Follow the money ... out of the 'burbs?

I spent a little over week in the Northern Virginia 'burbs last month, ping-ponging between Lorton (where my infirm mother is currently living) and Stafford (where her working kitchen and washer/dryer combo are currently living). I would be lying if I didn't cop to a bit of culture shock. I spent most of my visit overwhelmed by consumer overabundance and spatial vastness.

Because developer-friendly space is at such a premium in San Francisco and the inner-ring cities that immediately abut it, retail outlets are not huge. I live and work in places that are pedestrian-friendly and public transit-accessible. We have empty lots and storefronts, but not huge swaths of them. I live on an island where 2000 square feet is considered hugely spacious for a house. My sense of scale is keyed to these criteria.

So can you see how I got lost in a Giant Foods -- the floor area alone was 61,600 feet. Or, as I like to think of it, "Possessing more square footage than many of the states' gubernatorial mansions." And if you think 61,600 square feet of store is big, wait 'til you get to the SUV-packed parking lots. And then drive by the new developments that have sprouted up like mushrooms along Route 123, or Route 234, or Route 1, or ... you get the picture. Big vehicles, big houses, big stores. Add to that the fact that few of the subdivisions I had to drive around had sidewalks. None of the big-box store agglomerations had crosswalks; it was literally safer and easier to drive from store to store than it was to walk. There was no way to experience a retail center on foot, or try to assign a pedestrian scale to a neighborhood.

In addition to the too-bigness of it all, the other thing that blew my mind was the sheer number of abandoned strip malls. Apparently, the thing to do is to build a brand new strip mall and move the anchor stores into their bigger new homes. The old spaces are just hulking across the street, deserted and very quickly sliding into dereliction. The places I drove around seemed wasteful, squandering resources and space for no good reason.

Sooner or later, cities and counties are going to have to figure out what to do with all those abandoned strip malls and McMansion-y developments. The Infrastructurist tackled some of these problems in their post on the book Retrofitting Suburbia:

A lot of older strip malls are getting retrofitted into denser, mixed use town centers. There are some structural advantages to rehabbing. New construction is always more expensive than buying into existing construction. Essentially what Jane Jacobs points out way back in Life and Death of Great American Cities is that part of what’s so attractive about older neighborhoods is that they can afford to have, you know, the music teacher school or the shoe repair shop or obscure little hobby stores–the independent mom and pops. With new construction, the rents are just too high.

But this is just one solution to one problem. The CSM reported last month in "Bulldoze the 'Burbs?" that

There’s another shift underway, as migration to America’s southern tier is slowing and as more Americans are moving back into city centers, a trend that predates, but was accelerated by, the subprime mortgage crisis. As urban strategist Christopher B. Leinberger wrote in the Atlantic in March 2008, the growing number of vacant and abandoned malls, office parks, and McMansions threaten to turn suburbia into the next slum.

And the WSJ reported on July 1 that "Cities Grow At Suburbs' Expense During Recession."

But what I wonder is this: What will happen to the half-empty strip malls and abandoned exurban subdevelopments? As Marketplace points out today, "More Low-Income People Live in the Suburbs." What is striking: how few municipal or social infrastructures are in place to handle this shift.

So what will the 'burbs look like in five years? Ten? What about those 61,600-square foot grocery stores? I am alternately excited and afraid to find out.

Comments

[Polly]

The town where my parents live (which is basically run by developers) does the same thing--they build a big shopping center, all the businesses move there, and then they build another one, and all the businesses move there, and then they build another one. I have no idea how that possibly works economically, except that I guess there's enough short-term gain for the developers that they don't worry about the rest (it's not like anyone there is worried about long-term economic development, and you can tell--it is and has always been a very depressed area). Sometimes it gets pretty hilarious, though--this is central California, so they'll build these developments and then realize after the fact that there is no water.

[verucaamish]

Oh boy Lisa your talk of Lorton is taking me back to the days I'd rent a car to go the the Ikea in Woodbridge. In my previsous job I worked with nonprofit community development corporations. One huge thing that happened with the suburbs was the breakdown of the public school system in center cities and the build up of public school systems in the suburbs. DC under that Mayor with the bowtie, made an intentional decision to NOT focus on real school reform and set up a city for people without children, both young professionals and retirees. You see this in San Francisco as well where there are more dogs in the city than children. The challenge is that it makes a city the opposite of bell curved. You have extremes of income on both sides - people who can afford the high housing prices of a central city AND private school and people who don't have the resources to relocate (living in substandard housing) and sending their children to public schools. Because of the underinvestment form cities in public education (Woo boy if the Wire didn't nail that one), you saw a lot of middle income folks moving to the suburbs to get affordable housing and decent public education.

[Lisa S.]

Veruca -- no kidding. I absolutely do not blame any family that's all, "I left because I did not feel like selling a kidney to put my kid in private school."

The graying of San Francisco is especially striking; every time I leave the city and hit another part of the country, I'm always like, "Where did all these kids come from?" The real question should be, "Why don't we have more kids in SF?"

I actually do blame the school systems for this: thanks to SF's crazy laws, it's impossible to tell where your kid's going to go to school if they're in a public school, and the private schools are not cheap.

[Lisa S.]

On the other hand, while I freely acknowledge that this post can come off all "Rah! Rah! Let's all live in dainty little cottages in the big city!" I would like to put a lot of difference between my "Space and Material: Use it less wastefully, maybe?" meandering and this eyebrow-raising bit of urban provincialism.

[verucaamish]

I'm right there with you Lisa. My partner and I just bought a bungalow in Oakland so we almost do have a dainty little cottage in the city. Hee! There's a world of difference between what you wrote in this post and your link (dear GAWD! Do they want the rest of the country to hate us?) I do find it mind blowing how you can't walk from one strip mall to another in places like Arlington, TX and Woodbridge, VA, The question I have for city planners and elected officials is how do we not make people pay for things that are key to healthy living - a good school system, a walkable city, and access to things like farmer's markets and public transportation. Noone should have to choose between an affordable home, a walkable city, and a decent school.

[KateGM]

In response to reading, "If You Must Leave San Francisco, Chew on This."
Wow. I am officially stunned into silence (a rare feat). Now I'm never, ever going to move out of Philadelphia-- wage tax, cronyism, and rising poverty be darned!

[Alexander Robb]

My wife and I moved to Petaluma when we became pregnant, for the better schools and the lack of used syringes on the sidewalk. The stench of diesel mixed with bum piss and the crazy people yelling at their imaginary demons helped make the decision easier. But I really missed having intelligent conversation and being able to ride my bike everywhere. Now they want to build a Target anchored strip mall a stones throw from our house. This will kill a bunch of Mom and Pop stores in the downtown area, and I fear we may end up looking like Rhonert Park or Novato, lacking in any central soul. My philosophy is; no matter where you live, shop local, buy local, be local. Chain stores run by multi-national corporations suck the profits out of state, pay shitty wages and look like crap, while selling plastic junk from China. Vote for change with your wallet!

[Kerry]

Wow, that blog post is why every time I think of San Francisco, I have an urge to punch.

I think this is related to 2 larger questions: 1) is a city really working if the basics of life (which I'd say do include decent schools, affordable housing and access to recreation and affordable food) are outside the reasonable grasp of many? and 2) considering that large amounts of the country have been developed for the automobile, how can they be transformed into these walkable communities that people supposedly want? Central Phoenix is more bike friendly than walkable--the blocks are long and there's little visual interest. But the wide streets mean there's enough room on the road so that you don't get hit, as opposed to Cleveland where there were sidewalks but biking was treacherous.

[ginger]

Man, that is some classic San Francisco self-congratulatory crap. But coming from a real estate agent, whose entire job is to pretend that any property he represents is the best property on earth, it's not surprising at all. Hypocritical, yes - how you can sell real estate and simultaneously run down those who "consume, consume, consume" is a mystery - but not surprising.

[Grainger]

Heh. I did grad school in Newport News. One of the local malls there had the "bigger newer down the street" thing happen; everything moved out. EVERYTHING, even the crap kiosks in the middle of the aisles closed down. I think that maybe half the food court and a Suncoast Video were the only things left.

...and people still went there! In fact, a LOT of people went there! I wandered in just to see whether anything was there and I was amazed that people would come into an empty mall just to hang out.

Later on, I figured out what was happened. See, there was very little green space in the area; no parks, no fields, if it wasn't water it was paved. These people were hanging around in the mall because it was the closest thing they had to a local park.

[Lisa S.]

Grainger, where did you study in Newport News?

Back when I lived there, we were waiting with baited breath for a mall to open within city limits -- we used to have to go to Coliseum Mall for shopping!

[Grainger]

I was over at NASA.

There was always the Patrick Henry Mall, was that open when you were there?

Geez, I'm looking at Google Maps of the place...hey, I found the place I'm thinking of! Newmarket Place...huh, looks like it's still there. Maybe it got rebuilt? This was almost eight years ago now.