This may be just the tip of the iceberg. Once desired, suburban and ex-urban communities with cul-de-sacs, McMansions, and long commutes could be on their way to becoming the blighted and abandoned communities of tomorrow, accelerating the process Chris Leinberger documented in his eye-opening Atlantic essay of March 2008.
A large and apparently growing share of mortgages are underwater according to this analysis in the Wall Street Journal, so we may expect more of this.
Long ago, I asked my colleague, the esteemed urbanist and architect David Lewis, what he thought was the biggest issue of urban revitalization of our time. He responded without hesitation that the eventual decline of sprawling, shoddily constructed, exurban communities would make the urban cores of cities like Philadelphia or even Detroit - with their compact infrastructure, dense neighborhood footprints, and authentic and historic structures - look like a walk in the park. Not to mention that this entire development cycle is a giant waste of resources and a potential drag on long-run economic competitiveness and prosperity.
Richard Florida
Before we start proclaiming the sky is falling and the end of suburban life is upon us, lets wait for this to happen in actual suburbs. Victorville is about as much a suburb of L.A. as Binghamton is of New York City. Actual suburbs of L.A. (like, say, Thousand Oaks, Pasadena, or Hollywood) haven't seen anything resembling this. Prices may have gone down there too, but not because of a drop in demand. The drop has been in ability to afford.
What is happening isn't a collapse of suburban life, its a course correction after an extreme runup in the price of suburban life. Saying that life in the suburbs is no longer going to be desirable because the riiculously rapid rate of suburban cost of living turned out to be unsustainable is a pretty weak argument. Families are still drawn to having a decent sized house with a little yard of their own in a safe neighborhood. That hasn't (and won't) change. What's changed is the realization that not as many families can afford that as it once seemed. The suburbs aren't going anywhere, their cost is just going to drop some.
I don't know anything about Victorville, but suburbs that are very far from the urban core are here to stay unless transit and planning policy in cities change. In my city, Houston, there are suburbs to the extreme south, southwest, west, and north--and more and more to the northwest. (Probably the only reason we don't see similar growth east and southeast is that developers run into Houston's only physical barriers, Galveston Bay and the ocean.)
The reason these suburbs work at all is that most of the people who live in them don't commute into the city (either Downtown, Greenway, or the Uptown/Galleria area, all three areas being high concentrations of office buildings in or near the center of town). They commute into offices that are located in areas that when I was a kid were on the extreme edge of town. Such office conglomerations include Westchase, the Energy Corridor, Greenspoint, and more frequently, office buildings scattered along Beltway 8 with no particular center of density.
So for Houston (and really I should say Harris County as a whole), transportation policy that has favored an ever-expanding system of ring roads combined with more-or-less continuous widening of "spoke" freeways and toll-roads has made it reasonable for major corporations to locate main or satellite offices very far from downtown. So for many families, not only is living in a suburb 40 miles from downtown an economical choice, it is actually more convenient than living in-town because the exurb ends up being closer to the workplace.
Obviously Houston isn't the only place where we see this. Think of all the corporate headquarters located in Fairfield County, Connecticut.
One thing this has lead to is that some suburban areas in Houston have become basically slums. They don't look like what we think of as slums, but they are in terms of social and economic indices. After all, as high-paying jobs grew up in the suburbs, so did the low-paying jobs that accompany them. The janitors, maids, garage attendants, etc., are not going to commute 80 miles round-trip to work, so they moved out into the suburbs as well. (This is why we are starting to see many suburban municipalities trying to pass laws that make it harder for poor people to live in their towns--for instance, laws that limit the number of people who can live in an apartment or house.)
All excellent points. The only thing I'd add is that, outside of Houston, the laws you describe have been one of the basic features of suburbs for a very long time.
Interesting how these new constructions are coaxed into rubble by some gentle nudging and pulling from a steam shovel. Compare that with the problems encountered by the wrecking ball when it came face-to-face with the impregnable old Hollenden House Hotel in downtown Cleveland. Yes, I know, massive brick-and-stone pile from the Gilded Age vs. pre-fab drywall, etc. Still! Another reason why "aging" center city edifices will trump exurban tornado fodder every time.
Actually, in earthquake country, a massive brick-and-stone pile is about as unsafe as you can get. They behave in an earthquake in much the same way a wedding cake behaves if you give the table it's resting on a good kick.
"Shoddy construction" can mean a lot of things, but it California at least, if the building went through the normal permitting process, it doesn't mean "structurally unsound".
Actual suburbs of L.A. (like, say, Thousand Oaks, Pasadena, or Hollywood)
You do realize that "Hollywood" is a neighborhood within the City of Los Angeles?
Fresno->LA is about the same comparison as Binghampton->NYC. Analogising Victorville->LA to NYC 'burbs more appropriately evokes Middletown, NY or Danbury, CT or the north shore of LI, or the Water Gap area of NJ, which *are* NYC ex-urbs.
Not that I'd recommend Victorville to anyone not working in the desert, while those NYC ex-urbs are fine places.
Fair enough, Hollywood is technically in L.A. proper, so my mistake, although it is a decent little drive from downtown most times of day. But as for Victorville: my point was less about literal distance (although even then Fresno is much, much further from L.A. than Binghamton is from NYC) than function. No one lives in Victorville to commute to L.A., so its hardly a suburb/exurb and (whatever the proper analogous place) doesn't at all further Florida's suggestion that we may be seeing the end of the suburb as we know it.
Curtis: The eastern portion of SB County is generally considered to be part of greater LA. Although not many folks commute the 80 odd miles from Victorville all the way to downtown Los Angeles, certainly plenty of people do commute West for jobs closer to the heart of the metropolis (ie., in LA County).
Mr. Florida: I'm a big fan of yours, and I like the new blog.
err, make that "western portion of SB county."
Fresno is much, much further from L.A. than Binghamton is from NYC
It's about 40 miles further, as the car drives (219 v 178, per google). Try out Visalia, CA, then--189 v 178, but same drive time. The point remains.
No one lives in Victorville to commute to L.A.
Do you know anyone who lives in exurban California? I knew several people who commuted daily from Modesto to near Palo Alto (Silicon Valley, generally), which is 10+ miles more than Victorville to LA, in the early 90s. I know people who commuted from Northern San Diego County to LA--which is a different issue, b/c North County is highly desireable & historically expensive, as opposed to V'ville and Modesto--about the same mileage and drive time as V'ville->LA and Modesto->SV.
You are right that they don't live in V'ville **TO** commute to LA; they live in V'ville b/c that is the shortest commute to their job which allows them to afford a house with a yard that isn't in the barrio/ghetto/whathaveyou. "Acceptable commute" means somethign entirely different in Cali than it does anywhere on the east coast.
That's not a bulldozer.
If you throw around terms without knowing what they mean, why should one believe anything you post?
And those are not "homes." They are houses.
JNCC - The title is intended as a play on a famous study and book on urban renewal - "The Federal Bulldozer."
Love it. Thanks, jncc, for the lesson of the day: Don't snark on RFlorida--he's too smart for you...