Quote:
Originally Posted by the urban politician
^ There goes Crawford again, smugly telling the world how it is without a clue or evidence.
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I don't agree that everyone is rushing to buy a SFH or the idea that the suburb is going to disappear. That's ridiculous. I think there's some obvious trends going on, that everyone here is familiar with, but like to deny because of politics or feelings.
1. Even before remote work and COVID, urban cities have become more and more specialized while business moves to suburban areas and greenfield development remains easier.
2. The US as a whole is getting older and having less kids. That goes double for demographic groups that are more educated and higher earning, well up to a point. So there will be more singles and more childless couples. This is also causing established cities, even in sunbelt metros, to lose population or stagnate at least in a statistical way.
3. The US as a whole is more unequal. One class is having a hard time earning and saving enough to buy a home. The other class has lots of money to buy a home(or two) at inflated values to safeguard and build wealth in an era where interest rates seem to be low and will be low for what seems like forever.
So naturally:
-Urban cores and superstar cities are only going to get more and more hideously expensive because people with money will put it into real estate. The higher land values yield more urban building typologies like high rises or block sized mixed use construction. This ultimately leads to vibrant cores full of glassy towers and streets lined with yoga studious and juice bars, while at the same time the actual population of the city crashes and the bottom falls out of un-gentrified neighborhoods.
-Working and middle class people will continue to leave urban cores to cheaper suburbs they can afford while leaving superstar metro areas completely, sometimes migrating out of state. However this doesn't necessary mean the destinations they head too are necessarily better off in raw economic numbers, people may move from a prosperous place they can't afford or find work in, to a much poorer less productive and less safe or educated place that they can afford and get a job in.
- The growth in singles and people on the older end of the demographic pyramid means that a greater proportion of the population as a whole may seek apartments or condos over single family homes, regardless of whether they live in suburbs or cities. This is going to counter the effect of people leaving high density cities for low density ones.
- The peculiar cultural ideas about cities versus suburbs aren't relevant to Millenials or Gen Z. A huge yard or a cul-de-sac isn't necessarily better. Transit is not "socialism", etc.
The end result is a future where big cities simultaneously decline precipitously but thrive more than ever, and more and more people move to suburbs than may not look like the suburbs you are used to. There will be a lot more apartment complexes, maybe apartments in various town center developments, more duplexes and attached housing, etc. And they are moving to states like Texas and Arizona in such large groups they are going to change the culture and politics of those places and they won't match your pre-conceived notions of them any longer.
The casualties I think is going to include the relevancy and usefulness of hub-and-spoke commuter rail systems, office-heavy downtowns where they roll up the sidewalks at 5 will crater while downtowns that are more mixed use with institutions like government buildings and hospitals will do better. Superstar cities whose stars fade, like Chicago, are going to need to fix their fiscal and public safety issues.