Suburban sprawl is stifling the US economy

One time inner city ghettos like Bushwick, Bed-Stuy, and Crown Heights are gradually being gentrified into middle class neighborhoods. Property values are even rising in what were once the most entrenched slums, like East New York.

Meanwhile, the inner suburbs are beginning to decay as middle class professionals no longer move there to raise families. Low income residents displaced from the inner city are being pushed into these areas where rent is low - but still not saving money because they have to buy a car and pay for gas just to get groceries, and if they take transit to work it's now the 3-10x more expensive commuter rail rather than the affordable subway.

The outer suburbs where McMansions dominate are still thriving, but a few years ago I drove around the middle ring suburb where my dad grew up. In his childhood and even in mine it had been a solidly middle class Levittown clone. Tidy homes and yards, well-kept strip malls, and all. Now it's a textbook example of suburban decay. Entire blocks of houses that desperately need paint jobs and repairs. Deserted parking lots in strip malls with half the storefronts empty and the pavement cracked so badly a small child could get lost in the gaps. Independent businesses boarded up. Old people pushing grocery carts along nearly deserted sidewalks -- probably two or three miles each way to the supermarket. Not a pretty sight.

You see the same in Detroit, among other places. A suburb populated by wealthy or even middle class taxpayers can afford to keep up the infrastructure and economic engine to make it a pleasant place to live. One populated by low income people can't -- it soon becomes unlivable. That's going to be a conundrum for us to solve in this century. I hope we address it by building upwards and expanding public transit to make city-style living affordable again for everyone (which would also be a more efficient use of taxpayer dollars than repaving thousands of miles of roads and keeping up sprawling electric and water/sewer lines in suburbs where people wouldn't live if they could afford the city), but fear we haven't the political will to do so.

I live in a suburb and recently spent a large amount of time looking for a new job, after living in a small part of California with limited opportunities, and while I didn't have the best time looking for a position as a Software Engineer, it's not as if there weren't jobs in any suburb or downtown that I couldn't achieve. I'm not someone who would look to regularly commute downtown but there are both Metra and L-stations that I could access and it's not as if we don't have roads.

This sort of sprawl as an issue seems to be targeted towards growing cities and suburbs that are undeveloped in terms of resources and infrastructure. Many of Chicago's suburbs and surrounding areas have really deep histories and local roots. In this sense they become their own neighborhoods, cities, towns, and villages instead of just rows of houses without sidewalks or an endless stretch of strip malls.

I think it's also easy to carpool or work around bus schedules if that's really an issue to a commute, or buying an electric car for short journeys like that.

The second city is also in a much better position than many other cities in the midwest. Indianapolis and Minneapolis-St. Paul are a lot harder to get around from outside the city, especially if you don't have a car, so I could understand how moving further and further out could be a detriment.

There are a number of factors at play here. To pretend that just because people act a certain way that the decision is based in fact and logic ignores reality.

People don't use public transit because:

1. They don't want to mingle with the "lower classes."

2. Driving a car for a long time was a status symbol. It's less of a status symbol today, but the effects of this are still embedded in American culture. Those "with money" can afford a car. If you take transit, then you are "poor."

So if you take transit you are signalling to others that you are "poor." Or you are afraid that you might have to sit across from someone that is "poor" and that would make you feel uncomfortable.

3. Buying a car for a long time was also "supporting America" (cue people chanting 'USA! USA!') because you were supporting the Big 3.

4. People get annoyed at having to wait for things like the bus. Even of the bus runs every 10 minutes, the fact that you might have to wait 10 minutes for something is enough for people to get upset about it.