Metro Regions In Reverse

For all the hand-wringing in the Republican Party (and elsewhere) about whether the U.S. has become Europe, the closest resemblance comes in one characteristic that certainly isn't being discussed in the presidential primary: American suburbs are fast growing poorer. European ones have long been this way, as city centers throughout the continent have long been home to the wealthy for several reasons -- postwar flight never happened on the same scale, public transit is much more extensive, and historic preservation, a key to these cities' identities and tourism, limits real estate development and keeps property values high. Low-income communities, particularly immigrant ones, live on the peripheries, where large-scale public housing can be built, most infamously in metro Paris, where the riots of several years ago produced lots of soul searching and questions about now-President Sarkozy's tolerance.

Now, the Brookings Institution reports that the U.S. suburban poverty rate grew by 53 percent during the last decade and 55 percent of metropolitan areas' poor people live in the suburbs. This flip between urban and suburban poverty isn't generally surprising because coastal cities have seen large influxes of the well-educated and well-compensated; young professionals stay and older families return. Nonetheless, its rate is quite dramatic, which affects nearly every aspect of urbanism, including the property tax base, the school system, access to transit, the delivery of social services over dispersed settlement patterns, the increased popularity of dense development, and the question of what to do with unpopular subdivisions. (If managing vacant land in Detroit is hard, imagine how much harder it is the outer reaches of metro Northern California.) Spatially, there are a popular wealthy core and a popular wealthy outer ring, but the inner ring is at risk of being skipped.

I work in one of these inner-ring suburbs. And as disappointing as it is to hear about rapid growth in poverty anywhere, I find this city to be wonderfully full of possibilities, even if the large majority of its residents are in the working class, if not the working poor. Perhaps this is because this city has always been an immigrant hub and looked like Boston's neighborhoods (even if it's not legally part of Boston) since well before urban living became popular again, so the city's leaders know how to run it. Whatever the reason, every downtown storefront is occupied, the streets are active, new real estate development happens in pockets, and life feels alive.

It doesn't always look very elegant and there's enough not to like there, too (crime, lower-quality schools, the problems that come with being a tougher neighborhood), but overall, it's very instructive about how to harness a working-class community and turn it into a vibrant place. When suburbs change from upper middle-class enclaves to the welcoming port for immigrants, the policy and urban planning that happen in them have to adjust so the city recognizes and maximizes the potential value. The line is fine between improving a low-income community so that it's a high-quality place that everyone deserves and making it such an attractive place that only the wealthy can afford it (again). But such places serve a very important role in a regional economy and ecosystem and their worth deserves to be trumpeted.

Thanks to Spoon for inspiring this post's title.