Is It the Beginning of the End for Suburbia

[Anonymous]

Interesting interview with one of the key researchers on this topic:

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/OutofR

One of the least talked about issue here is that poverty is so much more damaging to the fabric of suburban society than urban. It's so difficult to provide services in a community that's not dense at all. Costs so much more.

[Anonymous]

OK, which exurbs will have Huns ransacking them in 30 years? Ashburn? Haymarket? Stafford? Frederick? Annapolis?

Will Escape from Centreville become the hit movie of 2050?

Will everyone start wanting to live en masse in 900 square foot condos or unrenovated 1200 square foot homes from the 1930s?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OK, which exurbs will have Huns ransacking them in 30 years? Ashburn? Haymarket? Stafford? Frederick? Annapolis?

Will Escape from Centreville become the hit movie of 2050?

Will everyone start wanting to live en masse in 900 square foot condos or unrenovated 1200 square foot homes from the 1930s?

I'm sure 20 years ago, no one thought there'd be group houses full of unrelated Hispanic day laborers living in Aspen Hill culs-de-sac.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Mock, but it's true. The city has a problem, and that problem is that it can't hold onto the middle class families.

Correction: the city had a problem holding on to middle class families. Ten years ago it had a problem holding on to middle-class families period. It now has significantly less of a problem holding onto middle class families with primary grade children. It's having less and less of a problem holding on to middle-class families with middle-school children. The trends are quite clear.

Add to that the fact that fewer and fewer people are choosing to have children, and the fact that as the massive number of baby boomers age, many are divesting themselves of suburban mcmansions. The demographic change is accelerating. We often here from folks who felt they had to move out of the city when their kids became of school age. Sorry the change didn't come about soon enough for you. But we're talking about the future here, not the past.

Unfortunately the numbers tell a different story. Here are the population statistics for <20 population for key wards and Fairfax County.
Fairfax County: 27%

DC Ward 1: 16.0 (21.9) (parentheses are from 2000)
DC Ward 2: 13.3 (16.5)
DC Ward 3: 17.2 (15.6%)
DC Ward 6: 14.6 (18.7%)

This is a huge discrepancy. On top of it, most wards (except for ward 3) actually went down. And I'm not going to calculate the absolute population numbers by ward, which you can do on DC's census site, but overall the District lost a total of 12,000 kids 19 and under. There was a startling 26% drop among 5-9 year olds, and a 16.6% drop of 10-14 year olds.

Wake up. Your impression of what is going on in your city is not borne out by the data. The relative population of kids is way lower than the counties. And the absolute numbers of children are going down in the critical age groups that you cite.

Of course the total number of children is falling in DC, silly. Poor families with lots of kids are moving to the suburbs. Large poor families are being replaced by single adults, DINKs, empty nesters, and, yes, one- or two-child families. That's the well-documented dynamic, and it's only going to accelerate over the next 10-20 years, as tastes continue to change and as the region's poverty load continues to diffuse from the urban core out to the suburbs.

Well I ran the numbers and it turns out no, the decline is the exodus of the poor.

The data says that Wards 1,2,3,6 declined about 9% in the number of infants to teens, and wards 5,7,8 declined 10%. So basically the same.

In the crucial categories of 5-9 year olds plus 10-14 year olds, again the decline was nearly identical for the two groups. (23 vs. 24%)

Ward 4 is sort of a mix so I would treat that separately, and it declined by about 4% overall, and 11% in the above demographic.

So I don't know how to break it to you, but the city's population of children is going down. There appears to be no income disparity, or it would have shown up in the ward numbers. It appears that families are moving out but the overall increase in DC's population has come mostly from singles and families with no kids or maybe one kid. That makes sense given the type of housing stock that was added in the last ten years.

Face facts, there is a value proposition to the suburbs. And it isn't the fun of driving a minivan. The suburbs cost less, provide more space, and most of all they devote more of their public effort toward quality schools. DC's housing prices are only very loosely coupled to school quality. In the suburbs, a home price can vary by a 150K or more based on whether it is in an excellent vs. merely good school boundary. Sure there are tradeoffs, but there is no point in pretending that the suburbs are doomed, the people who live there are fools, and everyone is moving back in to the city, when it is not true. DC is growing because it is becoming attractive to young, largely unattached workers. Gentrification plus the lowest regional unemployment in the nation makes this happen.

[Anonymous]

mistake there. "No, the decline is not the exodus of the poor".

[Anonymous]

For one of the PP's who claimed that dc housing prices (which did run up and over inflate) have retained their value: they have not. Trust me, plenty of houses selling for hundreds of thousands less than a couple of years ago. The difference btwn this and the burbs is: people in NW routinely NEED equity right away in order to finance private school; in the burb, you can weather the ups and downs of the economy without going into a dire situation to educate your kid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't think that in itself will change much. American auto manufacturers have already changed their business model to smaller, more fuel efficient cars. I do think the days of huge SUVs are probably gone (thank goodness). What I don't know is how the delivery of goods to suburbs will change, if at all, as transportation prices increase to bring things like food to grocery stores.

Plus, not all suburbs exist to house urban workers. I live and work in Rockville. I only fill my gas tank once every two weeks. Burbs that have their own industry/business sectors will likely be just fine.

I think you're overly optimistic. The vast majority of suburban residents commute. If not downtown, then to other suburbs. The number of folks who live and work in the same place is very small. Go out to Rockville Pike, or Viers Mill Road on a weekday morning if you don't believe me.

you people need to understand that no matter where you work (in the city of a suburb) you might be married to someone who works somewhere else and has a long commute. For example, my husband works in DC and I work in Dulles. How do you reconcile that? If we live in DC, I am screwed, if we live in Dulles, my hubby is screwed. So we did the best thing for both of us and bought a house in Falls Church in the middle.