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Carregando... The End of the Suburbs: Where the American Dream Is Moving (2013)de Leigh Gallagher
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Registre-se no LibraryThing tpara descobrir se gostará deste livro. Ainda não há conversas na Discussão sobre este livro. People with money increasingly want to be close in to cities, where they have access to lots of activities and stores without needing to drive for hours each day. This leaves lots of faraway suburbs in a bind—they might even end up abandoned or demolished—and also poses problems for people without money; poverty is increasing in the suburbs and it’s harder to get services there, as well as harder to commute to a job. This book doesn’t have much I haven’t seen elsewhere about the sadness of suburbia, though I was really happy to be reminded that Kenneth Jackson cited a clay tablet from 539 BCE “on which a resident of the then booming Mesopotamian city-state of Ur, whose residents had started settling in the countryside, marveled to the king of Persia about how his property was ‘so close to Babylon that we enjoy all the advantages of the city, and yet we come home we are away from all the noise and dust.’” I also didn’t know that children are four times as likely to walk to schools built before 1983, and that obesity rates go down with the age of the neighborhood. Still, even though the book starts by acknowledging all the government policies, from mortgage lending (and mandatory segregation) to highway building, that encouraged suburbanization, it ends by saying that many people freely choose suburbs, as if their choices were made in a vacuum. sem resenhas | adicionar uma resenha
"The government in the past created one American Dream at the expense of almost all others: the dream of a house, a lawn, a picket fence, two children, and a car. But there is no single American Dream anymore." For nearly 70 years, the suburbs were as American as apple pie. As the middle class ballooned and single-family homes and cars became more affordable, we flocked to pre-fabricated communities in the suburbs, a place where open air and solitude offered a retreat from our dense, polluted cities. Before long, success became synonymous with a private home in a bedroom community complete with a yard, a two-car garage and a commute to the office, and subdivisions quickly blanketed our landscape. But in recent years things have started to change. An epic housing crisis revealed existing problems with this unique pattern of development, while the steady pull of long-simmering economic, societal and demographic forces has culminated in a Perfect Storm that has led to a profound shift in the way we desire to live. In The End of the Suburbs journalist Leigh Gallagher traces the rise and fall of American suburbia from the stately railroad suburbs that sprung up outside American cities in the 19th and early 20th centuries to current-day sprawling exurbs where residents spend as much as four hours each day commuting. Along the way she shows why suburbia was unsustainable from the start and explores the hundreds of new, alternative communities that are springing up around the country and promise to reshape our way of life for the better. Not all suburbs are going to vanish, of course, but Gallagher's research and reporting show the trends are undeniable. Consider some of the forces at work: * The nuclear family is no more: Our marriage and birth rates are steadily declining, while the single-person households are on the rise. Thus, the good schools and family-friendly lifestyle the suburbs promised are increasingly unnecessary. * We want out of our cars: As the price of oil continues to rise, the hours long commutes forced on us by sprawl have become unaffordable for many. Meanwhile, today's younger generation has expressed a perplexing indifference toward cars and driving. Both shifts have fueled demand for denser, pedestrian-friendly communities. * Cities are booming. Once abandoned by the wealthy, cities are experiencing a renaissance, especially among younger generations and families with young children. At the same time, suburbs across the country have had to confront never-before-seen rates of poverty and crime. Blending powerful data with vivid on the ground reporting, Gallagher introduces us to a fascinating cast of characters, including the charismatic leader of the anti-sprawl movement; a mild-mannered Minnesotan who quit his job to convince the world that the suburbs are a financial Ponzi scheme; and the disaffected residents of suburbia, like the teacher whose punishing commute entailed leaving home at 4 a.m. and sleeping under her desk in her classroom. Along the way, she explains why understanding the shifts taking place is imperative to any discussion about the future of our housing landscape and of our society itself--and why that future will bring us stronger, healthier, happier and more diverse communities for everyone. Não foram encontradas descrições de bibliotecas. |
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Google Books — Carregando... GênerosClassificação decimal de Dewey (CDD)307.740973Social sciences Social Sciences; Sociology and anthropology Communities Specific kinds of communities Suburban communitiesClassificação da Biblioteca do Congresso dos E.U.A. (LCC)AvaliaçãoMédia:
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While the housing bust of the mid-2000s had a lot to do with this exodus from suburbs, it was certainly not the only reason. There had been a growing frustration with commuting long distances every day to work and amenities that left many exurban McMansions uninhabited before the bottom fell out of the housing market. Now the builders that once built giant houses in pre-planned cul-de-sacs are moving to cities and building condos and luxury apartments.
Gallagher does not necessarily predict what the future will look like, but she does say that the dominance of suburbs as we know them now cannot continue unabated. There is a lot to love about suburbs, such as more privacy and space, and many Americans will continue to live in suburbs (although they are graying at record speed). New building, however, points toward housing “closer to centers of jobs, entertainment, and lifestyle needs” (p. 197-198). Perhaps the future will look more like smaller urbanized areas in relatively close proximity connected with public transportation.