UPA Package 3, Module 1

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UPA Package 3, Module 1

• SUBURBANIZATION, URBAN
  FRINGE DEVELOPMENT AND THE POOR

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Contents

• Understanding concepts
• Suburbs
• Factors contributing to suburbanization
• push factors
• pull factors
• Problems of the poor associated with
  suburbanization
• Problems of the poor in abandoned inner cities
• Problems of the poor in the suburbs
• Some smart solutions to suburban sprawl

3.1.4 Suburbanization, Urban Fringe
Development and the Poor
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Suburbs

• Defined
• Literally means beyond the city, can refer to
  any settlement at the periphery of a large city
• A small town in the process of being swallowed up
  by an expanding metropolis
• A newly built industrial area in the urban fringe
• A residential community beyond the core of a
  large city
• By Robert Fishman, 1996

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• Politically independent municipalities located
  outside the corporate boundaries but within an
  interdependent metropolitan area.
  (Patrick J.
  Ashton, 1978)
• Need not be a separate political unit from the
  central city.
  (Robert
  Fishman, 1996)

3.1.4 Suburbanization, Urban Fringe
Development and the Poor
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• Characteristics
• Separate from the urban core but dependent on it
  economically and culturally.
• In terms of design, distinct from both city and
  countryside but a marriage of town and
  country.
• Distinctive mark Primacy of the single-detached
  family home in an open park-like setting.

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• Characteristics (U.S.)
• peripheral growth
• low density
• functional segregation of land uses
• lengthening journeys to work and market
• ubiquitous cars, trucks and highways
• mainly residential use with some commercial,
  office and industrial nodes
• typically middle class lifestyle

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Underlying Values

• Primacy of the family and the ties that bind it
• Necessity of privacy of the family unit
• Need to separate the domestic sphere from the
  world of work
• Visions of integrated neighborhood parks, lower
  residential densities, and tree-lined streets in
  garden cities by social reformers (e.g.
  Ebenezer Howard, Frederick Law Olmstead).
• Search for class-segregated neighborhoods which
  the older city could not provide.
• Desire for class segregation (friction theory,
  Lesson 2)
• growing uneasiness at close contact between
  classes
• rejection of neighbourhoods that make such
  contact inevitable

3.1.4 Suburbanization, Urban Fringe
Development and the Poor
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Suburbanization

• Historical Stages
• Suburbanization during the early industrial stage
• Suburbanization up to the period of late
  industrialization
• Post-industrial suburbanization

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• Early Industrial Stage
• Only the elite could afford to live in the
  suburbs because they had the time and money to
  commute by horse and carriage.
• Later advent of the trolley and ferry boat
  allowed the upper middle class to escape urban
  slums because they could afford the price of
  developed suburban properties offered by real
  estate interests.
• Both upper class residential retreats and upper
  middle class streetcar suburbs did not make a
  significant shift in the population.

3.1.4 Suburbanization, Urban Fringe
Development and the Poor
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• Later Industrial Stage
• Decentralization of industry was triggered by
• deterioration of the physical environment due to
  air and water pollution.
• escalating hostility between classes started to
  threaten capitalist prerogatives and profits.
• development of electric power which allowed for
  the introduction of assembly line production
  requiring sprawling one to two storey plants in
  more spacious, cheaper land in the citys
  periphery.

3.1.4 Suburbanization, Urban Fringe
Development and the Poor
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• As industry moved out of the city workers
  followed to be close to their jobs. This was
  aided by
• widely available inexpensive automobiles which
  became a social and economic necessity.
• massive road building that provided easy access
  to the suburbs.
• Federal subsidy to low-density detached,
  owner-occupied single-family housing available
  mainly in the suburbs.

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• Later Industrial Stage
• Federal government-built industrial plants in the
  suburbs that were commissioned during World War
  II.
• The outward exodus of jobs and households reached
  its peak from the post war years to the 1960s,
  further facilitated by the truck-auto-freeway
  trilogy that
• opened suburban areas for efficient motor
  freight movement
• enhanced employee access
• Circumferential by-pass roads and downtown -
  oriented corridors promoted outlying industrial
  growth

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• Post Industrial Stage
• From the 1970s onwards the character of suburbs
  reflects the tertiarization of the urban economy.
• Decentralization of offices including corporate
  headquarters from their usual central location to
  the suburbs
• Suburbanization of large shopping malls and
  superstores.
• Emergence of information technology-based
  establishments such as business and industrial
  parks, science and technology parks, airport
  corridors and the like.

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• Contributory factors (push factors)
• City center became undesirable place due to
• physical disamenities like traffic, noise, dirty
  air, filthy grounds, visual ugliness
• deteriorating social relations among classes
  the alienating, exploitative treatment of labor
  by capital and the unruly, threatening behavior
  of working classes.
• Fear of contagion of the rich by the poor led to
  suburban flight of the rich.
• Land values rising steeply, making central
  locations expensive.

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• Rising property tax necessary to support urban
  public services drove property owners out
• Post war (1948-1958) formation of new households
  coupled with backlogs of unfilled demand for
  separate housing due to the war.
• Vacant lands in old city centers insufficient or
  unsuitable for residential building.
• Urban renewal too slow to make new housing
  available.
• Destruction of old housing during urban renewal
  created serious housing backlogs in inner cities.

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• The pull factors
• The pull of the rural ideal.
• Supply of urban space plentiful in the urban
  fringe.
• Individuals becoming able to pay for their means
  of mobility (car).
• Society supports a far-flung urban system through
  investments in roads and railways.

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• Federal aid to housing encouraged building
  single-detached family houses in suburban sites.
• Transfer of retail shopping malls from downtown
  to suburbs added attractiveness to suburban
  living.
• Perceived advantages of buying suburban homes by
  young couples.

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Socio-Spatial Effects

• Suburbanization has given rise to the
  metropolitan area comprising
• the mother or core city
• several smaller cities / towns functionally
  linked with or dependent on the mother city
• Late 20th century suburbanization is
  characterized by sprawl development

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• Suburban sprawl described
• Scattered on leapfrog development.
• Auto-oriented commercial strips along roadsides
  in the urban fringe.
• Large expanses of low-density, single-use
  development which isolates living, working and
  shopping places from each other.
• Absence of civic traditions and a sense of
  community.

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• Problems associated with suburbanization
  affecting the poor
• Loss of jobs in inner cities
• Inner cities shifted from manufacturing to
  business and office locations jobs changed from
  blue collar to white collar.
• Inner city residents lost their manufacturing
  jobs but the new jobs nearest to their residence
  are those they are least capable of filling.
• Suburban flight of high income whites meant loss
  of a source of basic entry jobs for female
  domestics and male yard workers.

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• Longer journeys to work
• Hard core unemployed lack automobiles for
  driving to work hence, are less preferred by
  suburban employers.
• Inner city residents who find suburban jobs are
  adversely affected by lack of transportation,
  inadequate public transit routing, and excessive
  costs in time and money.
• Reverse commuting disadvantageous to the poor in
  the inner city.
• Car-less suburban poor are disadvantaged

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• Fiscal crisis in inner cities
• Suburban flight of rich residents depresses
  rents and tax revenues of core local authorities.
• The poor are left behind and suffer from reduced
  urban services.
• Additional poor move in to take advantage of
  declining rent, competing for diminishing urban
  services.
• New investors are unwilling to invest in areas
  of decline making jobs harder to find.

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• Progressive loss of farm lands
• More severely felt in land-short countries where
  many of the poor are farmers whose lands are
  being converted to residential subdivisions and
  industrial estates.
• Unavailable housing in suburbs
• Cost of housing and zoning restrictions in
  sub-urban subdivisions keep low-income workers
  out of the suburbs

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Formal Exclusionary Policies of Suburban
Authorities

• Large-lot zoning - large lots required
  effectively excludes the low-income families
• Exclusion of multiple dwellings - assures
  uniformity of residents (high-income only)
• Minimum floor areas - spacious homes are
  mandated, unaffordable to the poor
• High subdivision requirements - specification of
  architectural style, landscape guidelines, and
  underground utilities.

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Informal Strategies of Suburban Communities to
Reinforce Written Rules

• Public hearings
• Pickets, demonstrations
• Boycotts
• Support by national citizen-advocate groups
• Legal threats, lawsuits
• Sit-ins
• Referendum
• Influencing sympathetic politicians

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Some Smart Solutions

• British policy of urban containment
• Green belt policy
• New and expanded towns
• Mass transit systems
• French Suburbanization
• Reserves the city center for the gentry.
• Working class are moved to suburban industrial
  belts.

3.I.4 Suburbanization, Urban Fringe
Development and the Poor
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• American ideas
• Strong central cities and infill development
• Compact and transit-oriented development
• Maintaining agriculture and open space
• Taming superstores
• Better suburban workplaces
• Removal of government policies that contribute
  to exclusion of low-income groups from suburbia