How Should Suburbs Handle Redevelopment?

There's a choice between turning non-existent urbanism into actual urbanism, and bad urbanism into something better.

Rows of detached single-family homes in Fredericksburg, VA, south of Washington, DC. Not your typical big-lot sprawl development, but not quite urban in form either. Source: gettyimages.com

A question for urbanists. When considering the future of the nation’s metro areas, should we focus on making marginally urban areas, like inner ring suburbs, into solidly urban spaces? Or should we direct our attention to the most egregiously un-urban areas at the metro area’s edge, and turn them into insta-urban places?

That’s the question posed by Addison Del Mastro, publisher of the Substack the Deleted Scenes.  Del Mastro published an interesting article on this theme earlier this week. He reflects on inner ring suburban areas in Arlington County, VA. It’s an area I’ve visited before but don’t know deeply. I’ve been there enough to know I like Arlington’s development form. He notes that Arlington neighborhoods are solid examples of the best of early post-WWII suburbia. And I agree.

Del Mastro notes that inner-ring suburban areas like Arlington are now becoming more expensive because demand for the proximity and quasi-urban development form they have is rising. Indeed, the reason I know something about the area is that I have a niece who lived in nearby Alexandria before moving away earlier this year. The area has, as they say, “great bones” – it has the frame to support more than it does now.

Yet, instead of saying that Arlington would be a great candidate for an full urbanism makeover, he wonders if close-in suburbs should get a pat on the back with an accompanying “well done” from the housing market. In his words:

“Partly because of this quasi-urban design, and partly because such places tend to be proximate to the urban core, communities like this are very expensive—often far more so than they look like they should be. Because of this—high prices, proximity to the city and urban job market, and a predominance of older buildings where redevelopment can start to make sense—places like this face immense pressure to liberalize their zoning and build more, denser housing.

My conceptual question here is, is that fair? Does it make sense? If these are the “best” suburbs from an urbanist perspective—true sub-urbs: outlying communities with a real connection to the city and an element of genuine urban design at a quieter, less intense scale—haven’t they done their duty? Why should these places, with their own history, character, organic and incremental growth over many decades, be disrupted when there are immensely “worse” suburban communities further out to densify?”

Then Del Mastro makes his point:

“(M)aybe it’s the middle suburbs—not the semi-urban communities at the city’s edge, not the real towns and country roads way at the edge of the metro area—that should add the most housing. They are the purest example of the contradiction of suburbia: wanting the amenities of urbanity and density without its perceived, imagined, or, in some cases real, costs.”

Three things come to mind regarding this thought. First, it demonstrates a misunderstanding of how cities have historically developed and grown. Second, it doesn’t consider the high costs associated with overhauling sprawled developments into urban oases. And lastly, it shows how the housing affordability debate has distorted urbanist thought.

Developing cities from the inside-out

Back in 2013 I created a metropolitan development typology that I called the "Big Theory" of American urban development (the link goes back to my old Blogger page). Without extensive explanation or detail, I’ll say that after World War II America entered the auto-centric phase of its development, and four distinct development types came about:

I’d guess that much of what Del Mastro is talking about in Arlington fits into some combination of the Levittown and Split-Level typologies.

I live in the Chicago area. There are certainly equivalent communities here, perhaps slightly further from Chicago’s Loop than Arlington is from the Capitol.  People familiar with Chicago might recognize suburbs like Skokie, Niles, Elmhurst and Oak Lawn as examples.

At the heart of this “Big Theory” is the notion that neighborhoods, communities, large cities, even metro areas, develop from the inside-out. Development starts at a certain node and eventually spreads outward, like a stone making a ripple in a pond. The ripples dissipate as they move further from the point of origin, until they fade away. Continuing this metaphor, a new “stone” was thrown into the DC pond, known as early 21^st century redevelopment (aka gentrification). There are new ripples surging through Arlington and places like it.

I’d argue that with the emergence of the Edge City period in the 1970’s, leapfrog development became fashionable. Potential homebuyers started to “drive until they qualify”. Malls and office parks followed. Edge City development opened up an entirely new periphery that we call exurbia – the kinds of places Del Mastro says where “a lot of older folks in these semi-rural communities look at these 5-over-1 apartment buildings sprouting up the same way we’d look at an alien ship landing in a cornfield.”

He’s right about that. But that’s the problem. Suburbanization destroyed our historical development patterns. It’s a big contributor to the housing affordability crisis we have today.

From my perspective, many inner-ring suburbs like Arlington and the Chicago examples I gave are pleasant, for the very reasons Del Mastro suggests. They are quasi-urban. But they’re largely owned by empty-nesters and elderly people still seeking to cash in on an the sale of their property, or young adults who might view it as a transient step before getting more space further away from the big city.

Another factor in favor of building up inner-ring suburbia – contemporizing. The earliest post-WWII suburbs are nearing 80 years in age. They were built for families, when it was common for families to 4 kids living in a small, 1,200 square-foot 3-bedroom home. They don’t have very many pleasing multifamily rental options. They were built without good pedestrian networks.  Today’s renters and buyers are looking for places that meet the needs of singles and small families. Perhaps they don’t want the responsibility of a home-sized space for just one person, or maintaining a yard. But if those options aren’t available to them, they’ll look elsewhere.

Unfortunately, I think the housing affordability crisis has so distorted urbanism discussion that we’ve lost sight of building full-fledged communities. Exurban communities are currently the furthest from becoming full-fledged communities, in the sense that they are the least walkable, least transit-oriented, and have the fewest mixed-use developments. Building them up to rectify development mistakes comes at a significant cost.

I consider America’s pre-WWII urban development to be our best example of complete communities. However, subsequent iterations of post-WWII development end up being less complete as they get younger – less walkable, less transit-oriented, less mixed-use. Suburbs that are closer to the urban core are closer to realizing their full-fledged community ideal than the exurban periphery. I realize the redevelopment of properties is more expensive than greenfield development, but getting them closer to the complete community ideal has greater benefits than overhauling the periphery.

I think inner-ring and middle-ring suburbs should be responding to the ripples in the pond that are impacting them. They should be incentivizing a more diversified housing stock that includes multifamily buildings, creating more walkable neighborhoods and districts for shopping, entertainment and gathering.

Arlington and places like it should not be rewarded for being “good enough”. They should strive to be better. They should be in the business of making themselves complete communities.