A Word from Eric Miller for May, 2005

Future of the Urb

My apologies to the Temptations.

Residents of Washington, DC, know all too well that color isn't so much the issue these days; it's the soaring price of real estate. Today the ability to own a home in America's most popular urbs is further from reach.

Looking at the prices rise in DC only tells a part of one story about the movement of people in, out of, to, and from our cities.

Looking from Alamo Square or Times Square, the problem of decaying center cities may appear to be behind us. Looking into the not-too-distant future, the urban story is not one consisting entirely of rejuvenation.

Across the country, both center cities and exurbs are booming. Recent census reports showed the alarming trends--fully a third of all Americans are now living in exurbia.

If you think this is a continuation of the tale of "white flight" from the 60s and 70s, your view is far too simplistic. Here's what's appears to be happening in a nutshell.

• New immigrants continue to move to central cities. Established minorities are beginning to flee for the suburbs and exurbs.
• People are segregating in cities according to social status. The coastal cities are the new suburbs. The richest live in New York and San Francisco, the poorest in Cleveland--suburbs and city.
• Educated knowledge workers continue to move to central cities, particularly the central cities of coastal knowledge and technology centers.
• Managerial types, lawyers, accountants, and other workers unable to afford the prices in central cities are moving to suburbs and exurbs.
• Rising costs are causing many to move to a different region entirely, some looking for more affordable cities and some looking for less expensive suburban-type regions.

What this adds up to is economic segregation, greater divisions along political and cultural lines and a whole lot of commuting.

In fact, the U.S. Census Bureau recently reported that Americans spend more than 100 hours commuting to work each year. Americans now spend more time commuting than the two weeks typically spent on vacation. For the nation as a whole, the average daily commute to work lasted about 24.3 minutes in 2003.

A lot of the places known for having good public transit are those where we spend the most time commuting. They're also the largest economic centers and the places with the soaring real estate prices--the places with the most urb and exurb.

In a ranking of large cities, New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles had among the nation's highest average commute times. New York and Baltimore lay claim to having the highest percentage of people with "extreme" commutes; 5.6 percent of their commuters spent 90 or more minutes getting to work.

Why? People live far off in a bigger house for less money, but still work in cities (adding to traffic and pollution which city residents must pay for) .

While the long commutes may be confined for the most part to the Northeast Coast cities, Boston, New York, and Washington don't have a lock on trends. In fact the most auto-centric city (actually, I suspect that distinction has been stolen by Phoenix), Los Angeles, lost residents at a rate of 9,621 per month from July, 2003, to July, 2004.

Why? Soaring housing prices and traffic congestion.

Newspaper accounts reported the trend is a continuing shrinking of the middle class in Los Angeles and a worsening of the disparity in income between new arrivals and the wealthier, long-term residents whose incomes likely will grow.

Do we want a center?

I suspect for many the answer is yes. Many of the more popular suburban and exurban destinations are so because they have a convenient transportation link (most likely rail) to the center.

The cities surrounding Washington DC, including Bethesda in Montgomery County and University Park in Prince Georges, are particularly popular for exurbians, as real estate practitioners note that residents are attracted by their proximity to Washington and to Metro, the city's public transportation system.

"Housing costs" seems to be a common, perhaps the most common, reason for choosing to leave the central city. I know from interviews I've done in Pittsburgh that many of those who have moved to Pittsburgh have done so because they can live within a stone's throw of downtown and still maintain a comfortable size home. (It is my inclination that Pittsburgh is not experiencing the same trends as Los Angeles and Boston and may prove to be one of the places those leaving major high-cost coastal cities are coming to).

Even the words "exurbs" and "suburbs" indicate they surround an urb. The urb is the place we identify with and likely the place we travel to daily, whether inside the loop or from the far reaches of the longest commute.

We want to live in the urb, but we can't afford it, so we live near it or move to a more affordable but less amenable urb.

Why do we need a center?

If you're a business, a center can serve the largest segment of the population. Just take any distribution system, including that of an airline or Wal-Mart, and you'll see those are based on centers ("hubs"), although these are not centers which are creative.

A creative center is a place where the accountants and the artists can mingle. A place where the immigrants and Daughters of the American Revolution can belong to the same local history club. It's a place where the new ideas meet the old money. Centers grow the economy, advance the technology as well a enrich the culture, and strengthen the social fabric.

When certain segments of all the fabric that make up a society or an economy flee to the suburbs or exurbs, there can be little question that the entire quilt is weakened.

What can be done?

If the primary reason for moving to the edges of the edges of the city are housing prices, then certainly affordable housing must be part of the key. Today cities are growing to contain the wealthy and the impoverished in the center and the middle class in the suburbs and exurbs. The same demarcations can increasingly be made by age group. The young and single, childless couples and old in the center and the middle-aged in the suburbs and exurbs.

In order to provide more affordable housing, our cities must maximize the use of space, become denser and do a better job of being comprised of self-sufficient mixed-use neighborhoods.

The old rings of suburbs must be rebuilt to resemble cities as well. Fixed transportation links to them must be improved.

A variety of housing types must be provided in the cities. Substandard housing must be rebuilt and vacant land eliminated. There can be no smaller goal than to have every inch of urban land occupied by a home, business, or office--or all three.

The continued flight to the suburbs and exurbs are indeed the result of lopsided federal transportation spending and the subsidization of highways. It's also the result of cities themselves not providing what housing consumers want: a decent house at an affordable price. I can see it all around me here in Pittsburgh: when you provide it, they come. Eric Miller is editor of The New Colonist.

Go to A Word from Richard Risemberg

Return to Top