For a half century, it’s been easy to mock suburbia for being too comfortable, white-bread and conformist. That’s all changed in the last 18 months as many suburbs have abruptly taken on a sense of tragedy and desperation–a fact that underlies Obama’s trip to devastated Lee County, Florida, later today. Drug violence, gangs pillaging half-empty subdivisions for scrap metal, skateboarders reclaiming the pools of abandoned McMansions, and whole streets of dead lawns spray-painted green have emerged as the new symbols of life in the ‘burbs.
One man who foresaw all the ugliness is Christopher Leinberger. The Brookings Institute fellow and distinguished scholar of the suburban living arrangement has decades of experience in real estate development and urban planning. The meme of doomed suburbs went mainstream with his cover story for the Atlantic magazine last March, “The Next Slum?” The problem, he says, goes much deeper than the foreclosure crisis. It’s part of a painful societal adjustment that will take a generation or more to work through.
After heralding the crash of America’s predominant living arrangement, his latest efforts are devoted to showing how suburbs can adjust and reemerge as healthy communities. In this conversation he analyzes the roots of suburbia’s current plight and explains how three straightforward adjustments to infrastructure can save a community.
The suburbs are really suffering. What’s the short-form diagnosis?
Americans are undergoing a fundamental shift in where they want live, work, and play. So this is not just a normal cyclical downturn. We’ve structurally overbuilt retail, office, and housing, and we’ve done so in the wrong places.
So where’s the bottom? Or, rather: Is there a bottom?
It’s not a matter of waiting for two or three years to absorb the overproduction. It’s a matter of drastically reducing real estate prices to well below replacement cost. And when you sell something for below replacement cost – that might sound like, well, “Somebody takes a hit but life goes on as usual.” No, life doesn’t go on. For the owners of that retail or housing space, every dollar that they invest will be money they don’t get back. That is another definition of a slum. There’s no incentive to invest in a slum. So here you are. You buy a 4,000 square foot house 40 miles outside town. You think, wow, I got great value. But when the roof begins to go, you just patch it, because if you put a new one on it’ll cost $20,000, you’ll still be at the same selling price. So, why do it?
You mentioned 40 miles outside town. Last year people were talking about high energy prices as the one of the prime causes of suburban collapse. But gas is back under $2 a gallon.
Energy prices have nothing to do with it. I said that at the time. They can accelerate the process, but what drives it is the shift in consumer preferences. Gen Xers and Millennials want a lifestyle closer to Friends and Seinfeld (that is, walkable and urban) than to Tony Soprano (low density and suburban). It’s not that nobody wants Tony Soprano. About 50 percent of Americans actually do want that configuration. But if we’ve built 80 percent of our housing that way, that’s the definition of oversupply. The other 50 percent of Americans want walkable urban arrangements and yet that’s just 20 percent of the housing stock. That’s called pent-up demand. So the market is just responding.
So rather than asking about a bottom, the better question might be: How long will it take for supply and demand to get back into equilibrium?
Upwards of 30 years. In a good year we only add 2 percent to the built environment. So even if we only produced walkable urban product for the next 20 years, it would take that long to get caught up.
That prognosis seems a tad glum. Give us some hope. How can a suburb save itself?
It can adapt. The Washington DC metro area is a useful model. A year ago I came out with a survey for Brookings looking at walkable urban places in the top 30 metro regions. DC was at the top on a per captia basis.
I imagine people are surprised to hear it’s not New York.
New York ranked tenth. When that came out I actually got a phone call from the NY Post and they were pissed. But only 8 percent of metro New Yorkers live in Manhattan. Most of the other 92 percent are spread out over four states at a density lower than Los Angeles.
Interesting. So what can DC teach us as an example?
What we’re learning about the DC area is that there are 30 of these walkable communities here. I’m only talking about regionally significant places, not individual neighborhoods. So, for instance, downtown DC, Reston, Bethesda and so on. Of these places, 90 percent are on the metro system and most of the rest will be linked into it in the next five years. So that’s a pretty obvious correlation right there. But most of these walkable places are in the suburbs.
What’s the lesson?
This structural trend is about the transformation of the suburbs into something else. I’ve been doing some research looking at the price premiums on a per-square-foot basis for walkable communities. They get a price premium between 40 and 200 percent. I’ve also been looking at what I call the “penumbra.” A walkable place is typically 50 to 500 acres in size. The penumbra, that area around it, can be even bigger.
Almost like micro suburbs.
Yes. These places are still suburban but they are within walking distance of the walkable places. This “penumbra” is seeing premiums of 20 to 80 percent over the rest of the market.
What’s an example?
Look at Tyson’s Corner outside DC. It has that giant suburban mall – 40 million square feet of retail and the largest suburban downtown in the country. It’s a traffic nightmare. They’ve been trying to get a Metro link that the Bush administration finally allowed to go through after years of trying to kill it. (The Bush people despised public transit.) The head of the neighborhood group that was involved in with this torturous three year planning process told me, “I’ve seen Arlington.” Arlington is one of the great models in the entire country of a redeveloped suburban commercial strip. Arlington has tripled its square footage and traffic has gone down ten percent. The people in Tyson see that and they want it too. They want that kind of urban excitement.
Plus there’s the incentive of protecting their property values.
Well, I’m not sure they know that they’re feathering their nests financially. But once this kind of information gets out hopefully they’ll understand it’s not only a higher quality of life for them, it’s better financially.
But Tyson’s Corner has a more lot going for it than, say, Lehigh Acres. What about those places that can’t adapt–will they just disappear?
Well, they’re probably not going to bulldoze these places. Though that may happen at some point. I’ll just repeat from the Bible: There will always be poor among us. The only model we have is the ’50s and ’60s when the middle class decamped from center cities to the fringes. The poor got very good housing at very low prices. A lot of that housing was broken up into apartments. I was just talking to a reporter from a major newspaper the other day who is covering this same thing. He had been spending time out at the fringe and he was shocked to see house after house of unrelated single men living together there. They’re flop houses.
But it’s tough to compare a brownstone in Brooklyn to the some house in the Antelope Valley made of particle board and paint.
There will be losers. And, yes, this is junk we’re putting up now. What’s the life expectancy particle board and plywood under even the best of circumstances?
So you have a suburb full of flimsy houses in the middle of nowhere, with no incentive for upkeep. That’s an ugly situation.
Exactly. It fails. Good lord, I’m a great amateur student of ancient cities. At some point they’re just going to collapse upon themselves and blow away — unless there is some massive redevelopment agency steps in.
In very practical terms, how do towns get on the right side of this multi-decade imbalance between supply and demand?
You need to get the right infrastructure in. Doing so is a three-step process. First, is getting a transit connection that can anchor a walkable urban core. Second, is putting in overlay zoning districts around the train stations that will allow for much greater density and mixed use development. We’re talking about a hundred, two hundred, three hundred acres. The third step is to get in place an entity to manage the thing, which generally takes the form of a non-profit business improvement district. These things are very complex, but we know how to do it now. We didn’t 50 years ago, but we do now.
That’s a tight plan.
And we have hundreds of examples of it working.
Is there a resource where, say, one might be able to find all the compiled case studies?
That’s my next book.
Well, I’m sure you’ll have no shortage of interested readers. Thank you.
February 10th, 2009 at 11:10 am
I live in Arlington, VA–the county he mentions that tripled its square footage and dropped traffic by 10%. I assume that’s only the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor, and not the whole county, but still–that’s an amazing statistic. And I can confirm that it’s a fantastic place to live. My boyfriend and I don’t own a car, live three blocks from the Metro, and spend many a weekend going no further from home than a 15 minute walk. But that 15 minute walk includes dozens of (good!) restaurants, two grocery stores, a couple small concert venues that bring some great local bands, and lots of retail. And we’re a five minute Metro ride from the shopping mall at Ballston, which has a traditional department store and your more usual mall stores. And a five minute Metro ride from downtown DC. And a twenty minute morning commute on the Metro to our offices.
And, unlike almost everywhere else in the country, my neighborhood is experiencing a construction boom. There’s a new Marriott hotel opening a couple blocks away, and five separate high rise apartment buildings going up within five blocks of my building. And I can’t wait for the new residents of those buildings to move in, because the more people who live close by, the more successful the local businesses will be, and the more diversity in retail our neighborhood can support.
February 10th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
[...] and testify in support of the Brookland small area plan. So, submitted for your parsing is this, from the Infrastructurist: You mentioned 40 miles outside town. Last year people were talking [...]
February 10th, 2009 at 4:15 pm
Note that 50 acres is just over a quarter of a square mile … a rail corridor with a regional “stopping train” service with each station at the core of a main “walkable” district that has a quarter mile zoned for ground floor multiple use with stacked townhouses around the train station not only adds to the effective supply of walkable zone, but extends the “penumbra” out along both sides of the rail corridor.
And given the access at the train station to a major walkable district, only partial redevelopment of a suburban “village” around a given train station would convert the existing suburban development in the immediate hinterland of the village into more valuable property than the standard emerging suburban slum.
February 11th, 2009 at 8:45 am
[...] interesting interview with Christopher Leinberger about the future of the suburbs. The point he’s making is perhaps helpfully illustrated by [...]
February 11th, 2009 at 8:53 am
[...] Infrastructurist Interviews Chris Leinberger on the Future of Suburbs [...]
February 11th, 2009 at 10:22 am
In the interest of precision, I think what BruceMcF probably should’ve said is that 50 acres is just over a square quarter-mile. A quarter of a square mile is 160 acres; a square quarter-mile is 40 acres.
February 11th, 2009 at 11:16 am
My guess is that the life expectancy of plywood and particle board is pretty good, actually.
February 11th, 2009 at 11:22 am
[...] 11, 2009 by danjo This interesting interview reminds me of something i think Krugman has said somewhere, that economics is about telling [...]
February 11th, 2009 at 11:36 am
I would love a link to the density statistics mentioned in the interview on New York and LA. I can’t seem to find matching information with a Google search.
February 11th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
[...] How to Save the Suburbs: Solutions from the Man Who Saw the Whole Thing Coming *Drug violence, gangs pillaging half-empty subdivisions for scrap metal, skateboarders reclaiming the pools of abandoned McMansions, and whole streets of dead lawns spray-painted green have emerged as the new symbols of life in the ‘burbs. [...]
February 11th, 2009 at 1:54 pm
Christopher Leinberger is an Illuminati stooge.
February 11th, 2009 at 3:17 pm
Great interview.
I work in construction is SoCal and we were amazed at the last few years of the housing boom when people would pay half a million dollars to live in a giant box out in Hemet. Those McMansions in the exurbs were just as expensive as a nice craftsman home in San Diego, but were triple the size with 12 ft ceilings, 4 car garage etc.
Instead of building affordable housing on the cheap land they built unaffordable housing on cheap land. So what was the point of living all the way out there? I never understood it. Status?
To be honest I just assumed the real estate market would collapse because we work in property management also and were losing tenants as they maxed out their credit to buy these mansions an hour away from their job as a Starbucks barista. I mean, come on - seriously. Record low interest rates and they can barely make the payments? What happens when interest rates go up? Did anyone bring a pocket calculator to the bank before they borrowed 20+ years worth of income? My God.
February 11th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
As much as Mr. Leinburger has props from Brookings, and I stongly support public transit, he’s skipping one factor - that DC, the capital of the US will probably have the biggest growth, esp with the Obama Admnistration. And as a Virginian who lives in Hampton Roads, Northern VA has the most expensive property values in the state, apart from maybe the coastal regions. Notice how Mr. L *only* uses DC and its environs Reston and Arlington, rather than Chicago with it’s L trains, as the example of the *glorious* solution to suburban problems.
For my example of proof, the newgeography.com
http://www.newgeography.com/content/00547-height-power-the-washington-fiefdom-looms-larger-than-ever
February 11th, 2009 at 4:13 pm
This disparity will grow in the coming years, as rival regions reel from the recession. Many once-powerful places are already losing their independence and allure. Wall Street, formerly the seat of privatized power, has been reduced to supplicant status. The fate of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s “luxury city” will be determined not in deals with London, Dubai or Shanghai but by the U.S. Treasury. Similarly, the vast auto economy of the upper Midwest will take direction from congressional appropriations and whoever is named the new “car czar.”
All this is bad news for much of America, but it should mean great business for many residents of greater Washington. Sudden interest in District pied-a-terres among investment bankers, venture capitalists, energy potentates and their hired help could do a lot to restore the battered condominium market. Office buildings in the District and surrounding environs can now expect a new rush of tenants, both from the private sector and the soon-to-be expanding federal bureaucracies.
The transfer of cultural power to Washington will also accelerate. After all, Washington is more than ever where the action is. Media outlets have already been shifting out of New York and other cities – the Atlantic Monthly moved from Boston to Washington in recent years, and USA Today, National Public Radio and XM Radio are headquartered in or near the capital. A city that, according to one 19th-century account, had a cuisine consisting largely of “hog and hominy grits” now boasts world-class restaurants, draws top-line chefs to its food scene and will continue to develop into a serious epicurean center. The area already ranks third in film and television production, largely because of a thriving news and documentary business, as embodied in National Geographic, the Public Broadcasting Service and the Discovery Channel.
Over time, those of us in the provinces may grow to resent all this, seeing in Washington’s ascendancy something obtrusive, oppressive and contrary to the national ethos. But don’t expect Washingtonians to care much. They’ll be too busy running the country, when not chortling all the way to the bank.
Joel Kotkin, newgeograpy.com
February 11th, 2009 at 10:03 pm
Marc P: the Los Angeles vs. New York figure is from the Los Angeles Metropolitan Area (17,776,000 people, 4850 square miles: 3665 people per square mile) vs the New York Metropolitan Area (18,815,988 people, 6720 square miles: 2800 people per square mile). The question is whether the census defines metropolitan areas in a truly meaningful way.
February 12th, 2009 at 12:10 am
NYC is spread over FOUR states? Okay, I understand NY, NJ, and CT. What’s the fourth? PA? RI?
February 12th, 2009 at 12:33 am
John,
Yes - parts of eastern PA fall within metro NYC. Great article in the New Yorker a couple of years ago by Nick Paumgarten about people commuting to Manhattan from Bucks County.
Jebediah
February 12th, 2009 at 9:03 pm
Rachel wrote:
> DC, the capital of the US will probably have the biggest growth, esp with the Obama Admnistration.
There is actually a bit of a precedent for this: FDR’s New Deal caused a boom in Washington because of all of the new workers of the federal government. At the same time, a lot of the rest of the country was at the low point of the depression. Of course, the previous administration has also created a boom of its own in Washington by outsourcing a huge part of the government to private companies, who do the same work as the earlier public servants, but for several times the cost.
February 12th, 2009 at 9:31 pm
I just moved out of Reston, VA after getting laid off from my job. It’s a very interesting model of living - I was within a mile of my job, the credit union, the grocery store, the bike store, the doctor’s office, the public library, the pool, the running/biking trail, my voting place… it was paradise. The biggest drawback was being 90 minutes - two hours from my social circle, which is up here in MD suburban hell. Still, I miss not having to get behind the wheel and drive for a minimum of 15 minutes just to reach basic necessities.
February 12th, 2009 at 10:47 pm
[...] when it involves suburbs turning into medium or high-density urban environments. This interview with Christopher Leinberger brings up two of my three favorite talking points on the subject: how suburbs can transform [...]
February 13th, 2009 at 1:54 pm
Washington DC will be the new Rome - an opulent capitol of an overstretched empire in decline.
February 13th, 2009 at 2:15 pm
[...] INFRASTRUCTURIST » Blog Archive » How to Save the Suburbs: Solutions from the Man Who Saw the Whole Thing ComingPosted by silas216 via FriendFeed [...]
February 13th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
[...] How to Save the Suburbs: Solutions from the Man Who Saw the Whole Thing Coming The suburbs are really suffering. What’s the short-form diagnosis? Americans are undergoing a fundamental shift in where they want live, work, and play. So this is not just a normal cyclical downturn. We’ve structurally overbuilt retail, office, and housing, and we’ve done so in the wrong places. So where’s the bottom? Or, rather: Is there a bottom? It’s not a matter of waiting for two or three years to absorb the overproduction. It’s a matter of drastically reducing real estate prices to well below replacement cost. And when you sell something for below replacement cost – that might sound like, well, “Somebody takes a hit but life goes on as usual.” No, life doesn’t go on. For the owners of that retail or housing space, every dollar that they invest will be money they don’t get back. That is another definition of a slum. There’s no incentive to invest in a slum. So here you are. You buy a 4,000 square foot house 40 miles outside town. You think, wow, I got great value. But when the roof begins to go, you just patch it, because if you put a new one on it’ll cost $20,000, you’ll still be at the same selling price. So, why do it? [...]
February 13th, 2009 at 2:50 pm
Surviving Peak Oil: Obstacles to Relocation
Oil and natural gas depletion will soon begin to undermine the capacity of urban and metropolitan areas to sustain human life. Modern urban and metropolitan life depends on oil and natural gas for food production and distribution, residential heating, water purification and distribution, sanitation, and the power grid that delivers electricity for the pumping of gasoline and diesel, airports, communications, elevators, home heating controls, and automated building systems. As international food transport collapses, most oil rich nations face starvation too, regardless of how much oil they possess. Oil depletion means population decline for all urban areas.
The notion that urban and suburban dwellers will relocate to small villages in agricultural regions is unrealistic. In the ensuing Peak Oil generated global economic depression, the value of urban residential properties will plummet. Increasing unemployment will slow new house sales and accelerate mortgage and property tax foreclosures. With more and more urban homes up for sale, their prices will decline sharply.
And, as the price of urban property declines in value, rural property will increase in comparative value. Indeed, in the last few years, the prices of agricultural land have increased. Soon, to move to a rural area most urban home owners will have to sell at a low price and buy a rural property for a higher price. The financial loss in selling and buying property will stifle the relocation to rural regions for most people.
At the same time, the cost of building new homes in rural areas will increase with the increasing cost of oil and natural gas. Building materials (asphalt and fiberglass shingles, cement, plastic and aluminum siding, fiberglass insulation, glass, lumber, and bricks) are either made from oil or they are manufactured with the energy of oil, natural gas, and coal. All building materials and construction workers are transported using oil (diesel and gasoline).
Electricity that is used in the manufacture and construction of houses will also become more expensive. Coal (which is transported with diesel) and natural gas (which uses oil in exploration, drilling operations, and transport of workers) provide the energy for electric power generation. Thus coal and natural gas costs, as well as the cost of electricity, will increase with the increasing price of oil.
Similarly, the construction of residential water (wells and pumps) and sanitation systems (septic systems or outhouses in rural areas) will cost more and more as the price of oil increases.
Local governments would have to construct schools and some roads in rural areas with expanding populations in an era of declining local government revenues (due to declining property values and property taxes). Local governments would have to raise taxes for new infrastructure at a time when citizens will vociferously oppose tax increases.
In colder regions of the world, including most of Europe and the U.S., urban to rural relocation means people moving close to wood supplies for home heating, but many agricultural areas lack significant forest land.
Inertia and procrastination are powerful forces in determining human behavior. It is basic human nature to deal with non-routine problems when they become obvious, not before. Very few people will study the Peak Oil future carefully to determine how it will impact them. Denial is encouraged by pervasive public, media, government, and business ignorance of Peak Oil impacts. Indeed, those who become vocal about Peak Oil face ridicule by the vast majority of the ignorant.
The combination of these obstacles means that only those who have ample resources and knowledge of Peak Oil impacts will be able to relocate, if they act sooner rather than later. Relocation will thus resemble a trickle of the affluent, rather than a mass movement.
As the Peak Oil economic depression undermines the value of investments and urban property, most people will be stuck where they are. When the highways fail, the movement of people from urban to rural areas will cease. That time is years away, not decades.
Studies by scientific organizations and independent analysts indicate that global crude oil production will now begin to decline, 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. The price of oil will skyrocket like never before.
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 exceed the level of production; thus oil depletion will proceed at the same rate until all recoverable oil is extracted.
Alternatives energies will not 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. The proponents of the electric economy, the hydrogen economy, or an algal biodiesel economy ignore the obvious. There is little capital, time, energy, or public will for such trillion dollar infrastructure makeovers. The belief in alternative energies is so strong that most scientists avoid examining obvious questions – does the development of alternative energies consume more energy than they provide, and do alternative energies consume liquid fuels and give us electric power, which is not what we need?
The U.S. government provides no studies to advise the Congress and president on what to do with this catastrophe. Congress and the president are so inept they don’t even know that they should commission the National Academy of Sciences to study the energy crisis and the advise the nation on how to plan for Peak Oil impacts. The NAS is the only objective body that can develop policy with the best scientists from many fields to work together cooperatively to develop sound policy recommendations. And the NAS is the only authoritative source for making such policy recommendations to the nation. Thus Congress and the president grope around in the dark, relying on energy company lobbyists and well meaning “sages” who offer some plan to save the nation, but who know little about energy policy and Peak Oil impacts. FEMA has no Peak Oil risk management plans. Contingency planning for Peak Oil is an oxymoron.
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.
After the last power black out, the people living in rural areas will find that surviving will become increasing difficult without all of the goods from the “outside” (food, canning jars, fencing, roofing, hay, straw, seed, animal feed, plastic tarps, fertilizer, clothes, fabric, medicine, hardware, saws, wood stoves, etc.). The survivors will be the very few who live in areas with good rain and soil and who prepared intelligently for a life without oil.
References and links here: http://survivingpeakoil.blogspot.com/2008/09/surviving-peak-oil-obstacles-to.html
February 13th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
Rachel -
Kotkin is spot on with much of that. You can feel it very acutely in NYC already.
Jebediah
February 13th, 2009 at 10:00 pm
Quite a few years ago I spent extended periods on special assignments in Washington, D.C.. I usually stayed in a rented condo in Arlington and traveled either by Metro or bicycle into the heart of D.C. for work. I concur with the author in re: to the positive aspects of Arlington and other walkable satellite communities. These communities have a human scale quality that makes them attractive and functional.
February 14th, 2009 at 7:26 am
[...] How to Save the Suburbs: Solutions from the Man Who Saw the Whole Thing Coming The suburbs are really suffering. What’s the short-form diagnosis? Americans are undergoing a fundamental shift in where they want live, work, and play. So this is not just a normal cyclical downturn. We’ve structurally overbuilt retail, office, and housing, and we’ve done so in the wrong places. So where’s the bottom? Or, rather: Is there a bottom? It’s not a matter of waiting for two or three years to absorb the overproduction. It’s a matter of drastically reducing real estate prices to well below replacement cost. And when you sell something for below replacement cost – that might sound like, well, “Somebody takes a hit but life goes on as usual.” No, life doesn’t go on. For the owners of that retail or housing space, every dollar that they invest will be money they don’t get back. That is another definition of a slum. There’s no incentive to invest in a slum. So here you are. You buy a 4,000 square foot house 40 miles outside town. You think, wow, I got great value. But when the roof begins to go, you just patch it, because if you put a new one on it’ll cost $20,000, you’ll still be at the same selling price. So, why do it? [...]
February 14th, 2009 at 8:52 pm
[...] Go here to read a recent interview with Chris Leinberger. [...]
February 15th, 2009 at 11:47 pm
I am very happy that I found your blog. Keep up the good work.
February 16th, 2009 at 11:29 am
[...] How to Save the Suburbs: Solutions from the Man Who Saw the Whole Thing Coming The suburbs are really suffering. What’s the short-form diagnosis? Americans are undergoing a fundamental shift in where they want live, work, and play. So this is not just a normal cyclical downturn. We’ve structurally overbuilt retail, office, and housing, and we’ve done so in the wrong places. [...]
February 16th, 2009 at 7:39 pm
[...] How to Save the Suburbs: Solutions from the Man Who Saw the Whole Thing Coming The suburbs are really suffering. What’s the short-form diagnosis? Americans are undergoing a fundamental shift in where they want live, work, and play. So this is not just a normal cyclical downturn. We’ve structurally overbuilt retail, office, and housing, and we’ve done so in the wrong places. So where’s the bottom? Or, rather: Is there a bottom? It’s not a matter of waiting for two or three years to absorb the overproduction. It’s a matter of drastically reducing real estate prices to well below replacement cost. And when you sell something for below replacement cost – that might sound like, well, “Somebody takes a hit but life goes on as usual.” No, life doesn’t go on. For the owners of that retail or housing space, every dollar that they invest will be money they don’t get back. That is another definition of a slum. There’s no incentive to invest in a slum. So here you are. You buy a 4,000 square foot house 40 miles outside town. You think, wow, I got great value. But when the roof begins to go, you just patch it, because if you put a new one on it’ll cost $20,000, you’ll still be at the same selling price. So, why do it? [...]
February 17th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
[...] article on the demise of the suburbs made me think of Paper Towns. The author’s solution to the [...]
February 18th, 2009 at 6:49 am
[...] become more valuable. Even without the up-zone properties values will rise. Recent work done by Christopher Leinberger shows that walkable communities have a per-square-foot price premium of between 40 and 200 percent, [...]
February 18th, 2009 at 2:39 pm
[...] become more valuable. Even without the up-zone properties values will rise. Recent work done by Christopher Leinberger shows that walkable communities have a per-square-foot price premium of between 40 and 200 percent, [...]
February 19th, 2009 at 12:27 am
[...] suburban housing called — ominously — “The Next Slum?”, did a Q&A with the Infrastructurist blog this week that some of you might be interested to read. Here’s a taste of what he said about [...]
March 4th, 2009 at 8:30 am
[...] communities that are connected to a rail network. (Chris Leinberger of the Brookings Institute explains the principle in this interview.) The most successful model to date is the DC area, but many other US cities from Charlotte to [...]
March 11th, 2009 at 4:12 am
Has anyone actually done this and can provide some input?
March 20th, 2009 at 11:09 am
Really interesting. Thanks for the interview!
March 31st, 2009 at 4:47 pm
[...] point that Leinberger made in his Infrastructurist interview is that this dynamic amounts to a death sentence for these communities. Home values plummet and [...]
April 10th, 2009 at 11:06 pm
Could Kotkin possibly be any more of a grump? We tried the dencentralized route: it turned into a 50-way race to the bottom. We’re just getting started, but this country is going to try something else for a while. Of course the pendulum will swing back eventually, but Leinberger’s analysis here makes about a thousand times more sense than Kotkin’s relentless and increasingly half-hearted apologies for the ‘burbs.
April 17th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
[...] a new post of my own, I’m going to point you to one that I really like. In particular, The Infrastructurist is running a terrific interview with Chris Leinberger, a developer and market analyst who has become one of America’s best [...]
April 22nd, 2009 at 5:36 pm
[...] things to do, of course. But the long term trends seem finally to be moving in the right direction. And a long term surplus of housing units in sprawling suburban communities and a long term shortage in walkable urban places might really speed the process along. Financial incentives seem to be a [...]
May 13th, 2009 at 10:46 pm
[...] 14, 2009 · No Comments Here is an interesting article. The author is Christopher Leinberger. Apparently for years this man preached that the new [...]
May 21st, 2009 at 9:03 am
[...] How to Save the Suburbs: Solutions from the Man Who Saw the Whole Thing Coming » INFRASTRUCTURIST The suburbs are really suffering. What’s the short-form diagnosis? Americans are undergoing a fundamental shift in where they want live, work, and play. So this is not just a normal cyclical downturn. We’ve structurally overbuilt retail, office, and housing, and we’ve done so in the wrong places…. [...]
August 6th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
[...] overhang (22 million units by one calculation) of large lot exurban housing. When we talked to him, Leinberger put it this way: “Gen Xers and Millennials want a lifestyle closer to Friends than to Tony [...]
August 30th, 2009 at 1:47 pm
[...] costs so much more per square foot than does housing in DuPont. As Christopher Leinberger put it: It’s not that nobody wants Tony Soprano. About 50 percent of Americans actually do want that [...]
September 16th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
[...] a fascinating article you should read if you are interested in the shift away from the 50+ year phenom of building [...]
January 29th, 2010 at 7:30 pm
[...] How to Save the Suburbs: Solutions from the Man Who Saw the Whole … [...]