Read Online The End of the Suburbs: Where the American Dream Is Moving by Leigh Gallagher - Free Book Online Page A
Book: The End of the Suburbs: Where the American Dream Is Moving by Leigh Gallagher
Read Free Book Online
Authors: Leigh Gallagher
Ads: Link
new community. Less than one year later, all seventeen Barcelona homes had sold out.
But what gets built in Vegas might very well stay in Vegas. Elsewhere in the country, the market, consumer demand, demographics, and consumer preferences are all pointing in a different direction. “The notion that we’re all going to be living in cities is wrong,” says Diana Lind, editor of
Next City
. “But the idea that we’ll have suburbs that have a different kind of lifestyle than we have right now is just inevitable.” Even Toll Brothers’ CEO, Douglas Yearley, says there will be a broader mix of choices available to meet the demands of an increasingly diverse population. The urbanist and architect Peter Calthorpe likens the discussion to the debate over gay marriage. “We’re not saying that the suburbs are wrong or should go away,” he says. “Just like we’re not asking to stop heterosexual marriage just because we want gay marriage. We just want to have a choice.” There will still be exurbs for people who like to live that way and can afford to do so. But the changes afoot mean that there will be many more options.
• • •
N one of this will happen overnight. Right now it’s a challenge to build anything when the economy is stalled and incomes are stagnant. But like most big changes, the reconstitution of our landscape will happen a little bit at a time. “It doesn’t mean that all of a sudden there will be these huge wagon trains moving in and deserts in the cul-de-sacs,” says the Urban Land Institute’s John McIlwain. It’s a shift that’s just beginning, he and others point out, and we won’t know until we look back, census by census, to see how it played out.
If the changes suggested in this book sound extreme, that’s because they are. But consider other transformations that have happened over the course of our nation’s history. In 1910, no one could have looked forward and imagined cities turning into the slums they did in the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s, just as in today’s city-as-Disneyland era, we can’t now imagine them that way, either. Or imagine the 1950s, when most women didn’t work; now, that’s hard to fathom. Or similary, imagine the ’80s and ’90s, when smoking was considered cool. That same kind of reversal can happen again when it comes to how and where we choose to live. The suburbs as we know them had an exceptionally long run, remaining basically unchanged for more than half a century. “We’re turning what happened in cities fifty and sixty years ago on its head,” says Sam Sherman, the urban developer in Philadelphia. “Don’t ever say it can’t happen. It happened before.”
Besides, it’s when trends are just beginning that they’re the hardest to spot. “When a strong trend is in its early stage, it doesn’t look strong,” says the University of Virginia’s William Lucy. The 1950 census, he points out, did not contain clear evidence proclaiming what would happen during the next half century. And yet a slightly visible trend soon became a wave, which became a movement, which became a contagion, which became our suburban-majority country. “In ten years,” says housing economist Jonathan Smoke, “we’ll know what happened.”
Whatever things look like in ten years—or twenty, or fifty, or more—there’s one thing everyone agrees on: there will be more options. The government in the past created one American Dream at the expense of almost all others: the dream of a house, a lawn, a picket fence, two or more children, and a car. But there is no single American Dream anymore; there are multiple American Dreams, and multiple American Dreamers. The good news is that the entrepreneurs, academics, planners, home builders, and thinkers who plan and build the places we live in are hard at work trying to find space for all of them.
©Bill Westheimer, courtesy Llewellyn Park Historical Society
Built in the mid-1850s, the communities of
But what gets built in Vegas might very well stay in Vegas. Elsewhere in the country, the market, consumer demand, demographics, and consumer preferences are all pointing in a different direction. “The notion that we’re all going to be living in cities is wrong,” says Diana Lind, editor of
Next City
. “But the idea that we’ll have suburbs that have a different kind of lifestyle than we have right now is just inevitable.” Even Toll Brothers’ CEO, Douglas Yearley, says there will be a broader mix of choices available to meet the demands of an increasingly diverse population. The urbanist and architect Peter Calthorpe likens the discussion to the debate over gay marriage. “We’re not saying that the suburbs are wrong or should go away,” he says. “Just like we’re not asking to stop heterosexual marriage just because we want gay marriage. We just want to have a choice.” There will still be exurbs for people who like to live that way and can afford to do so. But the changes afoot mean that there will be many more options.
• • •
N one of this will happen overnight. Right now it’s a challenge to build anything when the economy is stalled and incomes are stagnant. But like most big changes, the reconstitution of our landscape will happen a little bit at a time. “It doesn’t mean that all of a sudden there will be these huge wagon trains moving in and deserts in the cul-de-sacs,” says the Urban Land Institute’s John McIlwain. It’s a shift that’s just beginning, he and others point out, and we won’t know until we look back, census by census, to see how it played out.
If the changes suggested in this book sound extreme, that’s because they are. But consider other transformations that have happened over the course of our nation’s history. In 1910, no one could have looked forward and imagined cities turning into the slums they did in the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s, just as in today’s city-as-Disneyland era, we can’t now imagine them that way, either. Or imagine the 1950s, when most women didn’t work; now, that’s hard to fathom. Or similary, imagine the ’80s and ’90s, when smoking was considered cool. That same kind of reversal can happen again when it comes to how and where we choose to live. The suburbs as we know them had an exceptionally long run, remaining basically unchanged for more than half a century. “We’re turning what happened in cities fifty and sixty years ago on its head,” says Sam Sherman, the urban developer in Philadelphia. “Don’t ever say it can’t happen. It happened before.”
Besides, it’s when trends are just beginning that they’re the hardest to spot. “When a strong trend is in its early stage, it doesn’t look strong,” says the University of Virginia’s William Lucy. The 1950 census, he points out, did not contain clear evidence proclaiming what would happen during the next half century. And yet a slightly visible trend soon became a wave, which became a movement, which became a contagion, which became our suburban-majority country. “In ten years,” says housing economist Jonathan Smoke, “we’ll know what happened.”
Whatever things look like in ten years—or twenty, or fifty, or more—there’s one thing everyone agrees on: there will be more options. The government in the past created one American Dream at the expense of almost all others: the dream of a house, a lawn, a picket fence, two or more children, and a car. But there is no single American Dream anymore; there are multiple American Dreams, and multiple American Dreamers. The good news is that the entrepreneurs, academics, planners, home builders, and thinkers who plan and build the places we live in are hard at work trying to find space for all of them.
©Bill Westheimer, courtesy Llewellyn Park Historical Society
Built in the mid-1850s, the communities of
Similar Books
