Are the American suburbs poised for another boom?

[the urban politician]

I'd like to start by pointing out that a suburban boom and a center city boom need not be mutually exclusive.

But look at the conditions:

1. The US Economy has steadily recovered from the recession, job growth has continued and unemployment continues to decline & stabilize throughout the US.

2. Gas prices have been down lately, lower than they have been in years.

3. Housing prices have steadily been rising.

4. The inventory of new homes has sharply declined, with relatively little new inventory.

5. Recent generations tend to prefer urban environments, but that's not everybody. There are still millions upon millions who are gonna have kids and want to buy a home.

The burbs are gonna boom. Like it, hate it, but the McMansion is coming back, baby! There are going to be huge new housing tracts, new subdivisions, and new power centers to serve them.

Thoughts?

[Larry King]

To each their own.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

Thoughts?

i am thoroughly incapable of understanding or relating to the tastes and preferences of a shockingly large segment of the american populace.

but as larry said, to each their own.

or, less elegantly, "see ya, wouldn't wanna be ya".

[pdxtex]

my prediction is suburbs will continue to grow nationally but i think we're going to see a kind of urbanism light becoming more popular, more row houses and condos, planned mainstreet-ish type developments. i think the heady days of mowing down a cornfield to build 3000 sq. ft. crapboxes is hopefully over. considering general motor and ford have three of the best rated hatchbacks on the market right now (and they are selling like hotcakes), this would indicate to me consumer tastes are leaning towards more frugal pursuits. americans aren't quite ready to give up their automobiles, and certainly city centers are filling up with young people, but new construction in the city is still geared towards small households that arent kid friendly. if you want to raise more then one child its probably not going to be downtown in a glass box.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by pdxtex

if you want to raise more then one child its probably not going to be downtown in a glass box.

true, but there is much, MUCH, MUCH more to "the city" than just glass boxes in downtown. chicago has like maybe 10 sq. miles of "downtown" (and that's being generous) and roughly 200 sq. miles of regular old low-rise city neighborhoods. many of those neighborhoods are still way too crimey for family raising, and hence why they're still emptying out, but there is still an entire universe of choice between just a glass box downtown or a crapbox on some bulldozed cornfield out in bumblefuck. many city neighborhoods and inner ring burbs are still extremely viable choices.

[brian_b]

Originally Posted by pdxtex

If you want to raise more then one child its probably not going to be downtown in a glass box.

We've got two in our downtown glass box. The neighbors at the other end of the hall have two (in high school!) in theirs. Our neighbors below us have 3! The majority of parents in our building do only have one, but two doors down is a couple that will have their second in a few months and they just moved in; not moving out.

[pdxtex]

Originally Posted by brian_b

We've got two in our downtown glass box. The neighbors at the other end of the hall have two (in high school!) in theirs. Our neighbors below us have 3! The majority of parents in our building do only have one, but two doors down is a couple that will have their second in a few months and they just moved in; not moving out.

^^^im fully on board with city kids and its cool you guys can pull it off but chicago and new york are probably some of the exceptions. its probably frustrating for urbanist famililes who would love to buy a condo in a big tower but there choices are either entry level 1 bedrooms or 3 bedroom penthouses. id love a fairly market priced two bed in downtown portland but they dont exist. most new construction in those kind of buildings are 800-ish square ft 1 bedrooms. thats alot of space and could easily accomodate a two bedroom layout but instead you get the mcmansion sized living area in the city! mhays tell your builder buddies to build more two bed rooms and make the living rooms smaller! thanks..

[mhays]

Originally Posted by pdxtex

mhays tell your builder buddies to build more two bed rooms and make the living rooms smaller! thanks..

That can get expensive quickly. Those 800 sf units are usually one or two rooms wide. With two bedrooms, you need three rooms to have window frontage. That's a lot of exterior for one unit, and the building needs to be very shallow from hallway to window. That's lessened only somewhat if it's a corner unit.

Basically the developer would have to design a skinnier building, or one with more modulation. That means giving up square footage, as well as paying through the nose for additional exterior cladding. So units will cost a lot per square foot.

[pdxtex]

^^^totally agree with most of this and obviously affordability and housing diversity is going to be market specific. im sure the housing options in chicago are awesome and diverse. out west things are a bit different. portland specifically is having huge growth pains at the moment and jumped the affordability shark in lots of neighborhoods. the rental market is tight/expensive (though apt. construction is picking up) and most inner ring neighborhoods have filled up. multifamily construction is flat but demand is high, and your only other option is paying 350k plus for a small house or move to the burbs which prerecession saw tons of transit oriented townhouses and condos. and actually thinking about this, you probably cant touch a nice SF home in inner SE for anything less than 400k. 6-7 miles from city center things loosen up a bit and an ok house can be had for 280ish. Which I guess isnt bad but this the edge of the frontier for the moment. Things are still a bith meth-y out in felony flats but thats changing by the day also. I think the urban growth boundary worked too well because we've effectively run out of room in the city and prices reflect this, or at least population increase has not been able to keep up with housing supply......

[the urban politician]

I do agree that the latest iteration of the suburban boom will have a different look and feel to it than decades past, specifically the wastefulness of the 90's.

But whoa Nelly, I see a suburban boom a'coming..

[Dr Nevergold]

North American gas prices are temporarily lower than they've been in years, particularly because fracking has unleashed new production in America, combined with increased tar sands production in Canada. The fact that North America can get more oil within the continent and takes pressure off reserves elsewhere has also lowered prices worldwide.

The same basic trajectory is still true: we are consistently seeking and extracting harder to get, less sweet crude from deeper, harder to get areas. Once the fracking oil boom is over, and once the tar sands become over-developed, we will be in the same situation that has happened before with unstable oil production and prices that skyrocket.

We have the choice to develop toward renewables or to use up this short term boost in production.

How will suburbs boom? I have no doubt that America will predominantly grow in a suburban fashion for years to come thanks to this new temporary oil production boost. Americans still don't yearn for urban living in high enough numbers to make a significant difference in average lifestyle.

So yea, suburbs are here to stay and grow overwhelmingly faster than our cities.

[Centropolis]

i think its worth revisiting the anomalous/absurd growth numbers in ring counties of slow growth metro areas. aint gonna happen like that again.

[the urban politician]

^ It appears that a few are attempting to turn this discussion (no surprise, I guess) into the typical:

"Look at me, I'm raising my family in the city and so can you!" kind of thread, which is not what I'm trying to discuss.

Yes, you can raise your family in the city. More people are doing so. Cities are becoming more livable with an increased variety of housing options. That's something most of us on SSP agree on, since this is a forum dedicated to urbanism.

But the overall picture is that a ton of people are going to remain in the burbs, and I'm wishing to discuss my prediction that the conditions are ripe for America's next great suburban boom.

[Centropolis]

in places with high % of regional growth, yes. slow growth midwestern regions with under 3 million people are not going to transform rural counties with 40,000 people into suburban counties of 400,000 people 2 counties over from the core city (again). the 1990s arent returning. there will not be another big suburban county 75 miles from downtown, at least not st. louis. the 1990s style suburban growth machine has blown a fuse.

i think you are underestimating how massive suburbanization has been in some cities.

[mhays]

In some regions, the wide new roads of past decades are now jammed, and we're not building a lot of new ones. Moving outward is getting harder and harder. In regions that still build a lot of roads that's different.

Meanwhile jobs aren't moving outward as much, though that's complicated. A lot of urban cores are seeing office booms, or at least are seeing more construction as a percentage of their region than before. Industrial jobs are moving outward in probably most cities, especially as the booming ones have expensive and hard-to-get land in the middle.

Most cities are broadly seen as more desirable than they used to be. Some of the push should diminish from that.

[dave8721]

I have seen lots starting to get rezoned and bought up for suburban tract housing in the far reaches of SW Miami-Dade again (first time in about 5 years). I have no idea how anyone living out there could ever actually get anywhere with the traffic growth but with the regions high population growth, people have to live somewhere and father out is generally all many people can afford these days. The choices are often pay $600k (and up) for a small inner ring suburb/city home or pay $250k for a large home in the far outer suburbs.

[Crawford]

A boom, no. But they will continue to grow.

Anyone who thinks the era of sprawl is over needs to visit the suburban fringe. The growth machine is starting up again.

Where my brother lives in exurban Detroit thousands of 400k-500k homes are blanketing the former farm fields, 40-50 miles from downtown Detroit, and they're being sold out before construction even begins.

A big driving force, IMO, is the immigrant community. Even in not exactly super-diverse Michigan, half the buyers in his development are Asian professionals. Someone coming from India or China usually wants a big, new suburban house, and that's what's probably feeding some of the boom. They commute to job centers around Ann Arbor or in older suburbs of Detroit (he is in Novi-South Lyon area, for those that know Michigan).

[memph]

Originally Posted by Crawford

A boom, no. But they will continue to grow.

Anyone who thinks the era of sprawl is over needs to visit the suburban fringe. The growth machine is starting up again.

Where my brother lives in exurban Detroit thousands of 400k-500k homes are blanketing the former farm fields, 40-50 miles from downtown Detroit, and they're being sold out before construction even begins.

A big driving force, IMO, is the immigrant community. Even in not exactly super-diverse Michigan, half the buyers in his development are Asian professionals. Someone coming from India or China usually wants a big, new suburban house, and that's what's probably feeding some of the boom. They commute to job centers around Ann Arbor or in older suburbs of Detroit (he is in Novi-South Lyon area, for those that know Michigan).

I do think the long term trend is a continued reduction of growth in the suburbs though.

Even Detroit, which is one of the metro areas with the biggest city-suburb dichotomy in terms of growth (along with Indianapolis, Jacksonville and Phoenix), the suburbs do seem to be growing slower generally speaking.

Comparing population growth in the 00s to 2010-2013 (estimates), the fastest growing suburb in the 00s seems to have been Macomb Charter Township, where growth rates have fallen to half of what they were in the 00s.

Second fastest I believe was Canton Township, it's now losing population (though just a little).

Novi and Lyon Twp is growing a bit faster, but it doesn't seem to be enough to offset the reduction in growth in outer Oakland and outer Wayne (even if you include adjacent parts of Washtenaw and Monroe).

Yearly population growth rate 00s --> yearly growth rate 2010-2013
Novi+Lyon+South Lyon: 1263 --> 1648
Macomb Township: 2910 --> 1346
Shelby Township: 865 --> 733
Washington Township: 606 --> 279
Chesterfield+New Baltimore: 1066 --> 264
Brownstown: 764 --> -17
Berlin+Huron: 453 --> -112 (i.e. growth is not spilling over to here from Brownstown)
Northville Township: 743 --> 78
Orion Township: 193 --> 322
Plymouth Township: -36 --> -151
Canton: 1381 --> -306
Superior+Salem: 239 --> 171 (i.e. growth is not spilling over to here from Canton/Plymouth/Northville - that seems to be spilling over to Novi-South Lyon)

Top 5 fastest growing outer suburbs in the 00s (Macomb Twp, Canton, Shelby, Novi, Brownstown)
6704 --> 2668

Top 5 fastest growing outer suburbs from 2010-2013 (Novi, Lyon Twp, Macomb Twp, Shelby Twp, Rochester Hills)
5128 --> 4282

BTW even if there's still demand for suburbs in the future, there will only be growth if there's more demand than supply, or if the supply is not of the sort being demanded (i.e. old and dated suburbs, but you have at most slow growth on the periphery when old and dated suburbs are being abandoned).

[pdxtex]

Originally Posted by Crawford

A boom, no. But they will continue to grow.

Anyone who thinks the era of sprawl is over needs to visit the suburban fringe. The growth machine is starting up again.

Where my brother lives in exurban Detroit thousands of 400k-500k homes are blanketing the former farm fields, 40-50 miles from downtown Detroit, and they're being sold out before construction even begins.

A big driving force, IMO, is the immigrant community. Even in not exactly super-diverse Michigan, half the buyers in his development are Asian professionals. Someone coming from India or China usually wants a big, new suburban house, and that's what's probably feeding some of the boom. They commute to job centers around Ann Arbor or in older suburbs of Detroit (he is in Novi-South Lyon area, for those that know Michigan).

i can vouch for this. i have indian in-laws and their extended family all live in canton and they work engineer jobs in dearborn or wayne. everybody lives in pristine mcmansions with perfect landscaping and white carpets. my girlfriend is japanese and her family is like that too. big houses, luxury cars. i think many immigrant families (asians especially) equate newness and automobiles with their interpretation of american success....by contrast, my old fogey white parents live in an old fogey house with a dirty dog and muddy yard and a 30 year old rusty SAAB 900 on the outskirts of ann arbor...

[mhays]

Vancouver's zoning also calls for slender towers if I recall. I don't know their stair rules. Of course Vancouver is astronomically expensive and, while that's partially about offshore money, the expense of building towers has to play a part.

Condo financing will follow condo prices. When prices are high enough someone will loan money. And there's a huge difference between a developer with a lot of equity that can finance the rest without presales, vs. someone who needs presales to get financing....the latter will have to wait until buyers (and they themselves) trust presales to mean something. The former have a big advantage in that they can build at today's prices but sell at tomorrow's prices.