Problems with suburbia
-Traffic, long commutes
-Health and lifestyle
-Obesity
-Isolation
Sustainability concerns
-destruction of agricultural land?
-energy used for transportation
New Attitudes
-Urban living as hip
-Urban living as responsible
The shift in cultural values, the attitudes of Americans toward Urban living, is there, but are the economic incentives in place?
Breen, Ann and Dick Rigby. Intown living : a different American dream. Westport, Conn. : Praeger, 2004.
-Portland
"Today downtown is so vibrant it is hard hard to picture a down-and-out central Portland as the 1960s ended. Much like people have trouble visualizing a derelict Baltimore Inner Harbor now that it is revitalized." (Breen, 177)
"Here is how the owner of new construction, the six-story McKenzie Lofts built in 1998, sells its seventy-five units: 'What attracts people and businesses here is an uncommon desire for a more active, urban way of living and doing business away from suburban sprawl, communter traffic and the responsibilites of conventional homeownership. The Pearl District lifestyle is about freedom and creative living -- following a path of your choosing, rather than surrender to a conventional suburban lifestyle.'" (Breen, 182)
"The Portland Business Alliance has a staff member working full-time on housing. The current emphasis of the Alliance is to develop a program that will provide more workforce and middle-income housing in the city." (Breen, 182)
"With its success in stimulating housing, both in the Pearl neighborhood and in downtown, the Portland Business Alliance sees challenges ahead in making the city accessible to what it calls the workforce population...The two areas the business group were planning to study further were the lack of housing it sees available for the workforce population, and critical 24 to 35 age group. The group, the Alliance notes, grew by 45,000 from 1990 to 2000. 'Our ability to capture this population is key to sustained economic growth and livability.' A familiar business-driven refrain.
Subsidies for middle-income housing is obviously a touchy subject. In Portland, you can earn up to $46,000 a year and buy a condominium for as much as $175,000 and recieve a personal ten-year property tax waiver...
Meanwhile, the business alliance sponsors a downtown open house tour of available properties. In 2002, hundreds of people went through nineteen properties, centered in the Pearl [a Portland district] Part of the motivation was to show people that the area was not just for singles and the wealthy. Interest was, shall we say, keen. At Streetcar Lofts on Northwest 12th Avenue, there were thirty people waiting in line to get a view of units ranging from $180,000 to $662,000, with a fifteen-minute wait." (Breen, 188)
-Dallas
"An account by one of the urban residential pioneers attracted to the old department store:
'I wanted to downsize my life,' says Realtor Kitty Dusek, who after a divorce traded in a three-bedroom house in Rockwall for a loft apartment at 1900 Elm. 'Six acres of mowing was too much for me, so now I'm living in what used to be Titche's linen and fine china department, I feel I'm so 'in.'' (Breen, 70)
"A number of subsidies played a role in the conversion [of the downtown Dallas building], including a fifteen year property tax abatement from the city for historic restoration work, a $5 million low-interest loan, a sum from the the downtown tax increment finance district for sidewalk work, and funds from the US department of Housing and Urban Development."
"A 1999 newspaper story offers an account of life in the Kirby: [Henderson, Houston Cronicle Op Ed]
"Dorcy Seigl grew up in North Dallas in a spacious home with a generious yard and a short drive to shopping malls and movie theaters. Now she lives in a 600 square foot apartment with no yard, far from the nearest mall. She wouldn't have it any other way. 'It's a completely unique experience,' she says. 'I can walk to work. I can walk to gym. Last Saturday night, I had about 35 people over and we walked to the Gold Bar in the Titche-Goettinger building...It was a novelty for them the actually walk somewhere in Dallas.'" (Breen, 70)
5 characteristics of urbanity: walkability, density, diversity, hipness, public transit (Breen)
Breen Intro
"Patricia Gay, executive director of the Preservation Resource Center in New Orleans, has been one of the strongest advocates of the need to repopulated cities with middle class residents in particular. Urban policies 'almost never take action to increase the middle class, because of the risk of displacement," even though "displacement occurs when neighborhoods are not stable and when buildings deteriorate to an uninhabited state. Displacement occurs when residents of any income level are forced to move out because of crime," she writes. She notes that public subsidies fuel sprawl, while urban programs create enclaves for the poor. "We have confined our urban revitalization efforts and considerable resources in poverty programs. We have ignored the need for diversity and jobs generated by an urban middle class."
Many of my generation, raised in suburbia, are aware that low density development has its own set of issues, many of which were not anticipated by the proponents of single family detached housing. Commuting headaches, obesity, and isolation are a few that some to mind.[1] We are slowly realizing that suburban developments are simply not sustainable. Even if some Americans are not conscious of this, they feel the effects. Hayden writes, “It is much more common to complain about time or money than to fume about housing and urban space… Americans often say, ‘There aren’t enough hours in the day,’ rather than ‘I’m frantic because the distance between my home and my work place is too great.’”[2] However, many Americans, such as myself, are keenly aware of the benefits of urban living.
[1] Breen, 22.
[2] Hayden, 39.
An Inconvenient Truth - movie by Al Gore
Wikipedia:
The film opened in New York City and Los Angeles on May 24, 2006. On Memorial Day weekend, it grossed an average of $91,447 per theater, the highest of any movie that weekend and a record for a documentary, though it was only playing on four screens at the time.[31]
The film has grossed over $24 million in the U.S. and over $49 million worldwide as of June 3, 2007, making it the fourth-highest-grossing documentary in the U.S. to date (after Fahrenheit 9/11, March of the Penguins and Sicko).[33]
Al Gore has stated, "Tipper and I are devoting 100 percent of the profits from the book and the movie to a new bipartisan educational campaign to further spread the message about global warming."[34]
4 day work week instituted in CA? to reduce commuting
Growth of hybrid car industry from www.hybridcars.com: "Despite tough economic times and a shrinking US vehicle market, demand for hybrids continues to outpace the overall market. We expect the hybrid market to defy the gravity of a recession in 2009.
Hybrid sales—as a percentage of all new car sales—are likely to expand from about 2.5 percent in 2008, to beyond 3 percent in 2009. That will mean almost 500,000 new hybrids hitting American roads in 2009.
No comments:
Post a Comment