The Death of the Suburbs?

The debate about whether the suburbs are dying has been going on for some years with convincing arguments for yes and no. But the accelerating demise of  America's large retail brands puts the debate into overdrive and fills mainstream media with alarm. Are the suburbs really dying? NPR's Morning Edition was asking this question this week again in light of Business Insider's series titled "The Death of Suburbia". An ever larger mass of big-box corpses is littering the uniquely American commercial corridors of America where gas stations, fast food joints, car dealers and big boxes ferment into that universal ugliness which the writer and sprawl observer Howard Kunstler euphemistically dubbed the "geography of nowhere."

Ailing mall in Baltimore County (Photo Philipsen)

Gloom is setting in. The suburban retail corridors are used to a high rate of mortality and short life expectancy.  But the death of the big boxes is even more existential than the death of malls since it hits what was to be the next generation of retail and successor of the mall. Instead malls and their offspring are dying together at a scale that could threaten the economy. Estimates say that as much as $48 billion in commercial mortgage backed securities (CMBS) are at risk of default. Business Insider writes:

People in US suburbs are changing the way they shop, where they eat, and what they want in their homes. Malls are shutting down as e-commerce continues to take over, and the casual-dining chains that fed shoppers after a day of hoofing it through the mall are struggling to cope.

The pace is astounding: Radio Shack gave way to Circuit City, then came Best Buy and Hhgregg superstores, all are bankrupt now. Forbes tallied up the massive closures in January of this year not even mentioning 140 JC Pennies stores also closing:

US sprawl retail: 50% shopping centers, malls and big boxes

The recent closure of all 140 Sports Authority stores in the US is part of a trend showing no sign of letting up any time soon. Consumers continue to shop online like never before, as traffic dwindles in brick and mortar stores. (Seeking Alpha). Last week, Macy’s announced that it would close 63 stores and Sears said that 150 of its locations, including 108 Kmarts, will go dark. The stock prices of Macy’s and Kohl’s have plummeted, dragging those of Nordstrom and J.C. Penney along with them. (Forbes Jan 2017) 

Montgomery Ward, Hechts, Sports Authority, Toys R Us, and JoAnns Fabric, all just fading memories. America has way too much retail as anybody comparing the amount of store area per resident internationally could have seen for years. The US has three and a half times the retail of otherwise very comparable Canada, two times as much retail as England and seven times as much as Australia.

Source: Global economic analysis

While retail gets the headlines and leaves behind an impressive and frightening trail of humongous vacant structures, the shift towards urban walkable, mixed use communities also occurs for restaurants, housing, offices and entire corporate headquarters as well.

Planners and urban designers have celebrated the turning tides as a renaissance of cities, especially when energy cost was high and owning a car and driving seemed to decline. Indeed, restaurants and shops in historic or newly created urban main streets are thriving with more and with more and more businesses trading their suburban office parks for downtown or transit oriented development spots where they are surrounded by amenities such as food halls, coffee shops, fitness centers and happy hour brew-pubs.

The building of the built environment (real estate and the infrastructure that supports real estate) is in the middle of a structural change, only comparable to the change that took place two generations ago following World War II. (Chris Leinberger, Developer)

But the reality is more complicated: Cities are by no means out of the woods and suburbs are far from dead. For one thing gas prices have plummeted and Americans are again driving, more than ever. Secondly, suburbia is reinventing itself wherever it can. As a result, the lines between urban and suburban are becoming ever more fluid. Many years ago the Californian planner Peter Calthorpe was a pioneer in redesigning failing shopping areas into lively mixed use centers. the 1991 Mizner Park in Florida and later Belmar in Colorado and Santana Row near San Jose became poster cases of how a mono-functional suburban shopping center or mall can become a mixed use urban development, a model that has since been replicated hundreds of times across the country. Even Tysons Corner, the quintessential car centric office park outside of Washington and just beyond the infamous Capital Beltway is undertaking an ambitious overhaul under new Urbanist criteria of walkable city blocks with first floor retail and other uses above.

Failed Villa Italia Mall, Colorado

Belmar mixed use town center development on the same site

Unfortunately, farmlands and woods are still far from safe.The irony is, that the US has countered the dying malls and the general retail overbuilt by doubling down and building more and more new stuff by paving over ever new outer rings of new development for ever larger super centers, lifestyle centers and outlet malls. The result, naturally, is that older retail has an even harder time to survive, especially in older "inner ring" suburbs while land consumption, forest destruction and wetland loss continue unabated.

Since 1995, the number of shopping centers in the U.S. has grown by more than 23% and GLA (total gross leasable area) by almost 30%, while the population has grown by less than 14%. Currently there is close to 25 square feet of retail space per capita (roughly 50 square feet, if small shopping centers and independent retailers are added). In contrast, Europe has about 2.5 square feet per capita. (Forbes 2015)

Instead of focus and concentration, US development patterns are still trying to cover all bases at once, the downtowns, the new urbanist new developments, the retrofitted office parks and the continually more desperate attempts of reinventing brick and mortar retail with bigger instead of better. For this to work, the country would need unsustainable growth economic and population growth patterns which are unlikely to happen, especially if in-migration from abroad is stifled and existing immigrants are sent packing.

The dispersal pattern visualized via commutes in the nation's metro regions. (Garrett Dash Nelsonand Alasdair Rae
(detailed explanation see in National Geographic)

Instead, the failure of retail sprawl should become a valuable lesson about the dispersal model altogether. Whether in cities or in suburbs, the lesson must be that real communities are a basic human needs. A mix of uses, proximity that allows getting around without a car is not specific to European, South American or Asian cultures but is essential because it is conducive to social interaction and connectivity which all people need to thrive.

Sprawl housing: Drive everywhere (Photo: Brough Schamp)

Whether the suburbs are dying or not is not the right question. The country needs cities, suburbs and rural areas. What it doesn't need is waste and degradation. Historic cities alone can't accommodate all needs and don't have enough space to fit the entire still growing population even though many cities have plenty of space left sitting fallow due to the urban flight patterns of the past. neither are there enough green spaces left where they are needed the most, i.e. near metro areas. The death of sprawl-retail gives the suburbs a chance to grow up and become denser, less wasteful and more urban without further loss of valuable farms and forests. Abandoned retail grey-fields provide ample land resources that can come to the rescue. Instead of instilling panic they should be seen as an opportunity for cities and suburbs to become better.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

Mall redevelopment Belmar: Connectivity and interaction

The shopping mall apocalypse is creating a $48billion disaster on Wall Street (Business Insider)
Of course the Suburbs Aren't Dying, CityLAB
The American suburbs as we know them are dying (Business Insider)
Are the suburbs dying, or just evolving? Washington Post 
Are American Suburbs Dying? | Here & Now - WBUR
The End of Suburbs TIME
The suburbs are dead — and that's not a good thing - Salon.com
Suburbs Are Dying, Say Urbanists, but the Obits May Be Premature, The Daily Beast
Why cities are the best cure for our planet's growing pains, National Geographic

Four Million Commutes Reveal New U.S. 'Megaregions, National Geographic