Lower Home Sales, Higher Suburbs

Your home-energy bills might seem like a crime to you, but that's not why police departments from Florida to Washington state and up into Canada are examining suburban utility bills. The cops are looking for a tip-off that a home is being used as an indoor pot farm.

Raids of two houses near Miami late last month turned up marijuana operations worth nearly a million dollars a year in annual sales, according to the Associated Press. A coordinated effort by federal and local agents aimed at stamping out house farms is making hay in some top locales. "You can go into any neighborhood, the nicest neighborhood you want, and the person next door could be a marijuana grower," a Drug Enforcement Administration agent told the AP.

Detecting a pot farm isn't easy. Cops often rely on neighbors to notice when an empty house on the block starts to get regular visits from strangers. They also look for telltales like a spike in water or electricity use as pot growers provide their plants with rain-forest levels of moisture and artificial sunlight. In response, farmers tap illegally into electric lines or water mains to evade the meter. Besides running up energy costs for everyone else, these jury-rigged conduits sometimes electrify the ground outside the home.

So far, law-enforcement agencies are concentrating on drug syndicates, like the Cuban gangs behind many farms in the Miami area. But as the subprime crisis empties out houses across the United States and homeowners look for ways to make their mortgage payments, look for amateurs to get into the racket: One suspected grower arrested in Miami is an older woman known in her neighborhood as the lady who drives the ice-cream truck.

No Rush to Reform in Melbourne

Will the success of the real-estate market endanger smart growth in the suburbs? Outside Australia's city of Melbourne, politicians are siding with developers against the growth management group Melbourne 2030, according to a recent article in The Age, an Australian national newspaper. The capital of Victoria, Melbourne is Australia's second largest city, with a population of 3.2 million that grows by some 1500 people each week. Melbourne also boasts one of the lowest density rates in the world, with less than half the density of London (11 lots per hectare versus 25, but don't ask us what a hectare is.)

The authorities in Victoria have formed a commission to deal with the city's future growth called Melbourne 2030--named for the year by which Melbourne will have added another million people. The commission's goal is to study the best way "to comfortably absorb up to 620,000 extra households ... while protecting and enhancing our existing suburbs." This entails familiar steps like restricting suburban development to 40 percent of new building (from the current 60), and promoting commercial centers in residential areas that will encourage density and discourage the use of cars.

The usual objection to this sort of planning is that Australians--every bit as bent on upward mobility as Americans--won't give up their dream of owning their slice of the homeland and be shoved into apartments. And no less of an Ausssie icon than actor and Melbourne burber Geoffrey Rush (above; photo: Ken Irwin) has joined the opposition group Save Our Suburbs in protesting suburban high-rises. (S.O.S. has proposed that Melbourne 2030 leave posh burbs east of the city alone and direct its do-gooderism to the newer towns to the west.)

But local planning experts say the bigger threat to Melbourne 2030's plans is that politicians have become spoiled by unbridled growth. "The Government’s primary objective is to keep the building industry going because it’s essential to the Victorian economy," observes Bob Birrell, Monash University’s Centre for Population and Urban Research.

Bear this dynamic in mind as the U.S. housing market comes back from the dead in the next few months: its arguable that the building boom here forestalled for nearly two years the downturn we're experiencing now.

Dallas's New (Old) Boomburbs

Not so long ago, Dallas's inner-ring suburbs were going the way of the dodo bird. Young couples, tired of long exurban commutes and flush with realty-boom dollars were moving downtown, "buying up 60-by-140 foot lots and stacking them with 4,000 square feet of living space," Nathan Halsey, a Dallas-area builder told House & Garden magazine in 2006. Fighting back, residents of suburban redoubts like Lakewood and Vickery Place formed conservation districts to protect early 20th century cottages and Modernist slab houses, many of which had been only recently reclaimed from years of neglect.

So it's nice to see a piece like this weekend feature in the Dallas Morning News, about the centennial celebration happening in Winnetka Heights, a nabe in the Oak Cliff area of the city. Founded in 1908 and sold by developers as "an ideal suburb," Winnetka Heights is a mix of grand homes and Craftsman cottages, earning it an historic designation in the early '80s. (The area was also home to the Southland Ice Company, the first store in a chain that became 7-11.) That vote of confidence from the city encouraged homebuyers to restore the larger dwellings that had been broken into apartments to single-family homes, and A combination of good schools, diverse population and a "live-and-let-live" attitude, according to one resident, make it emblematic of a suburb that's adapted succesfully to urban pressures.

The Crash That Wasn't, Part V

The argument on this blog, since before the real-estate bubble popped, has been that a collapse of home prices is unlike the collapse in technology stock prices in the early 2000s, or the bubble now being forecast in environmental technology. The difference is pretty simple: a lot of tech-bubble money was invested in startups that promised to deliver unneeded services, or ones already provided efficiently by the offline market. And if a green bubble is indeed brewing, it's because there is more money being aimed at developing carbon-reducing technology than there are legitimate products to fund. Historically, that leads to unrealistic investments, and a crash.

Alex Tabbarok, a economist at George Mason University, makes the obvious point in today's New York Times that housing is neither unneeded nor overfunded. "Much of the increase in prices was a rational response to changes in fundamental factors like interest rates and supply," writes Tabbarok, noting that "land is hard to come by in places like Manhattan and San Francisco," and other coastal areas where people seem to prefer to live. Even in inland areas, Tabbarok adds, "zoning and other land-use regulations have made [housing] scarce." As a result, he predicts that home prices will settle at about 2004 levels. While there was speculation and while we feel bad for anyone who was forced to buy at the peak of the market, for most 2004 is not a bad number. We seem to remember that prices for houses then made them an insanely good investment.

The Season of Green

Suburbs may be by definition a rum deal for the environment (see last item). Or maybe green-ness is just something that occurs later in a suburb's life cycle. In Levittown, N.Y., often called America's first suburb, local authorities are pushing the owners of the village's 17,000 once-identical houses to improve the energy efficiency of the aging burb one house at a time. Few of Bill Levitt's one-story capes look at they did when they went up in the 1940s amid Long Island's potato fields. But it's estimated that more than a third have their original boilers; replacing them would save as much as 1.5 million gallons of fuel oil annually. Under the aegis of Green Levittown, which hopes to convince every homeowner to make some upgrade, discounts and low-interest loans will be offering for residents upgrading appliances, heating systems, even lightbulbs.

Levittown isn't the only town to come to its environmental senses in middle age. Around Washington, D.C., some areas have begun to reform themselves around newly erected Metro stops and their attendant, walkable shopping districts. Critics point out that making individual homes more eco-friendly won't save the planet, and that the greenest communities are those that are planned that way from the start. But focusing on the money and resources that can be saved while giving older burbs necessary may be an easier sell than asking developers of new areas to forego profits.

Dublin's Not So Fair Suburbs

The Lonely Planet guide reports in its latest issue that Ireland is losing the battle to remain green. The culprit, of course, is the car. Ireland has taken admirable measures, says the hipster guidebook's 8th edition, to encourage recycling with its tax on plastic grocery bags and is a leader in organic farming and eating. But the sustained economic boom from the 1980s onward drove housing prices in Dublin out of reach while putting the price of a new car into workers' pockets. That's the recipe for suburban development, which in turn deepens the car culture. Lonely Planet also bemoans the collateral decline in public transportation in a country where the bus and train networks were top notch.

It's not like the Irish didn't try; one of the most depressing conclusions to be taken from their experience is that the boom-to-burb cycle is almost unavoidable. In the early '80s, efforts were made to contain Ireland's economic rave-up by redeveloping inner-city areas of Dublin and restricting growth to the "western towns." But the profits to be had in building low-density sprawl made sure the urban renewal programs largely failed. But restrictions, it seems are not enough. Commuters and other landscape despoilers need positive reinforcement to stay in town and build and ride smart outside it.

Palaces of the Week

With the real-estate market in such disarray and the word recession pounding in our ears lately, you might expect the realty pages of the local newspapers to tone down their House of the Week features. But maybe there's something in an economic downturn that makes a mansion that much more gawkable. The Courier-Journal of Louisville is touting the Leichleiter home in Mockingbird Valley, just east of Kentucky's biggest city. The Valley has the highest per capita income in Kentucky, and the tenth highest in the United States. Fittingly, the Leichleiters' is a 5,200-square-foot colonial where personal space is the focus of the design. The elder daughter's room, gushes the C-J, is "pure girl"--purple and pink with white wrought-iron twin beds and a fuchsia chaise. The master of the house, the CEO of a healthcare company, keeps a library with leather-covered walls that "exude masculinity."

The Los Angeles Times, meanwhile, offers a Spanish colonial filled with "old California charm." On the block at $15 million, this 10,116-square-footer has 23-foot ceilings. Outside are a pool, barn, and paddock.

Homes like these are more House of the Year than House of the Week. Or maybe House of the Boom that Was.

Village Elders

The New York Times most emailed story for the past two days has been "A Grass-Roots Effort to Grow Old at Home," a phenomenon that shows how much of the grass roots wants to stay close to its roots in old age. The story concerns semi-official or downright impromptu groups of elderly who are conspiring to stay in their homes even after they are unable to completely care for themselves or their surroundings—sometimes upkeep of the house can be the biggest challenge. For now, this is a mostly urban phenomenon, but the suburbs is where these groups have found their greatest utility: handymen and drivers (for trips to the grocery store, to the doctor, or anywhere off the block) are often a suburban oldster's most immediate need. As the inner-ring of suburbs gets older and the next generation splits for other states, or at least other, farther suburbs, groups like this will be more necessary for older folks to see out the project they began mid-last century.

The article gives a list of email addresses for groups the reporter mentions. But anyone who is concerned for their own older neighbors can simply knock on their door and see if they need any help.

Woodstock (Re)Generation

Woodstock, Georgia is not as famous as New York's, but the Bible-belt town and the home of rock's supernova have one thing in common: they've both had to figure out how to deal with a mammoth population explosion. Considered "out in the country," barely a decade ago, the Atlanta exurb, 30 miles north on I-575, has doubled in size since then. Where many burbifying areas have been swamped by that kind of growth, Woodstock is considered the poster child of the Livable Centers Initiative, which the Atlanta Regional Commission, helped by the feds, funds "live-walk-play" districts near shopping and transportation.

Woodstock's participation in the plan was to rezone to accommodate residential buildings with retail space below, including sidewalks with room for shoppers on foot. A developer, Hedgewood Properties, already had its eye on the town. They were given the master plan and told to come back with a project that fit in. We wanted a community focused on people rather than vehicles," town planning officer Richard McLeod told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "We can go down the road of being another suburban wasteland, or we can go the way of being economically and environmentally sustainable." Today nearly 1,000 homes (above, left) and condos are either underway or being planned in a lively downtown that used to shut down at the close of business every afternoon. A website dedicated to the revitalization (named, a little perversely, Olde Towne Woodstock) keeps residents and visitors abreast of events like farmers' market days, cooking classes and town council meetings. Nothing on there at the moment about a music festival.

Grilling By the Numbers

The results of the 18th annual Weber Grillwatch are in. The headline on the survey, commissioned by the Microsoft of the grilling industry, is that more than half of all grill owners now own a charcoal grill, as opposed to gas. The surge in charcoal use seems to be a collateral effect of the increase in grilling by people 35 and under. These younger grillers are grilling more often, and they prefer charcoal.

Here's why we'd consider these stats obvious: as the average age of first-time homebuyers goes down—last we saw it was dropping past 30—the average age of people with grills also drops, since what is a house without a grill in the backyard? Those youthful homebuyers are more likely to have lower incomes than their older neighbors, and are less likely to afford a gas grill (a basic gas kettle runs about $100 more than a charcoal kettle).

Our favorite tidbit: Grillers in the deep South used charcoal by a wide margin more than others. Unlike their fellow grillers in warm states, who have switched largely to gas, the Old South's spatula-jockeys have stuck with the bricks. Being rump traditionalists, perhaps they simply prefer the authenticity of charcoal, not to mention the flavor. (Sixty percent of all grillers said they prefer the flavor of grilled food.) But it could be that Southern grillers are simply poorer, and so can't spring for gas.

In any case, it's time to get grilling. Sixty percent of those who own a grill do so on Memorial Day, sharpening up their spatula skills for July 4th, when 81 percent cook outdoors.

When Stars Get Over the Hill

The San Fernando Valley may be "America's Suburb" as this winsome blog about "lesser Los Angeles," claims but there's been nothing down-home about the place lately. When Britney Spears melted down in the Valley last month, the L.A. Daily News was quick to point out that Brit was only the latest Hollywood denizen to choose the relative banality of the suburbs in which to go bonkers. It was Sherman Oaks where an armed Martin Lawrence wandered into traffic shouting, "Fight the power!" Studio City saw Jack Nicholson go at a fellow driver's windshield with a golf iron. Wags might say it's the suburbs themselves that drive the stars mad; Britney's past six months argues that the stars are listing a little to port already.

Lately, though, the San Fernando Valley is starting to twinkle with its own stardust, as the vogue for mid-century Modern extends to suburban kitsch. The Valley is the perfect place for the winking retro chic of Suburbia, a salon on Ventura Blvd. in Studio City, founded when "celebrity hair stylist and colorist Jennifer Nash decided that Beverly Hills was 'so over the hill'," according Suburbia's website. Opened in November, the faux-mod spot has already appeared in The Hollywood Reporter and on E! Online.

Harold and Kumar Kill Zombies

When zombies invade the burbs in "Monster Madness: Battle for Suburbia," a forthcoming game for XBox, it's up to the local teens (left) to fight them off. Decent! But "Battle for Suburbia," as described in the gamer press, misses a few beats: for one thing, the outsized, buffed and baldheaded would never be mistaken for suburbanites. One of the great gags of the classic horror flick "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" was that you couldn't tell the walking dead from the city dwellers shuffling through their daily lives. These invaders are different than you and me. The settings for the skirmishes, despite praise from gamer-reviewers, are pretty lamely drawn and only one—The Shopping Maul—is recognizable as a typically suburban spot.

What strikes us as genius is that instead of conventional gamer weaponry, the collection of nerds, Goths and skaters wields whatever lies at hand in the suburban landscape: basketballs, lawn furniture, propane tanks and nail guns. The cheerleader twirls her ordinance, and one kid lays hands on grandad's home defibrillator. And while one reviewer takes exception to what he calls the "obscenely sexy," to our eye, that's what they're wearing at our mall, anyway.

Too Good to Be True: Debunking Suburban Legends

The Washington Post published an article over the weekend that has no place on a blog: sane, optimistic—even relaxing—and truly counterintuitive, at least about the suburbs. In "5 Myths About Suburbia and Our Car-Happy Culture," Ted Balaker and Sam Staley, both contributors to the libertarian magazine Reason, argue that if we really want to solve the global warming crisis, driving less isn't the place to start. This isn't the place to debate their scientific claims, and anyway, we think driving less is a life-affirming goal apart from what it might do for the planet. (So, it seems, do they.)

But along the way, Balaker and Staley put to rest some anti-suburban truisms that are ripe for debunking. To wit: "Americans aren't addicted to their cars any more than office workers are addicted to their computers," they write. "Both items are merely tools that allow people to accomplish tasks faster and more conveniently." It isn't as much fun to talk about the suburbs without this cliché, but it sure is refreshing.

Suburbanites don't even depend on cars more than other Americans, the two point out. Cars are the dominant form of transportation for all types of communities, and have been for a long time. In the 1930s, when suburbia in the modern sense had yet to occur, three of four households owned a car.

Balaker and Staley betray their libertarian worldview when they argue that, while herding people in cities might be more efficient use of land, "single-family houses, malls and shops would have to make way for a stacked-up style of living that most don't want." The implication being that suburbia is not a deleterious side-effect of freeway building and developers' greed: people live in suburbs because they like to.

An Architect Dies, Leaving Modernism Alive and Well

After a more than three decades of neglect, Modernist homes have become collectors' items. Philip Johnson's masterpiece, the Glass House in New Canaan, Conn., is opening as a museum this Spring, even as other classic Modernist homes in that high-priced suburb are looking for deep-pocketed buyers to care for them for the next half-century. In several cities societies dedicated to celebrating and preserving Modernist buildings have cropped up, and in Southern California, houses designed by the likes of the mid-century master Richard Neutra have become movie stars in their own right.

Despite their rebirth as national treasures, the supply of Modernism may be too deep, at least in the West, for mid-century homes to be hoarded like rare gems. This is thanks in no small measure to Dan Saxon Palmer, who died a month ago in Los Angeles. With his longtime partner, William Krisel, Palmer designed the first subdivisions in the San Fernando Valley (above), most of them built by the developer George Alexander. "They took on one of the great problems of Modernism, which was to create good, decent contemporary housing that was affordable for the masses," architectural historian Alan Hess told the Los Angeles Times this week.

Krisel has described the partners' early L.A.-area work as "transitional" modernism, since sales-minded developers didn't cotton at first to the severe lines and butterfly rooves that later became a Palmer & Krisel signature. Only after the pair had transformed the desert around Palm Springs with some 2,500 inventive and very successful tract homes could they have their way in L.A. "After Palm Springs, we could do those kinds of houses here. Because you've got to understand," said Krisel, "a tract builder is like a sheep. He follows."

Obama Unbored by the Suburbs

The country is playing catch-up with Barack Obama, getting to know the charismatic U.S. senator from Illinois now that he is already considered the male to beat for the '08 Democratic presidential nomination. In a long profile (here on login-free The Seattle Times site) that ran on Sunday's front page, The New York Times officially introduced him to Northeast elite voters. Characterizing Obama as "modest and careful" in dealing with the media, reporter Jodi Kantor unearthed "a rare slip" during his early '90s tenure as president of Harvard's prestigious law review journal. "He told The Associated Press," notes Kantor, "'I'm not interested in the suburbs. The suburbs bore me.'"

It may be that Obama is now playing catch-up with the suburbs. On Martin Luther King Day, Obama pulled off a "minor coup," according to the Daily Southtown, when he traveled to Chicago's south suburbs to speak at St. Mark Missionary Baptist Church, an African-American megachurch in Harvey. Harvey isn't the affluent consumer-culture haven the Times imagined when it coined the phrase "suburban populism" elsewhere in Sunday's paper. Harvey struggles with crime and poverty, and a mayor who has been the subject of several Southtown articles about town-hall corruption. Obama felt their pain while showing that the close-in burbs are on his national agenda. "Obama suggested the money sent to rebuild Iraq should be spent to rebuild towns such as Harvey," wrote Southtown reporter Guy Tridgell.

The trip to Harvey was unexpected both because St. Mark pastor Bishop William Jordan has supported Republican candidates in the past (though he backed Obama in his senatorial campaign), and because downtrodden Harvey didn't seem a large enough stage for a man ramping up to run for the White House. "If I recall Dr. King, he wasn't hanging out in Manhattan. Dr. King was not in Beverly Hills," Obama told the crowd at St. Mark. "Folks said, 'Why are you going to Harvey? Harvey has got a lot of problems.' I said, 'That's why I'm going to Harvey.'"