[Texgreen] The end of suburbia approaches

[Roger Baker]

'We have these terrible perfect storm conditions. The real estate  
market in America has gone south. We will get a death spiral,' said  
Kunstler.

[Another classic essay by Kunstler here:  <http://www.kunstler.com/ 
mags_lumpenleisure.html> ]



                       
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<http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0%2C%2C1838162%2C00.html>


'Dead zone' threat to US suburban dream

Petrol price rises may cause the housing bubble to burst, triggering  
global recession and the fall of America's Eden, writes Paul Harris  
in New York

Sunday August 6, 2006
The Observer

Levitown is a bus ride beyond the aptly named Hicksville in the outer  
suburbs of New York. Its lawns are neat and its houses boxy. From  
many gardens fly American flags and yellow ribbons: typical displays  
of suburban patriotism.

It was here, almost 60 years ago, that modern American suburbia was  
born. Work began on the town in 1947 and Long Island potato fields  
were soon covered with a radical new form of housing: single,  
similar, purpose-built houses designed for car-owners and aimed at  
families. At the time it was a shock. Social scientists scoffed at  
Levittown. But within decades the suburban experiment had come to  
define US life and what began in Levittown now covers the country in  
urban sprawl, strip malls and a way of life revolving around the car.

Now there are fears it is coming to an end. For the past five years  
America has been gripped by a housing price bubble. It has funded a  
huge expansion of suburbia as Americans poured their wealth into  
their homes. Yet many think that bubble may be about to burst. That  
would send shock waves through the US economy and into the rest of  
the world. Nor is that the only threat. The rising price of oil is  
squeezing suburbanites. It threatens a way of life where pavements  
are rare and everyone moves by car.

'We have invested all our wealth in a living arrangement with no  
future,' said James Howard Kunstler, author of the Long Emergency  
which postulates the end of suburbia. 'In building suburbia we  
embarked on the greatest misallocation of wealth in the history of  
the world.'
Not that it looked that way in Levittown last week. Kids were driven  
to school, fathers and mothers drove off to work, the retired  
sheltered indoors from the heat. Most had an obvious pride in where  
they lived. 'It's quiet and its peaceful. It's great here. I know  
it's the suburbs but it is where you want to live to raise a family,'  
said resident Sherri Smith.

Yet there are real signs America's long and profitable love affair  
with the suburbs may be over. The past five years have seen an  
unprecedented rise in house prices, which in turn has triggered a  
massive building boom. But the pace of house sales in America has now  
declined nine months in a row after setting a record last summer.  
Across the US once booming markets are stagnant or prices slipping.  
One recent survey showed home builders have started offering free add- 
ons, like pools or garages, in order to sell their houses. Home  
builder confidence is at its lowest level in 14 years. Fortune  
magazine recently headlined a piece on the housing bubble with the  
words: 'Welcome to the Dead Zone'.

It is a far cry from the mania of the past five years when Americans  
queued up - sometimes literally - to buy homes in new developments,  
often doubling their investment in 12 months. Not surprisingly the  
construction industry responded by a binge of development that saw 75  
per cent of new building taking place in the suburbs. That has left  
the economy deeply reliant on housing. Between 2001 and 2005 housing  
created 43 per cent of all new jobs in America. If the bubble bursts,  
the economy could plunge into recession. So tied up is the average  
American that a 20 per cent drop in prices is seen as equivalent in  
effect to a 40 per cent drop in the stock market.

Though a price collapse would be devastating, trapping homeowners in  
negative equity and wiping out savings, the fallout cannot be  
underestimated. Soaring oil prices have threatened suburbia as petrol  
has risen above $3 a gallon. At the same time heating costs have  
risen and the so-called McMansions of the 1990s are expensive to keep  
warm.

'We have these terrible perfect storm conditions. The real estate  
market in America has gone south. We will get a death spiral,' said  
Kunstler.

Those warning of a coming crisis believe suburbia's economic collapse  
would force a rethink of the fundamentals of the American way of  
life. The cultural and political force of suburbia is vast. It is  
where most Americans live. From The Graduate to American Beauty to  
Desperate Housewives, the suburbs pervade culture. Their bonhomie and  
good living have been celebrated in iconic TV shows such as Father  
Knows Best. Their dark side has also been explored in everything from  
David Lynch's surreal films to The Simpsons. 'The great American  
story has ultimately been told in the suburbs,' said Professor Robert  
Thompson of Syracuse University.

Thompson has charted how popular portrayals of the suburbs have  
changed. In the 1950s it was a celebration of their Edenic qualities  
as a place to raise a family. By the 1980s cynicism had set in. But  
most Americans have still chosen to live there, which leads some to  
believe predictions of a crisis are overblown.

Professor Robert Bruegmann of the University of Illinois in Chicago  
sees the suburban model as the future. In his book, Sprawl, Bruegmann  
launched a passionate defence of modern urban development that, he  
argues, has been a great democratic leveller: allowing ordinary  
working families access to a standard of living previously only  
available to the wealthy. And the idea of suburbia as a homogeneous,  
mainly white, cultural desert is a myth. 'They have always been more  
diverse and interesting than people ever thought,' he said.

Suburbia is home to 38 per cent of black Americans, 58 per cent of  
Asian Americans and more than half of Hispanics. It is also where  
most new immigrants choose to live. Bruegmann says the model has been  
closely copied in Europe and thus: 'High oil prices have no impact on  
suburbs. We have already had that experiment. It is called Europe.'

He believes antipathy towards the suburbs lies in the snobbishness of  
elite culture - Victorian styles were ridiculed right up until the  
1950s. Now the first suburban houses in Levittown are sought after as  
historical monuments. Bruegmann thinks tastes will change as suburban  
living becomes ingrained in the American psyche. 'That Wal-Mart store  
that everyone now reviles will be seen as quaint. People will say  
what wonderful construction methods we had back then,' he said. There  
may be some truth in that. When Levittown was first built, the houses  
were derided by architectural critics. Now the Smithsonian  
Institution in Washington wants to buy one.