In the March issue of The Atlantic, Richard Florida, an urban theorist and “defender of the creative class,” offers this way out of suburbanization, which he associates with an economic model, a form of American capitalism (“suburbanization was the spatial fix for the industrial age”), that began its death a year ago.
The housing bubble was the ultimate expression, and perhaps the last gasp, of an economic system some 80 years in the making, and now well past its “sell-by” date. The bubble encouraged massive, unsustainable growth in places where land was cheap and the real-estate economy dominant. It encouraged low-density sprawl, which is ill-fitted to a creative, postindustrial economy. And not least, it created a workforce too often stuck in place, anchored by houses that cannot be profitably sold, at a time when flexibility and mobility are of great importance.
So how do we move past the bubble, the crash, and an aging, obsolescent model of economic life? What’s the right spatial fix for the economy today, and how do we achieve it?
The solution begins with the removal of homeownership from its long-privileged place at the center of the U.S. economy. Substantial incentives for homeownership (from tax breaks to artificially low mortgage-interest rates) distort demand, encouraging people to buy bigger houses than they otherwise would. That means less spending on medical technology, or software, or alternative energy—the sectors and products that could drive U.S. growth and exports in the coming years. Artificial demand for bigger houses also skews residential patterns, leading to excessive low-density suburban growth. The measures that prop up this demand should be eliminated.
We are watching the twilight of sprawl. Experts, from the treasurer down, understand that America is entering another form of capitalism (or socialism, which is the truth of capitalism—the moment capital does not need the social forces of production and consumption, the general intellect, is the moment I’ll call it capitalism for real), and the economic restructuring will have an actual impact on the production of space—how and where land is used. In the near future, we can expect (or hope) that suburban houses, the monsters of the earth, will be the dinosaurs of an extinct economic age.
David Shankbone is the source of the image.
I’m pretty sure I read this article a few months ago.
Yes, any minute now all of America will begin moving into biodegradable housing pods slightly bigger than each individual worker, all centralized in huge Green arcologies where all work for the common good. I’d say that you should start holding your breath now, and surely before you could want for oxygen this magical dream will come to pass.
But, actually, land and housing prices are dropping …
What makes the suburbs non-viable are the eventual carbon tax impacts on suburban living and the new urban-centric America that President Obama is rebuilding, coupled with the eventual return of $150 a barrel oil.
Oh, or didn’t you notice when it bumped above $50 …
Baloney, Charles.
Seattle’s own Jim Cramer
The single-family home with village-level density is the standard around the world. They could be smaller (around 1000 sq. ft.) but they are still the goal.
House ownership can’t be deincentivized until we have a national retirement pension program or equivalent (beyond Social Security) because houses are the main investment vehicle for retirement (you sell and downsize when you retire, pocketing the profit).
Florida’s article was fantastic.
In a hypothetical economy where the real interest rate (the return on capital) is zero, communism prevails. In such an economy, you can only create value by “consuming labor” or “producing technology”. Capital is definitely necessary but the marginal utility of capital is zero. We are approaching a real interest rate of zero. In the end, we will have technology and labor, capital will become what it was always meant to be: a tool for exchanging technology and labor, and nothing else.
@6,
The standard around the world? Try cinderblock shacks with tin roofs, if you’re lucky. Get real.
Isn’t sprawl just a wide spread form of density?
Unless they are all bulldozed, the suburbs will become the 21st century American slum, complete with decrepit housing and social and economic isolation. In the future, only poor people will live in McMansions.
(a comparison might be those gorgeous Harlem brownstones, which unfortunately for the 21st century “ghetto” dwellers were a lot better built than the 2003 real estate boom suburbs slapped up out of plywood and sheetrock, except for the lead paint, of course)
Um, isn’t capitalism based in part on production and consumption?
I would actually say the moment socialism does not need the social forces of production and consumption to surv . . .eh, I’m too tired for this.
Oh, wait, I guess socialism is also based on consumption and production, production being needed for consumption.
Ugh. Again, too tired. I’ll stop now.
the first politician to poke his head out of the bunker & suggest de-incentivizing housing will get de-elected.
Fuck Richard Florida. He took a single interesting thesis – that creativity is important for the success of cities – and spun it into a self-promoting empire.
His latest book is actually a guide book intended for creative urbanites, to help them figure out which vibrant global metropolis they should move to.
Seriously. Fuck him.
What do you mean by “capitalism”. The dictionary says “as politico-economic system wherein the means of production and distribution are privately owned.” last time I looked it up. So how are any of the measures designed to promote the suburban lifestyle at taxpayer expense examples of capitalism?
The interstate highways, are they an example of capitalism? I don’t think so. The privileging of home ownership, also not a capitalist policy.
The American suburbs are built the way they are because the law requires it, they are not products of the free market.