Mortgage crisis is creating new 'slumburbs'

Carol Lloyd, Mortgage crisis is creating new ‘slumburbs,’ March 16, 2008, S.F. Chron., at C-1.

This past Sunday, an article appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle discussing the effect of the mortgage crisis on suburban developments and how it could lead to an increase in the building of walkable urban developments.

According to the article (citing Richard Florida’s new book, “Who’s Your City”), “super cities” like San Francisco are attracting a disproportionate number of educated, creative workers. These people keep the housing prices relatively high within the urban core despite the state of the US economy at large. Outside that core, however, suburbs are experiencing “unprecedented decline”:

“Stockton, with nearly 5 percent of all its households at some stage of foreclosure, got the honor of ringing up the second-highest foreclosure rate nationwide, after Cape Coral-Fort Myers, Fla.”

Carol Lloyd, the article's author, goes on to identify other areas that ranked high on that foreclosure list:

“Other sprawling California regions dominated the list: Modesto at No.3, Merced at No.4, Riverside-San Bernardino at No.5, Bakersfield at No.7, Vallejo-Fairfield at No.8 and Sacramento at No.9.”

These foreclosures draw attention to the importance of urban living, according to Christopher Leinberger of the Brookings Institute in Washington. Leinberger contends that edge suburbs are already turning into slums, and that neighborhoods populated with isolated, car-dependent single-families are not sustainable because:

(1) New suburbs tend to be far from public transport, social services and commerce;

(2) As compared to redeveloping older, sturdy urban buildings, it is difficult to create multifamily housing out of existing production-built suburban housing; and

(3) The suburbs, which depend on developers’ fees and property taxes for community needs, are financially vulnerable.

The article points out parenthetically that Leinberger’s suburbs do not include “older inner suburbs like Berkeley or Palo Alto that have walkable urban neighborhoods and public transit.”

Lloyd finishes on a positive note, citing to John Norquist, president of the Congress for the New Urbanism, for the opinion that walkable neighborhoods are being built well and that they are a desirable thing. And she cites again to Leinberger, who believes that building walkable urban developments offers no guarantee of a city’s success but is an essential first step.

The experts, Lloyd says, believe this could be an evolution of the American dream toward a “far healthier, more ecological vision.”