Bobert Contreras’ Blog in Back to the City reports on the recent corporate recognition that some social trends are moving people back into cities, as both United Airlines and Walgreens have reinvested in city centers.
United Air Lines is set to move its operational headquarters, starting this year, from the Illinois suburb of Elk Grove to downtown Chicago. Quicken Loans, also citybound, recently began leasing space in Detroit and plans to build its headquarters there. And in February, Walgreens announced its acquisition of New York drugstore chain Duane Reade, signaling a deliberate decision to improve its capabilities in urban settings.
These companies are getting a jump on a major cultural and demographic shift away from suburban sprawl. The change is imminent, and businesses that don’t understand and plan for it may suffer in the long run.
To put it simply, the suburbs have lost their sheen: Both young workers and retiring Boomers are actively seeking to live in densely packed, mixed-use communities that don’t require cars—that is, cities or revitalized outskirts in which residences, shops, schools, parks, and other amenities exist close together. “In the 1950s, suburbs were the future,” says University of Michigan architecture and urban-planning professor Robert Fishman, commenting on the striking cultural shift. “The city was then seen as a dingy environment. But today it’s these urban neighborhoods that are exciting and diverse and exploding with growth.”
Bobert C. and others counts this as part of a youth movement (aside from the reference to Boomers), a rebellion against the unhealthy suburban living that stands in great contrast to the entertaining and intense urban diversity available under New Urbanism. Cities are no longer dingy, but now are seen as thriving ecocenters, teaming with walk-to convenience and diversity.
This is an interest read of a real social phenomena, the renewal of the outlying boroughs of NYC do seem to provide solid prospects for experiences of community and vibrant lifestyle. But on the other hand it is also well recognized that city living simply is not sustainable in the green sense, and often goes against the grain of our deepest needs and values. Reporting on the Radical Homemaker’s Talk, Ernestine speaks about how hard it is in an urban enviroment to bring back to life the neighborly, garden-oriented, community pleasures of living right:
The question that I felt was never totally answered by either Hayes or the panel, is how to enact this kind of living in an urban environment. Sure, there’s a lot all of us could do to make changes that would bring our lives more in line with our values, but Hayes talked a lot about the ideal being turning our homes from units of consumption into units of production. It’s easy to see how this works on a farm, where the options to consume less are readily available and the options for production are obvious. But in my apartment, with no outdoor space and limited storage, what can I do? I think the easy answer would be to either become an urban forager (and dumpster diver) with a community garden plot, or to pick up a trade that can both provide me with a modicum of income as well as support some aspect of my life in a way that isn’t purely commercial (like, I don’t know… carpentry or dressmaking), but is that realistic for even many of us? I’m not asking to say that it isn’t, but I do know that the community gardens in my area are totally booked and it’ll be a long time before I know enough about dressmaking to make that useful for myself or anyone else. So what are the other ideas? How do we get by on less and self-produce more if we don’t have farms waiting for us upstate?
Ernestine Cabins was responding to a talk given by Brooklyn chicken coop keeper and author Shannon Hayes, who in her talk argued that the industrial revolution has taken away the art and craft of homemaking, literally the making of the home. To repeat, we all to some degree have lost the ability to make our homes. Instead our homes have become centers of consumption. Time and pressures of finance have compressed our lives, bringing us in need of more and more devices, and in so doing have taken us into habits that do not correspond with our deepest values.
These are very real and important questions. People are moving back into the city to find the sense of community and vital connection that often can be lost in suburbs, but also people who have lived in the city over time are also struggling with the deep sense that city living goes against some of their most cherished values, the sense in which they want to live. One doesn’t need to be a radical homemaker or an interested urban business watcher to see that these are real struggles to find meaningful ways of living. It’s one thing to realize that corporations have attached themselves to new markets and new conceptions of what urban living is, and quite another to truly ask, How is it I want to live? Yes, if one is going to live in the city, or out in the boroughs it is important to think about the values one is living by, and to do everything in one’s power to make your life match what you hold most dear. I for one, as much as I love the city, and much of what it stands for, cannot see myself devoting my homelife to what it represents. The answer is always in finding the right balance, the right amount of connectiving, the right standards of community, the right atmosphere of life.
fresh air and green grass 