Suburbs spread to deal with unique historical circumstances present right after WWII in the US. The flaw was in thinking those conditions would last indefinitely into the future. In short, the typical American suburb is a maladaptation.
Sounds like "they are failing because they stopped fulfilling their original implicit role of enforcing informal segregation when formal one was abolished, and without that, there is no point".
Because they are not financially sustainable and do not create wealth. They squander wealth from productive cities to build endless roads, gas lines, electrical lines, and all other kinds of infrastructure that increases in cost per distance it needs to travel through. Suburbs use future revenue coming out of new development to cover liabilities of the past (as roads ought be resurfeced every 20 or so years). It's a pyramid scheme.
It's not true, because it ignores the interplay between city and suburb and judges only by "productivity." Cities, for instance, export their need for parks and open space to the suburbs, making them less "productive." It's also not reasonable to assume that streets and services are a fixed rate per meter -- city infrastructure is a multiple of suburban costs.
The truth is... complicated. It takes a mix of urban and suburban to create a successful city.
Suburban areas do not have "parks" and "open space". Not sure what you mean. What they have is invasive turf grass, that destroys any kind of local fauna, in setbacks and miles of asphalt.
Cities exporting their greenery needs to suburbs is non-sensical, as lack of density in a suburban area makes any kind of access to a public park, even if it exists, a non-starter. Unless you reference golf clubs as green space, or sth. World's greatest parks are in deeply urban and dense areas - Central park in NYC, Jardin du Luxembourg in Paris. Oslo in Norway is 68% green space. Singapore is widely known as "garden city". It is demonstrably false to claim suburban areas are "greener" and that cities somehow export this need for an ammenity.
And no, it does not take suburban development for a successful city. The less of suburban development, the more destined for success a city is. I really hope you are not equivocating rural towns with suburban development. Rural towns in 1950s America used to have a train line, had town centres with dense development and streetcars were found in most of them. Suburban development is devoid of any kind of community, 3rd space building. The closest thing to dense centre is a stripmall. Many of which are detoriating in U.S. and have vacant units go unfilled for years.
> In yet another case study, Vice President of San Miguel’s Board of Directors, Anthony Kalvans did some digging. He worked to construct a value per acre calculation for the township. Kalvans found that Jazzytown, a denser area, was producing almost $3.8 million per acre across five acres, while the suburban area produces less than 5% of that and takes up nearly 70 acres. Both places pay the same for water, but the wealthier suburbs are absorbing millions of dollars in benefits that never come back to the poor areas. If the wealthy want to live expensively, that’s fine, but they should never make us pick up their bill.
Perhaps I missed it in the article, but by what objective measure are suburbs as a whole failing? The article just seems to be recounting a collection of horror stories.
I’ve got family all over the country. From what I’ve seen, older inner ring blue collar suburbs that have experienced their own white flight have declined. However, the ones with high quality schools have thrived and it’s not uncommon to find situations where two identical houses are 50% apart in asking price because one is in the good school district and the other is in the bad district.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 42.1 ms ] threadhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IsMeKl-Sv0
The truth is... complicated. It takes a mix of urban and suburban to create a successful city.
Cities exporting their greenery needs to suburbs is non-sensical, as lack of density in a suburban area makes any kind of access to a public park, even if it exists, a non-starter. Unless you reference golf clubs as green space, or sth. World's greatest parks are in deeply urban and dense areas - Central park in NYC, Jardin du Luxembourg in Paris. Oslo in Norway is 68% green space. Singapore is widely known as "garden city". It is demonstrably false to claim suburban areas are "greener" and that cities somehow export this need for an ammenity.
And no, it does not take suburban development for a successful city. The less of suburban development, the more destined for success a city is. I really hope you are not equivocating rural towns with suburban development. Rural towns in 1950s America used to have a train line, had town centres with dense development and streetcars were found in most of them. Suburban development is devoid of any kind of community, 3rd space building. The closest thing to dense centre is a stripmall. Many of which are detoriating in U.S. and have vacant units go unfilled for years.
Source: https://medium.com/candide-group/suburbs-the-great-american-...
I’ve got family all over the country. From what I’ve seen, older inner ring blue collar suburbs that have experienced their own white flight have declined. However, the ones with high quality schools have thrived and it’s not uncommon to find situations where two identical houses are 50% apart in asking price because one is in the good school district and the other is in the bad district.