford a car, good luck because you’re not going to be near a frequent bus route and you’re definitely not going to be able to walk or bike to work!

Poverty is like a vicious cycle and a suburban landscape exasperates it.  Just the act of being poor creates the conditions that make it difficult to recover.  A 2013 Journal of Science article concluded that poverty imposes such a massive cognitive load on the poor that they have little bandwidth left over to do many of the things that might lift them out of poverty.  It also estimated that the condition of poverty imposes a mental burden equivalent to a 13 point IQ drop.  Just like people and families, once a neighborhood starts down the path, it is hard to recover.  You can see this in small pockets all over our suburban landscape.  Subdivisions that were the nice places 30 or 40 years ago haven’t aged well.  They become more costly to maintain and many end up falling into disrepair.  

We’re lucky to live in a beautiful place but Buffalo is proof that it may not always be that way.  As cities continue to become more popular places, gentrification will drive the poor somewhere.. and that somewhere in metro Atlanta is where 85% of the ‘affordable’ housing is.  Aging and dying subdivisions will become the slums of the 21st century.  Our sprawl bombed landscape burns holes in our pockets and literally crushes those who can’t afford the amenities that motordom requires.  We need to rethink how we have built our cities and towns and make them work for everyone.  Not just those of us fortunate enough (for now) to drive with no concerns.

For more on the East Side neighborhood, go to fixbuffalo.blogspot.com

Here are some additional shots from the tour.

Inside the Sacred Heart CathedralThe revitalized area of Larkin Square. This is only 5 short blocks away from the Sacred Heart Cathedral.Approaching the 17 story Buffalo Central Terminal finished just before the stock market crash of 1929. It was active until 1979.The beautiful interior of the Buffalo Central Terminal. This place has incredible potential and it looks kinda like the Halls of Justice right?

Quote of the Week: Leinberger on the Exurbs

Many drivable-fringe house prices are now below replacement value, meaning the land under the house has no value and the sticks and bricks are worth less than they would cost to replace. This means there is no financial incentive to maintain the house; the next dollar invested will not be recouped upon resale. Many of these houses will be converted to rentals, which are rarely as well maintained as owner-occupied housing. Add the fact that the houses were built with cheap materials and methods to begin with, and you see why many fringe suburbs are turning into slums, with abandoned housing and rising crime. - Chris Leinberger

Anyone want to buy in a subdivision in Cherokee or Forsyth?

Read on... 

Quote of the Week: Chuck Mahron on Suburbia

We often forget that the American pattern of suburban development is an experiment, one that has never been tried anywhere before.  We assume it is the natural order because it is what we see all around us.  But our own history -- let alone a tour of other parts of the world -- reveals a different reality.  Across cultures, over thousands of years, people have traditionally built places scaled to the individual.  It is only the last two generations that we have scaled places to the automobile.

Chuck Mahron is the Executive Director of Strong Towns