Lost in the suburbs

is another episode of The Nature of Things from 2008. It visits Los Angeles, Vancouver, Toronto, Mexico City and hey, Portland, Oregon!   


In order to facilitate Toronto's expansion some of the most fertile soil in North America had been covered with concrete and asphalt. Suburban residents cover 4 times more space than those living in the city.


L.A. is the "ultimate suburban wasteland" according to David Suzuki. The Fresno valley nearby that's threatened to be built up too provides more than 200 commodity crops and is one of the biggest food providers in the U.S. Farmers start to become the minority though and the urban population does not understand their lifestyle. Farmers work earlier, they also work later, and some of their duties are noisy and dusty. Although the soil and the climate are great the water for irrigation comes via pipeline from far away and required a huge financially investment by the federal government. Unfortunately, the municipalities decide what to do with the land and sacrifices it for construction that creates jobs. In one place in California "extravagant" people can even live in a suburb made for small air planes! The garage, the street, the parking in the front of the house are all designed to accommodate the wing span.      

Vancouver has apparently an even higher car use than L.A. and an additional 30,000 cars enter the roads every year. But the city barely builds any new roads. Vancouver is so unaffordable for most people that they move into the suburbs which are designed for cars, or "extensions of highway intersections". "The  sound of sprawl is the freeway roar," it was said but it has turned into ever growing congestion. Widening the roads and adding more highways has not and will not solve the problem. Maintaining 1 km of road costs $10,000 per year, and new roads cost more. This does not include the costs for police, accident services like health care, and air pollution. Presumably, there will be road tolls soon which will increase the cost of living in suburbs! Together with demographic changes the demand for large houses in distant suburbs will disappear over the next couple of decades.   
 
Mexico City with more than 20 million people is an urban nightmare, sprawling tremendously. There's no more natural beauty & tranquillity, just cars & too much traffic, air and other pollution, and water shortage. The city is not human any more. 

Portland Oregon has not stopped the sprawl but has made room for nature in the city. It started 25 years ago that the city tore up a freeway and put in a waterfront park, tore up a parking house and create a public space in the centre of the city, diverted money from road construction to public transport and built a light railway instead. City neighbourhoods revived and the growth was directed into more dense, already existing areas instead of adding on to the city boundary. A model suburb is denser, the houses closer to the sidewalk, a front porch faces the road instead of a garage, school and shops are in walking distance.In Portland people want to live there and don't feel forced to live there - that should be the goal of city planning. Some critics said that Portland's moves were a socialist conspiracy to get people out of their cars but in fact in was a conspiracy that brought people into cars in the first place.        


Generally suburbs provide more affordable housing than the city centre, get you more space for less money. People think it is easier to start a family, it feels safer to raise children, suburbs have a perceived higher quality of living. But it's not actually that comfortable: commuting means sacrificing time and well-being, expose oneself to accidents, fuel & maintain the car, pay insurances. It's not affordable to the individual or the community. 
Generally, cars have driven the sprawl. The deal has been that the private sector provides the vehicles -without any limits - and the government provides the pathways. But huge amounts of money (subsidies) go into supporting the car and even only a 10% of it would better be invested in public transit. 
An initial problem is that wilderness and natural areas are often considered as land to be developed, as something that needs to change. Another problem is that the costs for infrastructure (water, sewage, roads, community services) are only partially accounted for in the price of suburban houses. The municipality that provides the infrastructure usually ends up with a debt that can't be recovered from taxes from the new residents. So they keep building hoping it pays off next time ... but it does not. Suburbs won't work forever.