Stranded in Suburbia
May 20th, 2008 at 7:26 am by Susie
It was maybe 25 years ago when I read a piece by a local real-estate expert saying that the city and the close-in suburbs were going to be where the well-off would cluster, and that the poorest people would live in the farthest suburbs - because of the cost of oil.
According to Krugman, that time is here:
Greater Atlanta has roughly the same population as Greater Berlin — but Berlin is a city of trains, buses and bikes, while Atlanta is a city of cars, cars and cars.
And in the face of rising oil prices, which have left many Americans stranded in suburbia — utterly dependent on their cars, yet having a hard time affording gas — it’s starting to look as if Berlin had the better idea.
Changing the geography of American metropolitan areas will be hard. For one thing, houses last a lot longer than cars. Long after today’s S.U.V.’s have become antique collectors’ items, millions of people will still be living in subdivisions built when gas was $1.50 or less a gallon.
Infrastructure is another problem. Public transit, in particular, faces a chicken-and-egg problem: it’s hard to justify transit systems unless there’s sufficient population density, yet it’s hard to persuade people to live in denser neighborhoods unless they come with the advantage of transit access.
And there are, as always in America, the issues of race and class. Despite the gentrification that has taken place in some inner cities, and the plunge in national crime rates to levels not seen in decades, it will be hard to shake the longstanding American association of higher-density living with poverty and personal danger.
Still, if we’re heading for a prolonged era of scarce, expensive oil, Americans will face increasingly strong incentives to start living like Europeans — maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of our lives.
I am very grateful to live now in a place with a yard, where I can grow vegetables. I can walk to the post office, two drugstores, three churches, several beauty salons, a florist, two well-stocked grocers (one with a butcher counter), a dozen neighborhood bars and restaurants, an auto repair shop and a convenience store. And about a mile away, there’s a much bigger commercial strip. This is one of the things I love about the city, this ability to live efficiently, within a compact area.
Everything in the suburbs requires a car, and we all know how that story turns out.
I keep watching for the news buzz about motorized bicycles. Seriously, this is a golden business opportunity in the U.S. - the company that makes them cool to own while remaining functional and gas efficient is going to find a much larger market than they’re accustomed to.
Paul Krugman - has yet to be right but is revered by the left because he is a world class hater to all things American. You know your typical smug, elitist, NY/ West Coast country-hater. Hey how come you guys did not pick him to be your Prez nominee? He certainly fits your criteria!
Wendy, do you have any relevant point to make?
What is it in Krugman’s piece that you disagree with?
And where do you live?
Why are you so bitter?
Here’s a site that calculates how walkable your neighborhood is.
It’s a bit flawed in its methodology, but interesting nonetheless.
You just type in your address, and it does the rest:
http://www.walkscore.com/
It gives a walk score on a scale of 0 to 100.
Mine is 71 (it should probably be a little higher), and my lifetime addresses have ranged from 68 to 100, with the exception of a sorry sojourn in Austin TX (37).
Susie, I’m guessing that your current score is about 75 to 85, and that your previous one was less than 50.
Wendy, please tell us how you scored.
My new place is a 54, my old one was a 65. But the map misses a lot of stuff in my new neighborhood.
Oh, the old one was that cool area elsewhere in town, right?
I forgot that, and was thinking of The Hellmouth when I said the old one.
The walk score program makes mistakes in both directions, often miscategorizing the nature of a business. F’rinstance, it thinks that Restoration Hardware is an actual hardware store.