Reuters: Is America's love affair with the "exburbs" over?

[marmar]

Is America's love affair with the "exburbs" over?
Fri Apr 10, 2009 9:19am EDT


GAINESVILLE, Virginia (Reuters) - Jean Bell didn't plan to take care of her neighbor's lawn when she moved to this cluster of brick townhouses hard by the freeway.

But the house next door has sat vacant for the past year and a half, and the bank that owned it wasn't keeping it up. So the retiree and her family have mowed and watered the grass to deter the burglars who have hit nearby developments.

"We all have to watch each other's homes because we don't want the property values to go down any more," Bell says. "It's scary, and I really don't know what's going to happen."

Thirty-five miles from downtown Washington, it's easy to find signs that America's relentless suburban expansion may have petered out.

Raw earth and blank concrete pads mark house lots that have sat unsold for three years.

Streets remain incompletely paved and poorly lit, the legacy of a builder that declared bankruptcy. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.reuters.com/article/gc03/idUSTRE5386W220090410?sp=true

[amitten]

1. The urban sprawl has to stop somewhere. We can't just pave

the entire world. Land is a finite thing.

[Warpy]

2. NM is a weird state and we just got a north-south commuter rail system

That means our exurbs along the northern Rio Grande will survive. The ones to the east and west, not so much.

Nobody expects gasoline to stay under two bucks a gallon forever. It's been over three here twice in the last five years and people realize it will probably get there again.

The exurbs served by the train will likely survive and prosper. The others will add themselves to the other ghost towns across the state.

[tularetom]

3. Three years ago people were willing to commute 2+ hours from here to the bay area

Just to take advantage of the cheap housing available here. Then a few things happened. The housing got expensive. Then builders went apeshit and built lots of houses. Then the bay area jobs disappeared. Then the housing got cheap again. Then people began walking away from the cheap housing. We're pretty much back where we were before all this shit started except for all these vacant houses.

But the next time somebody comes here with a Springfield monorail. all these yahoos will jump at it like they did the last time.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

4. They change their story every year,

Lets see here, last year it was gas prices that were going to kill the suburbs, now it is as though those houses are empty because people would rather be homeless than in the suburbs?

There is a group who has hated the suburbs since their inception and will just wrap whatever the present circumstances provide to explain their immediate doom.

[ddeclue]

5. She needs to call code enforcement on that bank

She should NOT have to be cutting the grass for these cheap bastards.