Y'all are missing THE key factor in suburbanization, I believe. Schools.
I'm in the burbs (Evanston) because the Chicago Public Schools are terrible. Otherwise I'd been the city in a flash. This isn't a matter of racism -- we chose E'ton because it's more integrated than Chicago -- about 60w/40b, as opposed to 10w/90b&h -- and I don't think it is a matter of racism in most people's cases. Rather, they don't want to send their kids to schools that are even more underfunded than suburban schools and might be dangerous. Every single parent I know who moved from the city to burbs did so when they had a kid or when their kids reached school age.
This is not a problem they have so much in Europe, where schools are nationally financed and fairly equal in quality. It has to do with the localism and the property tax financing of education. A Belgian friend visiting here was nonplussed by the variation in the caliber of education from the city to the burbs, school quality is not a factor Belgians consider in choosing a place to live.
I think is strange that Americans should accede to social practices fixable by nonradical means the fixing of which would get them more of what they want, like property taxes for schools or privatized medicine. But I'm getting used to it.
--- Michael Dawson <MDawson at pdx.edu> wrote:
> Hasn't the engine of suburbanization, on the demand
> side, been mostly simple
> economics? For the price of an urban rent, a huge
> swath of the population
> has been able to buy a detached house with a yard
> that is at low risk of
> losing its resale value. Suburban houses are cheap
> per square foot,
> relative to equal-quality urban space. Right? Of
> course, being suburban
> makes owning a car mandatory, but, again, doesn't
> that still make it cheaper
> to go to the burbs than to try to buy expensive
> urban housing?
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org
> [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org]
> On Behalf Of Wojtek Sokolowski
> Sent: Thursday, September 23, 2004 9:57 AM
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Subject: RE: [lbo-talk] the petro-thusians have
> their moment
>
> Jon:
> > The trouble is that, unlike Europeans, apparently,
> Americans have a
> > very deep-seated urge to flee from areas of large
> population
> > concentration to low-concentration ones. Perhaps
> this is a hold-over of
> > the old pioneer longing to "light out for the
> territory." But it makes
> > it much harder to provide public transit for most
> of the population.
> > Somehow, one would have to persuade the people who
> fled the cities to
> > move back; a few are doing so, but the overall
> trend is still massively
> > in the other direction. Makes no sense to me, but
> I'm a very untypical
> > American.
>
> Many (if not most) Americans flee cities precisely
> because they feel
> threatened by the complexity, the lack of cocoons -
> they have to deal with
> people different then themselves in public places -
> and yes, public
> transportation. I heard that opinion times and
> again, especially in PA -
> people are willing to go to extraordinary lengths to
> avoid taking public
> transit. For example, my wife co-worker gave up a
> day off to avoid going
> from H'burg to Philly on a train (2 hour direct
> connection!) - she left one
> day earlier just to be able to ride in a company car
> with my wife. This is
> not an isolated case - most middle Americans hate
> cities, public places and
> public transit - hence their cocoon seeking
> behavior.
>
> Wojtek
>
>
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