The future of 'nowhere'
Urban planners love to hate the suburbs, but what's going to become of them? Will Bellevue eventually become a post-carbon ghost town or a new urban hybrid? Some reflections on the urban/suburban debate.
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It would take perhaps an apocalypse to break us out of these deep, psychological and cultural patterns, even if that were a good thing. However, Archer does see change:
... [A]s we look to the future, suburbia is evolving in three key directions — not incidentally, along the same paths already being paved by global capitalism; suburbia will be flexible, it will be smarter, and it will be hybrid.
That evolutionary change is already noted. Here you can see it in Bellevue, as it is the most rapidly densifying city in the county and outstripping Seattle in the percentage of minority population. Suburban towns throughout the region are becoming more classically urban: gay friendly, transit friendly, etc. In Pugetopolis, the city and suburb are meeting in the middle somewhere, but that's a national trend, too.
According to Alan Berube, research director and fellow at the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution, the suburbs are not the new ghost towns. On the contrary, they are durable and will continue to grow and evolve:
... [T]he nation will need to accommodate at least another 100 million people during this period, and not even $10-per-gallon gas will send the majority of Americans scrambling back to cities. But 'suburbia' will be an even less useful descriptor in 2050 for the diverse range of communities in which the majority of Americans will continue to live.
Berube says the burbs will be more walkable, more diverse, poorer (already more than half of the metropolitan poor in America live outside the city proper), and more diverse. He thinks they will have to become less self-focused and more regionally minded to solve problems, like transportation. He envisions better governance and more collaboration.
One thing Berube hopes is that we might get beyond the Manichaeism of the suburban debate:
'Suburbia' is an oppositional concept — in Latin, it's literally 'under city.' But as the people and places that define suburbia look more and more like those we associate with the city, and less and less like one another — in 40 years perhaps we'll get beyond our fixation with 'the suburbs' (love them or hate them) and develop a richer vocabulary for what lies beyond the city limits.
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Comments:
Posted Mon, Aug 18, 6:23 a.m. Inappropriate
Kunstler's prognosis that both the cities and suburbs will decay and that most of us will end up living in small towns along rivers is just nonsense. I live in Seattle, have a large vegetable garden and keep a couple of hens, but I don't believe for a minute that most of us will take up an Amish lifestyle down along the Lewis River.
The evolutionary change that Skip brings up towards the end of his column is probably correct. Bellevue is changing from a "suburban city" into an "urban city" before our eyes. Because of our heavy investment in auto based infrastructure and our ingrained notions of where we want to live or not live, change will be very incremental and evolutionary regardless of what planners or futurists may think or counsel. Just as the region has changed since 1976, thirty two years from now in 2040, the region will be changed but still very recognizable and familiar.
As so often, Skip provides another thoughtful and provocative column. Great Stuff.
Posted Mon, Aug 18, 6:40 a.m. Inappropriate
According to energy investment banker Matthew Simmons, global oil production is now declining, from 74 million barrels per day to 60 million barrels per day by 2015. During the same time demand will increase 14%.
This is equivalent to a 33% drop in 7 years. No one can reverse this trend, nor can we conserve our way out of this catastrophe. Because the demand for oil is so high, it will always be higher than production; thus the depletion rate will continue until all recoverable oil is extracted.
Alternatives will not even begin to fill the gap. And most alternatives yield electric power, but we need liquid fuels for tractors/combines, 18 wheel trucks, trains, ships, and mining equipment.
We are facing the collapse of the highways that depend on diesel trucks for maintenance of bridges, cleaning culverts to avoid road washouts, snow plowing, roadbed and surface repair. When the highways fail, so will the power grid, as highways carry the parts, transformers, steel for pylons, and high tension cables, all from far away. With the highways out, there will be no food coming in from "outside," and without the power grid virtually nothing works, including home heating, pumping of gasoline and diesel, airports, communications, and automated systems.
This is documented in a free 48 page report that can be downloaded, website posted, distributed, and emailed: http://www.peakoilassociates.com/POAnalysis.html
I used to live in NH, but moved to a sustainable place. Anyone interested in relocating to a nice, pretty, sustainable area with a good climate and good soil? Email: clifford dot wirth at yahoo dot com or give me a phone call which operates here as my old USA-NH number 603-668-4207.
Posted Mon, Aug 18, 7:50 a.m. Inappropriate
I'll second RCR's observation that your final paragraphs are more likely correct; change will be evolutionary.
Brookings' Berube says suburbs will "have to become less self-focused and more regionally minded to solve problems, like transportation. He envisions better governance and more collaboration."
In the state of Washington, at least, cities find it easy to collaborate in some areas, using interlocal contracts and MOUs for various projects. But regionalism as policy is hampered by the state's revenue system, which rewards cities for self-focus, and by our unremitting populism, in which centralization is always suspect. The state's growth management statute is focused on individual municipal and county compliance, not on an urban region's sufficiency or sustainability. City officials are elected on issues that are narrow and parochial - the land use that happens in our own neighborhood, police and fire response times - not the larger regional problems.
The evolution is already underway. I agree that we are going to need a richer vocabulary, if we're going to solve the next generation of problems.
Posted Mon, Aug 18, 9:20 a.m. Inappropriate
"Two urban land-use trends that have not been generally acknowledged will complicate climate change-driven effects in highly urbanized areas unless stormwater managers work closely with planning departments: smart growth and residential "mansionization"...
Redevelopment, infill, or home-scaled remodeling in densely populated built-out inner-urban neighborhoods causes incremental hydrograph modification that will compound extreme weather events' effects on urban infrastructure... Seattle's Climate Change Action Plan mandates increased housing density to reduce carbon emissions (Hayes et al. 2006)....
In single-family zoned areas in Seattle alone, 492 homes were demolished between 2003 and 2005, with an average of 500 demolished homes each year in all types of zoned areas in Seattle since 1998.
If every demolished home in Seattle was replaced with a new home, these data suggest that 250,000 square feet per year of imperviousness would be added each year. While this is not a huge amount of imperviousness, actual imperviousness increases are probably much greater since many of the demolished homes are not replaced by homes but by more densely grouped structures such as condos, town homes, or commercial buildings...The Seattle Climate Change Action Plan calls for 22,000 new homes downtown and in nine inner-urban neighborhoods by 2024 (Hayes et al. 2006)... [The Regional Council has since set in motion the Mayor's "laughable" plan to up that to 350,000 more people by 2040. Less the 29,000 net new people we gained between 4/2000 and 4/2008, that would be 320,000 new units at Seattle's rate during that period of about 1 (one) net new persons per new unit. Hardly a "sustainable" rate]
Generally when professionals in our industry speak of sustainable infrastructure, it refers to low-impact development, integrated site design, green infrastructure, or natural system restoration (http://seattle.gov/environment/building.htm). Still, this "assemblage" approach leaves out a number of important components.
One architect, in contrasting green building with sustainable building, makes a number of critical distinctions. Raymond Cole defines green building as reducing resource use and environmental destruction, while sustainable building is defined by simultaneously responding "to changing climate and repair[ing] previously damaged ecosystems." He compares green building's technical emphasis on "resource use environmental loadings and occupant comfort" to sustainable building's technical emphasis on "extending scope to understand behavioural and socio-cultural aspects of technological advance" (Cole 2005)...
Seattle's storm of 2006 gives us what might be one of the last cautionary tales of modernity. As the foundation of modernity, our stormwater and sewer infrastructure is mass-scaled and still largely mechanistic. Those who cleared storm drain inlets the day Seattle flooded could not save neighborhoods from flooding because the infrastructure's capacity had been exceeded and it could do only one thing–fail."
Posted Mon, Aug 18, 9:30 a.m. Inappropriate
I'm a big fan of the little downtowns proliferating everywhere, from resurgent older downtowns like Renton and Issaquah to new ones like Mercer Island. It's also cool to see some cultural diversity -- who knew cricket was so big at Marymoor Park?
Posted Mon, Aug 18, 9:31 a.m. Inappropriate
photo: PS: As with every Bellevue story in Crosscut, once again I'll ask why an ancient photo is used. Doesn't somebody have a camera!?
Posted Mon, Aug 18, 11:34 a.m. Inappropriate
RE: Peak Oil impacts: How much money is Peak Oil Associates making off this doom and gloom fear mongering?
Posted Mon, Aug 18, 12:10 p.m. Inappropriate
combines the good and bad: Mercer Island is not only between Seattle and Bellevue geographically, it combines the good and bad environmental elements of both of these- and the further out suburbs. That's why I've lived there all these years. Jerry Gropp Architect AIA PS
Posted Mon, Aug 18, 12:44 p.m. Inappropriate
In such a world dense cities are still by far the most efficient form of living. Keeping the distance between housing, workplaces, and services very close removes time and energy from transportation. Building housing that is dense and touching vastly reduces energy for heating. Dense cities are much more efficient in terms of electrical wiring, commerce, plumbing, and transit because materials and travel time scale down with distance. Importing food by rail will never be expensive or difficult. Yes, we may need more farm laborers, but nothing near the number of people that live in the exurbs right now.
Oh, and Bellevue isn't a suburb anymore - it's a city. I see it as a younger version of San Francisco's "suburb" of Oakland.
Posted Mon, Aug 18, 1:02 p.m. Inappropriate
Photo?: That's a photo of Bellevue? I thought it was a photo of the southwest side of Mt. Index........
Posted Mon, Aug 18, 5:29 p.m. Inappropriate
That's an advantage which lower-density development doesn't have.
Oh well, so much for reality. Go ahead and argue about density if you like.
Posted Mon, Aug 18, 5:46 p.m. Inappropriate
We also have to get over some people's idea that every dense neighborhood is fair game for loud bars. Those should be in certain areas (like where the bars were there first), and the rules should be enforced everywhere else.
People who say "noise comes with cities" are either not well traveled, or just really good at ignoring noise. I've never seen such pervasive rudeness outside the US, in London, Hong Kong, Tokyo, or anywhere else. In those places, people care about not being jerks. Hell, even New York is cracking down. Good for New York.
But we can change, or we can at least punish the jerks.
Posted Mon, Aug 18, 6:03 p.m. Inappropriate
How come these experts never give precedence to not having to travel to work at all? I work at home exclusively (years now) and have friends that actually travel to the office maybe once or twice a week. In the future this will become even more prevalent. I can see where the college campuses will be a thing of the past. I wonder how academics like that thought? These are low carbon solutions that can happen now. The U of Dub campus would function very well as a wildlife park. So who's resisting this change? Maybe some of those experts that love their campus office? What is good for the goose should be good for the gander.
If you want a perfect example of the fascist thinking that permeates the green lobby, peek at mhays. Obviously he doesn't like little dogs and people he thinks are "jerks", for whatever reason. Obviously by his metrics, these people need to be "punished" for not seeing it his way. So if the "green revolution" isn't moving fast enough maybe it's time to start stuffing it down everybody's throat. Stuff ‘em all into a cement high-rise (it's for their own good you see), ban the dogs (don't need those now do we?) and start handing out the cheap vodka (a bottle of anesthesia a night goes a long way toward compliance). Joesph S. would have loved it.
Posted Mon, Aug 18, 6:10 p.m. Inappropriate
RE: People Don't Respond Like They Should: College campuses will be a thing of the past? They've been saying that for at least 50 years... do we really want everything to go virtual?
Posted Mon, Aug 18, 7:36 p.m. Inappropriate
Little dogs are fine. People who let them bark around other people are jerks.
Not sure where that cement highrise thing came from. I'm in favor of density in terms of what gets built, but there will always be houses, as well as townhouses and other non-highrise options.
But hey, it's fun making stuff up about other people, eh? Or are you just a nutcase?
Posted Mon, Aug 18, 7:37 p.m. Inappropriate
RE: People Don't Respond Like They Should: (I was responding to g. jiggy)
Posted Mon, Aug 18, 8:15 p.m. Inappropriate
Heh. Someone just called Knute an eco-facist. That just made my day.
Posted Mon, Aug 18, 9:01 p.m. Inappropriate
RE: People Don't Respond Like They Should: Dogs bark. People that allow dogs to bark may or may not be jerks, but they most likely are NOT control freaks. Little yappy dogs ARE annoying, though; you sort of remind me of a little yappy dog.
Posted Mon, Aug 18, 9:10 p.m. Inappropriate
RE: A Couple of Quick Points: I don't understand how you dismiss Kunstler out-right by virtue of a vegetable garden and hens. Kunstler is one of the more astute social critics in the MSM, by my measure--one that extends beyond my taste in landscape and pets. I would also point out that Urban and Suburban decay is currently underway, and the psychology of previous investment is not the driver of change, as you suggest, but rather an impediment to change.
Posted Tue, Aug 19, 9:42 a.m. Inappropriate
Companies who build vehicles of transportation will adapt to the rise of oil costs in a fight to compete for customers. Just as they did in the 70's when cars guzzled gas, companies will build more fuel efficient models. In the end the ones who will be hurt are those who can't afford the new cars. They will be forced to live closer to work. Those who have no issue buying a brand new car will end up with cars that can go longer on each tank and they will keep living in their picket-fence houses in the suburbs.
Posted Tue, Aug 19, 10:06 a.m. Inappropriate
And what really couldn't and won't happen, Knute, is the absurd idea of total local self-sufficiency. The very basis of human civilization and prosperity is the division of labor, specialization of production and exchange of people (genes, ideas) and goods. The end of cheap oil will not end the advantages of agglomeration (cities) or of trade, but rather spur new rounds of innovation and creativity.
Freakonomics will not replace the science of economics nor fantasyland the science of geography.
Posted Tue, Aug 19, 3:02 p.m. Inappropriate
What is important is that we have individuals capable of making their own decisions - and this we may well be losing. If it's lost, we all might as well be bending over and spreading the cheeks for what is about to happen to us.
As Sucher notes, density has social costs - and they directly contradict any economies of scale that are present in Cities. Because of this Kunstler may well be right in prophesizing some sort of continuing trend of decentralization. Certainly the internet reduces the costs of communication and informal coordination making this a more realistic option for the educated individual, not just Ted Kacinski types.
Posted Tue, Aug 19, 3:03 p.m. Inappropriate
One Word: Buses.
Posted Tue, Aug 19, 5:39 p.m. Inappropriate
Basically the rubber band can't stretch any more because all of our grid systems are tied to very centralized generating "nodes" -- power, Internet, business.
Enter hydrogen. Hydrogen can be generated by water -- a new process from MIT and another from Australian are 100% efficient. With a solar powered system, storing energy as hydrogen, a home can be 100% off grid.
That means I can build a house anywhere, not just at the edge of where the systems end.
Enter WiMax. Wimax, unlike Wifi and cell phones, don't need hundreds of little antennas...just a few really big ones to cover scads of area.
Imagine a person living on a few acres of land, with his own hydrogen/solar generator. He can take any water source and the electrylsis process will purify it. His "car' could be a truly "off road" vehicle because he doesn't need 100% perfect roads, just a good enough road to get groceries (the ones he doesn't grow himself). Entertainment? Plenty of it through his 75GB Wimax pipe...games, phone, streaming video.
So, the part that's could disappear is the "urb" as in we may become a honeycomb of people back to living everywhere in the countryside and being really self-sufficient.
Posted Tue, Aug 19, 6:18 p.m. Inappropriate
RE: Hydrogen Changes Game: Sorry, what does "100% efficient" mean? Are you proposing solar-powered electrolysis of water to create hydrogren with no loss of energy in the process?
Posted Tue, Aug 19, 9:05 p.m. Inappropriate
RE: A Couple of Quick Points: You need to re-read what I wrote. My points are that despite the fact that I grow some of my food I do not believe that we will abandon cities and suburbs to become farmers or small town dwellers. We are not going to beat our Ipods into plowshares and move to the sticks. Secondly, my point was exactly that previous investment is an impediment to change, and that is one reason change is incremental and relatively slow.
Posted Wed, Aug 20, 8:50 a.m. Inappropriate
Previous investments are not sustainable; therefore they won't be sustained. The progressive, linear change you describe requires a stable environment, and its safe to say the environment is growing increasingly unstable. The expectation that progressive, linear change will continue simply because it occurred in the past smacks of market ideology. Sudden, non-linear change strikes me as a more realistic expectation.
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