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American Dream, Downsized
Andrew Lam, The Nation
…For the first time in human history there are more people living in urban areas than rural, and cities have grown like amoeba into megacities–so crowded that they have become virtual countries with complex ecosystems unto themselves. Tokyo leads the pack with 31 million residents. Seoul has 23 million, followed by New York and Bombay.
Living space, unless one belongs to that tiny percentage called the upper class, is shrinking as the human population continues to grow. While the rural poor leave open sky and rolling plains to flock to the edge of the metropolis–they crowd into ramshackle slums in the third world, or one-room units in the first–the middle class is clinging to its precious status by contending with far smaller living spaces than those of previous generations.
I remember when a middle-class family could own a Victorian home in San Francisco. Now such a home would be divided into three or four units, each remodeled and sold to an upper middle-class couple.
Case in point: I went with some friends to look at a two-bedroom house the other day. It’s a bungalow that was once the home of a working-class family in the 50s. Now, with skyrocketing prices and a prime location, it’s out of reach for my friend, who is a single lawyer. The little house was going for a little over $1.3 million dollars. “My American dream,” she said with a sigh, “has just been seriously downsized.”
Of course, the further you go from the city, the more space you can afford. But there’s a catch: if you want more space you’ll likely have to exchange it for your time. The price tag for a front yard and back garden can be a four-hour commute every day.
Shrinking along with the American dream of home ownership is the size of the family. Fewer adults are having children. Once a rural necessity, having children in an urban setting is no longer as vital. In megacities like New York, Tokyo, Paris and Hong Kong, the birth rate is on a steep decline. After all, having a child could mean sliding from the middle class to the standard living of the poor, with a crib in the walk-in closet, a garden on the fire escape. Hong Kong, which has the highest human density in the world, also has one of the lowest birth rates: 0.93 per couple last year. A room of one’s own may be all the space one has, if one is lucky.
Today a condo is what most in the middle class can hope for in places like San Francisco or New York. I suspect that in another generation or two, middle-class homes in American cities will look like those of Tokyo today–which is to say, the size of a train compartment.
(6 Feb 2007)
Related: Hunting’s Bind of Less Space and Time (Washington Post):
Suburban development is partly driving the decline, leaving fewer open spaces where it’s safe to pull a trigger without hitting a home or one of its occupants. But the trend goes deeper, experts say, reflecting a cultural shift underway nationwide. As Americans become busier, more urbanized and less rooted in family and social traditions, they’re less inclined to go into the woods on a cold, wet morning to wait in breathless silence for a deer to walk by
Wayne Co. foreclosure rate leads the nation
Louis Aguilar, The Detroit News
Wayne County posted the highest rate of home foreclosures among major metro areas in the nation during January — seven times more than the national average — while Oakland and Macomb counties took huge hits, too.
It all combined to push Michigan to second place among the 50 states for new foreclosures, up 147 percent from a year ago.
Michigan saw 11,554 new foreclosure filings, according to RealtyTrac. That put one of every 366 Michigan households at risk of losing a home because of missed mortgage payments.
… The only state worse overall than Michigan was Nevada.
“Michigan is in a deep systematic recession. That always fuels the foreclosure rate,” said Bill Martin, chief executive officer of the Michigan Association of Realtors. “It’s not easy to say if we have bottomed out. I haven’t seen a forecast that says when the situation will turn around.”
…Michigan’s economy is essentially stagnant because of the woes of the auto industry, which has shed tens of thousands of jobs in the past few years, with more cuts to come.
(13 Feb 2007)
Contributor KClark writes:
“The bursting of the housing bubble may not be peak oil related everywhere, but it is in Michigan. High oil prices are killing the US auto industry SUV cash cow and taking car dependent Michigan down with it. Yet at the same time, business groups are lobbying for more road expenditures and more parking.”
Beyond Moscow, Dachas Make Way for Suburbia
Price Boom in City Fuels Middle-Class Exodus
Peter Finn, Washington Post
PEREDELKINO, Russia — The unpaved, unlit roads are clogged with traffic. Getting to and from work in the center of Moscow is a 90-minute crawl each way. The schools are lousy. There are no stores within walking distance. Local health-care facilities are primitive.
And Ekaterina Korobtsova couldn’t be happier.
In December, Korobtsova, her husband and their 3-year-old son left their Moscow apartment and moved into an all-pine, 2,700-square-foot home in this settlement a few miles outside Moscow’s city limits.
“When I was pregnant four years ago, I discovered there is no oxygen in Moscow,” said Korobtsova, 39, a senior manager in a telecommunications company. “Here, we have fresh air. We can walk in the forest. We will hear birds sing in the spring. And we don’t have to smell our neighbors’ cooking.”
Korobtsova is part of a wave of homesteaders transforming the forested environs of Moscow into the beginnings of suburbia.
(14 Feb 2007)
