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From Post Carbon Institute
The Death of Sprawl - Designing Urban Resilience for the Twenty-First-Century Resource and Climate Crises
The Death of Sprawl - Designing Urban Resilience for the Twenty-First-Century Resource and Climate Crises
In April 2009—just when people thought things couldn’t get worse in San Bernardino County, California—bulldozers demolished four perfectly good new houses and a dozen others still under construction in Victorville, 100 miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles.
The structures’ granite countertops and Jacuzzis had been removed first. Then the walls came down and the remains were unceremoniously scrapped. A woman named Candy Sweet came by the site looking for wood and bartered a six-pack of cold Coronas for some of the splintered two-by-fours.1
For a boomtown in one of the fastest-growing counties in the United States, things were suddenly looking pretty bleak.
The adobe-colored two-story houses had been built by speculators in a desert region dubbed the “Inland Empire” by developers. The unsold homes faced vandalism and legal liabilities when the town’s average home sales prices dropped from well over $300,000 in 2007 to $120,000 in 2009. These plummeting prices pushed Victorville over the edge, making the city one of the nation’s foreclosure capitals.2
After people began to ransack fixtures from the vacant homes, Victorville town officials warned the bank owning the sixteen-home development that it would be on the hook for security and fire calls. The bank, which had inherited the mess from the defaulted developer, assessed the hemorrhaging local real estate market and decided to cut its losses. A work crew was dispatched to rip the houses down and get what they could—money, beer, whatever—for the remains.3
Boom and Bust
Why did this town boom and then bust so spectacularly? After all, it followed a seemingly tried-and-true model of suburban growth that was replicated across the United States for decades.
To begin with, gasoline prices had risen from under $2 in the boom years to over $4 by 2008. Thanks to such massively increased personal transportation costs, Victorville by 2009 had an extremely thin margin between what people thought they could afford and what they now actually could afford. By one estimate, Americans as a whole spend $1.25 billion less on consumer goods for each one-cent increase in the price of gasoline.4 Thus by 2008, compared to 2005, consumers nationwide had $250 billion less to spend on cars, furniture, appliances, and all the other items families typically purchase when moving into a growing area like Victorville. To the alarm of real estate developers, city officials, and investors, the true total costs of living in Victorville (including gasoline and time spent commuting) also weighed heavily against market valuation.
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The structures’ granite countertops and Jacuzzis had been removed first. Then the walls came down and the remains were unceremoniously scrapped. A woman named Candy Sweet came by the site looking for wood and bartered a six-pack of cold Coronas for some of the splintered two-by-fours.1
For a boomtown in one of the fastest-growing counties in the United States, things were suddenly looking pretty bleak.
The adobe-colored two-story houses had been built by speculators in a desert region dubbed the “Inland Empire” by developers. The unsold homes faced vandalism and legal liabilities when the town’s average home sales prices dropped from well over $300,000 in 2007 to $120,000 in 2009. These plummeting prices pushed Victorville over the edge, making the city one of the nation’s foreclosure capitals.2
After people began to ransack fixtures from the vacant homes, Victorville town officials warned the bank owning the sixteen-home development that it would be on the hook for security and fire calls. The bank, which had inherited the mess from the defaulted developer, assessed the hemorrhaging local real estate market and decided to cut its losses. A work crew was dispatched to rip the houses down and get what they could—money, beer, whatever—for the remains.3
Boom and Bust
Why did this town boom and then bust so spectacularly? After all, it followed a seemingly tried-and-true model of suburban growth that was replicated across the United States for decades.
To begin with, gasoline prices had risen from under $2 in the boom years to over $4 by 2008. Thanks to such massively increased personal transportation costs, Victorville by 2009 had an extremely thin margin between what people thought they could afford and what they now actually could afford. By one estimate, Americans as a whole spend $1.25 billion less on consumer goods for each one-cent increase in the price of gasoline.4 Thus by 2008, compared to 2005, consumers nationwide had $250 billion less to spend on cars, furniture, appliances, and all the other items families typically purchase when moving into a growing area like Victorville. To the alarm of real estate developers, city officials, and investors, the true total costs of living in Victorville (including gasoline and time spent commuting) also weighed heavily against market valuation.
.
.
.
.
.