The Death of the Fringe Suburb
[B' Spokes: While reading the following article I could not help but think how much better Baltimore would be with good mass transit and really nice bicycle network. But our mass transit is controlled by the state who looks at it like an expense and thinks more highway expansion at the expense of mass transit and bicycling is the answer. My position is simple keep things in reasonable proportion, sure do what highway expansion you can afford but not at the cost of mass transit and bicycling. The state's current policies is a downward spiral, making cars the ONLY way to get around then you need a lot more really really expensive car infrastructure to support that. We need to get the state to support transportation choice.]*************************************************************************************************
By CHRISTOPHER B. LEINBERGER
DRIVE through any number of outer-ring suburbs in America, and you’ll see boarded-up and vacant strip malls, surrounded by vast seas of empty parking spaces. These forlorn monuments to the real estate crash are not going to come back to life, even when the economy recovers. And that’s because the demand for the housing that once supported commercial activity in many exurbs isn’t coming back, either.
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It was predominantly the collapse of the car-dependent suburban fringe that caused the mortgage collapse.
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Over all, only 12 percent of future homebuyers want the drivable suburban-fringe houses that are in such oversupply, according to the Realtors survey. This lack of demand all but guarantees continued price declines. Boomers selling their fringe housing will only add to the glut. Nothing the federal government can do will reverse this.
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The good news is that there is great pent-up demand for walkable, centrally located neighborhoods in cities like Portland, Denver, Philadelphia and Chattanooga, Tenn. The transformation of suburbia can be seen in places like Arlington County, Va., Bellevue, Wash., and Pasadena, Calif., where strip malls have been bulldozed and replaced by higher-density mixed-use developments with good transit connections.
... <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/26/opinion/the-death-of-the-fringe-suburb.html?_r=1">http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/26/opinion/the-death-of-the-fringe-suburb.html?_r=1</a>;
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