Citistates Group

The game’s up between cities and suburbs and the suburbs are the hands-down winners, now and as far into the future as one can see, writer Joel Kotkin opined in a Washington Post Outlook section article February 6. The latest trend, Kotkin asserted, is suburbs finding ways to make themselves less monotonous, more diverse and interesting with cultural and religious institutions and village centers that can even draw the empty-nesters today’s cities are counting on for revival.

Not so fast, replies our Citistates colleague, Peter Katz, urban guru and founding executive director of the Congress for New Urbanism. “True urban life will prevail, simply because the value it generates is SO much greater than the suburban crap we’ve been building,” Katz maintains.

Here’s how the exchange has been running:

Katz to Kotkin:

Can’t disagree with the numbers side of your recent Post article, but you’ve fallen into the same trap as Joel Garreau in saying that suburbs will eventually mature to become good places.

They won’t because their weak physical structure will cause them to remain in perpetual adolescence. The road networks can’t survive another layer of growth. Lang understood this point made by Duany and other New Urbanists and wrote about it in Edgeless Cities. Some high value centers (such as Lenox Square in Atlanta’s Buckhead) will be “reformed” but most will limp along pathetically for decades, possibly hundreds of years if land values remain low.

But a key mindset HAS changed (see cult favorite, Penturbia by Jack Lessinger, for more on this idea) as indicated by the media mentions you cite. True urban life will prevail, simply because the value it generates is SO much greater than the suburban crap we’ve been building. Maintream developers and builders including Pulte and Centex (the nations 1st and 2nd largest homebuilder, respectively) are already starting to see this and are moving aggressively into the more promising urban markets. As always, its “follow the money.”

Kotkin to Katz:

I think you greatly underestimate the desire for a suburban lifestyle and the ability for things to change. As to tradition “urban” living, it will grow with some of the population, but it will not be predominant.

I also note that your two addresses are at least somewhat suburban. There is a lot of variety in suburbia — I live in an old 30s suburb about 30 minutes from downtown L.A. But it is suburban, private homes, although we can walk to a supermarket.

For every dollar the developers are putting into traditional urban areas, i would guess they are putting ten somewhere in the suburbs. The urban development gets press because the media likes it and, in some places, it’s a bit of a “man bites dog” story. Again, population growth has the potential to bring some people into the inner city, but the numbers pale to those in the suburbs.

The suburbs, for better or worse, are our future. and the longer the New Urbanists fight this, the more irrelevant they will remain. as I tell my students at SCI-ARC (Southern California Institute of Architecture), the future is in making the suburbs better.

Katz to Kotkin:

You noticed my addresses. Let me complete the picture for you:

My location in Alexandria (and my permanent legal address) is actually a few blocks away from the mailing address you noted (a post office box). I live in a New Urban community called Carlyle.

As for progressive, politically correct living, it tops the charts in most categories.

It’s a transit oriented development (5 minutes to one Metro station, 8 minutes to another), built on a remediated brownfield site (a former railyard). It’s also mixed use, containing over 6 million square feet of office space, a federal courthouse and the new US Patent and Trademark office, retail (mostly office service, a Whole Foods under construction, and a few delis now, but more coming), and 1,500+ units of rental and for-sale housing (existing and planned). 33% of Carlyle’s 80 acre site is open space, found in a variety of squares and small parks, a regional greenbelt, and landscaping adjacent to streets. I drive to many suburban locations just west of me, but I’m able to easily walk to my teaching job at Virginia Tech (8 minutes east, in Old Town). Once there, I’m in the midst of restaurants, coffee shops, a yoga studio, other institutions, offices and a further 5 minutes’ walk to a scenic, historic waterfront.

Old Town Alexandria, by the way, is one of the oldest urban settlements in America, dating to well before the founding of Washington, DC. George Washington was reputed to have surveyed parts of Old Town. More recently (1989), the Carlyle development, where I live, was laid out by the New York-based firm of Cooper Robertson. Despite some early setbacks, it’s now at 75-80% completion.

There is a civic association that has come upon the scene since the neighborhood was founded. My neighbors and I just put on a design workshop to help the developer understand what all of us (residents, business and property owners, office workers) want to see in terms of the programming and design of our large public open space at the center of the community. Land within Carlyle commands some of the highest prices in the DC metro area. Despite this, several pension funds are bankrolling a few developers at top-dollar rates to buy and build on any piece of property that becomes available here.

Upon completion, the Carlyle development and the adjacent East Eisenhower community, will contain more square footage than there is office space in all of downtown Philadelphia. Think of it as a new downtown for the region on a similar scale as Tyson’s Corner, but unlike Tyson’s it’s planned to function with pedestrians and transit in mind.

It’s not perfect, but it’s lots more urban than the dinosaur suburban places you’re suggesting that people love so much. Good planning, not location, is what sets Carlyle apart from the sprawl.

Is there too much parking? Yes. the suburban office developers and leasing guys cling to their outdated rule-of-thumb ratios, forgetting the two rail stations close by. But alas, the agents have had no trouble leasing offices here lately. Could it be the transit nearby? Not a bad feature considering Northern VA’s legendary Beltway backups.

Does it feel like a true city? Not yet, but as Andres Duany says, a city is like a stew. It needs time on the stove for the flavors to intermingle; for the spices to percolate into the meat and vegetables. New places rarely feel authentic. But after 10 years, Disney’s Celebration is even starting to feel like a real place: I photographed some broken park benches on my last trip there!

By the way, each unit in my townhouse complex has a two car garage. My neighbor to one side owns a Ferrari and a Porsche SUV, next door on the other side is a Toyota truck and another Porsche. Just past him, another Ferrari and high-end Audi sedan. A few doors down, a Humvee, 2-3 Mercedes SUVs, and a Cadillac Escalade SUV. My ten year old Volvo is getting an inferiority complex.

The point: My neighbors, who clearly have options available to them (and some very nice cars), are voting with their dollars for a highly urban lifestyle that also happens to accommodate their cars. It’s important to note that my neighbor’s cars get used far less than those of other Alexandrians, who live just a mile or so to the west.

My neighbors have never heard the term New Urbanism. They could care less. But they paid a whole lot of money for homes that give them options most people in the suburbs don’t have. And, according to my colleague Chris Nelson, their New Urban homes are going up in value faster than the conventional suburban “product” that you claim has “won.”

Joel, in your article, you’re painting the places you talk about with a very broad brush, and you are confusing places that others refer to as urban, suburban and new urban with reckless abandon. We’re in agreement that “the future IS in making the suburbs better.” We even agree that the village approach is a good way to go (though I question whether examples like Valencia are actually villages or just gussied up malls). Perhaps we all just need a better definition of the three terms I mentioned before: urban, suburban and new urban before the discussion can really begin. The US Census department gives us little guidance in this area: Robert Lang has cited some hysterical example of what they consider urban vs. suburban. Certainly all the things you cite are indeed happening. Culture is coming to some suburbs, but it’s returning to many downtowns. Some suburbs, such as Bethesda are urbanizing, while other downtowns are still suburbanizing, with expanding doughnuts of vacant land in use as parking around them, skybridges and quasi-public atria at their centers that shut down at 5:00.

There are trends and countertrends. Clearly most of America relies on their cars as the primary device around which they organize their lives. And yes, most people will opt for suburban schools over urban, particularly if tuition is covered in one’s highly subsidized house payment. Private school may work for Jason alone, but when Jennifer comes along, so does the moving van. These are the economic realities of modern-day America. We both know it’s far from a level playing field.

But when Mom and Dad want really great live theater, or a fabulous meal, they’ll suffer the inconvenience of riding transit into down town, or they’ll pay a fortune to park. Perhaps it may be just the elite who’s doing so, but that elite historically fuels the trends that others follow.

The suburban dream, after all, was a mass-market response to house envy by a rising middle class looking at the country mansions of the wealthy. It’s a well documented marketing success that fostered the model that has prevailed for several generations. But today, that model is experiencing stresses, and it’s not really delivering on its many promises (fresh air, open space, good schools, low price, etc.).

Certainly schools in the suburbs are still way better than their urban counterparts, but experiences like Columbine tell us that even suburbs have their problems. Traffic, social alienation, the list of growing stresses goes on and on. The suburbs lack the underlying infrastructure, social and physical, to enable them to mature gracefully. The stresses create outcomes that aren’t pretty. As I said before, some places like Buckhead in Atlanta will grow despite the problems, but most will simply stall out. More important, those who have a choice, like my neighbors, will look to new options.

The preference I’m citing is far from being the norm, a majority, or even a well-documented trend. But, according to my own personal trend meter, the New Urbanism HAS captured the imagination of the same innovators and early adopters who are responsible for a number of small recent innovations, such as the internet. Charles Brewer, the Atlanta developer who was the founder of Mindspring, an early internet service provider, often says “the New Urbanism is the next internet,” presumably because of its potential to revolutionize the way we live.

I began my response to your article by saying that I don’t disagree with the numbers you reference. Indeed, research by Bruce Katz of Brookings shows that the good stuff I’m pinning my hopes on (revitalized downtowns and suburban centers, better NU communities at the edges), is still a drop in the bucket. But other research just now coming out of Brookings from Chris Nelson, my previously mentioned colleague at Virginia Tech, shows that new demand for houses is moving drastically away from the Leave-it-to-Beaver model of a single use, single-family home, to a more urban multi-family type. Our job, as writers and so-called thought leaders, should be to lead others to new ideas and approaches. We shouldn’t be selling the status quo or even the deconstructivist clap trap that masquerades as innovation at schools like SCI-ARC.

Rather we should be finding and promoting real innovation that offers real options to a broad cross section of Americans. On that point: I’ve cited several examples of the choices made by the wealthy in my remarks above. That could get me in a lot of trouble with the PC police, but as Vincent Scully observed in the closing paragraphs of his afterword to my book, The New Urbanism (I don’t have a copy with me, so my words will likely be quite different than his): if you make urban places good enough for the wealthy, the rest get to come along for the ride. Peter Katz

PS: My West Coast address, in Del Mar, where I live with my fiance, IS unashamedly suburban, albeit with a great historic town center about 2 miles from where we live. Where we are, looking out over the Pacific Ocean, we can walk easily to several restaurants, a state park, a string of wetland preserves, several small professional offices, and a manicurist (my fiance likes that). That kind of proximity, which was important to us, is only shared by about 3% of the homes here in North County, San Diego.