Exurbs Expanding

Census: Americans are Fleeing Big Cities...

Americans are leaving the nation's big cities in search of cheaper homes and open spaces farther out.

Nearly every large metropolitan area had more people move out than move in from 2000 to 2004, with a few exceptions in the South and Southwest, according to a report being released Thursday by the Census Bureau.

Northeasterners are moving South and West. West Coast residents are moving inland. Midwesterners are chasing better job markets. And just about everywhere, people are escaping to the outer suburbs, also known as exurbs.

Here in Woodstock, IL we have layers in our suburban/exurban community.  We are our own city where older local residents used to know all the families of Woodstock and where they lived.  Many of them are in their 70's and 80's and the city is changing shape. 

We are growing rapidly with city dwellers leaving to find affordable housing.  Right now we have people in our church who were born here and will die here in the next few years as well as people who have just moved in to get a more "country" feel.  Others are moving in and occupying large houses in large, new housing developments and have plenty of money.  Most newcomers want less crime, better schools, better marriages, a better retirement, more time for recreation and to generally be left alone.

These are challenging times.

Comments

[Matt Stokes]

Someone brought this up in another thread, sort of, but here's a rhetorical question for all of us. How do we convince people that Christ calls us into community without being a legalist about having folks over for supper?

I know we're called to hang out, but I get nervous just thinking about people being at my house for more than two hours. I'd bet I'm not alone.

[Steve McCoy]

Matt, I certainly can't get into how to do the good things God calls us to do without making them legalisms. I would simply say to read and meditate on the Bible (Acts 28:7, Rom 12:13, 1 Tim 3:2, 1 Tim 5:9-10, Titus 1:7-8, Heb 13:2, 1 Peter 4:9). Also go to OT passages on hospitality, and there are many.

We get nervous, I think, in part because we don't regularly practice hospitality. Make it a practice and take some risks and it will become a regular part of life. And I don't say this as someone who is practicing hospitality as I should. God is stretching my family on this one, and we are setting some goals for the summer.

[Ryan DeBarr]

I left the Baltimore/DC area for just this reason. When starter townhome developments have signs saying "Starting in the low 700's", it's time to leave.

I am a Systems Administrator by trade. I was not poor. I just got tired of flushing my money down the drain.

[Anikisan]

Hi Steve,

Out in LA there are some intersting new twists on this phenomenon that kicked off after WWII. The suburban move seems to be exhausting itself as it runs up against the natural proclivities that God has put in us all at creation. That is the Trinitarian breathed desire for community.

Some new communities out West are being designed so that you can walk to everything and porches are being put on the front of houses (50's-90's track homes always have back patios). I think Christians need to jump on the wave of community development. After all, the church has always been an integral part of the community but when we have a heavy "spiritual church" emphasis and aren't at the table, then who is to blame?

Bottom line, parish ministry, and hence, wonderful opportunities and expectations for hospitality, is coming back into vogue.

[Matt Stokes]

Anikisan: There's a lot of great information about new urbanism out there. I think Christians can, with great discernment, be involved with this.

[Ryan DeBarr]

I'm leary of giving too much weight to human political and economic theories. As an even younger man I was an anarchocapitalist.

But we do need to realize that sprawl is not natural. It's natural for cities to be compact. Zoning regulations have forced people to spread out. Road construction has been used by politicians as a way to buy votes. During the Cold War there was a concerted effort by the Federal Government to get people out of the cities so that one nuke couldn't kill everyone.

The decline of suburbia is just the result of natural economic forces. The system is trying to get back to some sense of sanity.

[Michael Foster]

"During the Cold War there was a concerted effort by the Federal Government to get people out of the cities so that one nuke couldn't kill everyone."

Ryan, I studied History in college and I don't think I've ever heard that, which doesn't me it isn't true. Most likely I skipped that day to go hiking. Either way, do remember the source that you got that from? If not, no worries.

[Matt Stokes]

Michael: I'm working on my M.A. in History. I'm not sure about governments planning suburbs for that reasons, but certainly interstates and the idea of a spread out community were part of that development.

I think it's fair to mention that the development of the 'burbs was primarily innocent. It wasn't the result of somem desire to shut ourselves out from one another. A post in another thread suggested that problem isn't so much subdivisions (as distinct from suburbs) as it is a problem of childlessness and involvement based upon common interests, as opposed to community.

Maybe Dr. Mohler is on to something.

[Hutch]

David Brooks writes in his classic treatment of subururbia a few years ago:

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/001/531wlvng.asp

One of the problems we have in thinking about the suburbs is that when it comes to suburbia the American imagination is motionless. Many people still have in their heads the stereotype of suburban life that the critics of suburbia established in the 1950s. They see suburbia as a sterile, dull, Ozzie and Harriet retreat from the creative dynamism of city life, and the people who live in the suburbs as either hopelessly shallow or quietly and neurotically desperate. (There is no group in America more conformist than the people who rail against suburbanites for being conformist--they always make the same critiques, decade after decade.)

The truth, of course, is that suburbia is not a retreat from gritty American life, it is American life. Already, suburbanites make up about half of the country's population (while city people make up 28 percent and rural folk make up the rest), and America gets more suburban every year.

According to the census data, the suburbs of America's 100 largest metro areas grew twice as fast as their central cities in the 1990s, and that was a decade in which many cities actually reversed their long population slides. Atlanta, for example, gained 23,000 people in the '90s, but its suburbs grew by 1.1 million people.

Moreover, newer suburbs no longer really feed off cities. In 1979, 74 percent of American office space was located in cities, according to the Brookings Institution's Robert Puentes. But now, after two decades in which the biggest job growth has been in suburban office parks, the suburbs' share of total office space has risen to 42 percent. In other words, we are fast approaching a time when the majority of all office space will be in the suburbs, and most Americans not only will not live in cities, they won't even commute to cities or have any regular contact with city life.

[Matt Stokes]

Hutch:

Excellent points, but I have doubts about the empty city theories. Lots of loft development and a growing commitment to urbanism may help all that. Maybe not, I don't know. Call it the Sex and the City effect.

[Ryan DeBarr]

Michael, I really don't remember it. I was an econ major for three years... it came up a few times, and I've read it since then. The gubmint made a concerted effort to spread out the population so that a few nukes couldn't kill half our population and destroy our industrial capacity.

The problem with that is, it's just cheaper to live in neighborhoods where you can walk to the store. And I think Americans are getting tired of having to fight traffic twenty minutes to run to Albertson's or Target, when in the old days they could just walk to the market. And of having to drive the kids to baseball practice.

At least *I'm* tired of it. But then, I didn't grow up in suburbia.

[Hutch]

Some people are moving are moving back to the inner city cores as the result of the "new urbanism" - but I do not think the numbers are that large in comparison to the continuing exodus further and further out in the suburbs. I think that the new urbanism is kind of over-hyped - primarily because lots of young journalists live in lofts downtown and believe living in the city is a superior lifestyle. And it is a wonderful lifestyle if a person is 25 and single, a homosexual, or a married empty-nester.

But once most college-educated, middle class white people have kids, they want to move to the outer suburbs. Sure the outer suburbs may require more driving (but the driving is decreasing because more office space is built in suburbia now). But the outer suburbs also mean bigger and cheaper houses, bigger backyards, safer neighborhoods for the kids, fewer sex offenders living nearby, better school districts, neighbors who raise their own kids to be high-achievers, more big box stores,etc.

Read the article by David Brooks I quoted from and linked to above ("Patio Man and the Sprawl People" in the 8/12/02 Weekly Standard). If you can't get the link to work then google the article. The article is long, but it does the best job of explaining the outer suburbs of any article that I have ever read.

[hutch]

Steve,

Could you correct that first sentence in my last comment - I wrote "are moving" twice.

[Ryan DeBarr]

I almost moved to Baltimore City, but in the back of my mind I wasn't sure I was staying in the area. Housing in "gentrifying" neighborhoods is MUCH cheaper in an inner city than out in the suburbs- but you gotta fix the houses up.

Baltimore City's housing market near downtown is booming... it's the only place the under 30 crowd can afford to own a home. Tons of people live there.

The problem is, as hutch said, nobody wants to stay in the inner city once they have children. Once the babies come, get out ASAP.

[Matt Stokes]

Ryan: What about homeschooling or Christian schools? That's one component to the problem of kids in urban areas.

[stew]

Ryan & Matt,

Here's an idea - move into the inner-city, harness the natural forces of "gentrification" for the Kingdom, and raise your kids there. You will be the ones that will keep the schools and teachers accountable, because, as achievers, you have access to resources, and you have a desire to see your kids excel. Thus, by your very presence and intentionality, you become a blessing to an at-risk community who don't have the same education, background, upbringing, and access to resources that you do. What if?

[Matt Stokes]

Stew: I am getting married in August, and this is something that my fiance and I discuss often. Part of the problem with the city is that those with resources (financial, education, etc.) have left it. I'm not sold on home schooling yet (not opposed, mind you), so we'll see in a few years. I am very much open to living in an urban area so long as it is relatively safe.

[Ryan DeBarr]

Well, I moved OUT of the Baltimore area, so it's not an option now.

As for private schools: I'm not sure how many good private schools there are in that city. I mean good private schools that aren't for rich kids.

If I had kids, wouldn't sacrifice them in the Baltimore City school system. I'm not opposed to public schools (I went to them) and I don't think they're all terrible. But Baltimore's are. They have serious arson problems- the kids think it's fun to burn down the school house. They're terribly underfunded. They're so bad the state has been threatening to seize control of them. That idea is akin to letting my kids play on a corner where drugs are dealt, so that they can be salt and light. No, I don't think that's appropriate.

[Ryan DeBarr]

I've had a burden for (not necessarily a callin to) inner cities for ten years or so. But they're a hard, hard place to work. I'd much rather my kids grow up in Africa than Baltimore City. The near west side of Baltimore is the most dangerous place in the USA. It's great to love sinners, but as a man- how do you do the first without sacrificing your duty to your family? No easy answers there. I'm sure God can make a way.

Exurbs are growing because suburbs are growing. I living in Columbia/Ellicott City, Maryland. They don't have a small town feel to them any more. They now have some of the same problems that large cities do, such as gang violence. So the desire of many now is to move even farther out.

The libertarian side of me says let them do it. Another side of me realizes that sprawl is a huge problem, and one that is artificially promoted by government programs.

[Ryan DeBarr]

I meant to say: I *was* living.

I have been leaving words out of my sentences for the last couple days.

[Nick P.]

Ryan -

I lived in Laurel for a little while. Went to the mall in Columbia. Small world.

Did you do systems administration for a pretty big organization there?

nick

[Ryan DeBarr]

I worked for a medium sized engineering firm. 1600 users in 50 offices across 4 continents.

I'm unemployed in Louisville. I had one job, but had to quit it.

[stew]

Matt - I would definitely encourage you towards moving into the city or the inner-city. In many places, the question is not "Will gentrification occur?" - it is already happening. The real question is: "Will we harness gentrification for the Kingdom?" Will believers do gentrification justice-style?? - that's the question. Think about Nehemiah... he, in a sense, harnessed the market forces (since he was governor he could control those things) for justice and God's purposes. Why can't we?

James Boice wrote a book called "Two Loves, Two Cities" where he argues for people to move back into the cities (he says that cities are desperately under-represented by believers). And that coming from a very theologically conservative pastor... Something to think about. Tim Keller, of course, talks about the same things.

Disclaimer: MY SOAP BOX - Where in the world does anyone, please tell me, find "safety" as a top value and motivation for the decision-making of a Christian? I hear that so many times when I ask people to come and move into my inner-city neighborhood. "Is is safe?" Is it safe? I'm sorry, did Jesus, when asked by the Father, before the foundations of the earth, to come to earth and die... do you think Jesus asked, "Is it safe?" I can totally understand asking "Am I called?" But I'm afraid that if we care too much about safety we will lose our voice as prophets in a hedonistic, self-centered, self-absorbed culture in which we are called to live subversive, Kingdom-minded lives...

ok, my rant is done...

[stew]

Ryan - I totally understand your concern about the downfall of educating your children in underfunded communities. With a family of my own (and 1 due in July!) this is a constant struggle we wrestle through as a family. Bob Lupton had to wrestle through this as well when he moved his family into inner-city Atlanta 35 years ago. Some of his meditations and struggles are priceless in his book, "Theirs is the Kingdom". I would highly recommend the book for anyone who has any sort of pull towards or passion for the inner-city.

What I have found is this: the reason why schools suck is because good-intentioned people like you and me, 50 or 60 years ago, decided that they would pull out and leave those communities. They left to pursue a (what seemed harmless at the time) lifestyle marked by personal peace and affluence. They had good motives but bad practical theology - one that sought to flee from the "dark pull" of the city. Instead of facing decline and darkness head-on, they left. And with it they took their resources, their churches, their good schools, their banks, and their drive for progress.

But, the very motivation and drive that makes us so critical of those schools could be the very motivation and drive that God could use to redeem those schools. If our kids went to an under-funded school, don't you think we would fight like hell to make sure that school would get more funding? Don't you think we would rally like-minded parents and storm city hall with justice-minded ideas and plans? Don't you think we would start or revitalize an obviosuly failing PTA? Don't you think we would be knocking on every big business' door saying, "We know you've got money to give - why not give it to this school?"

And in the process of doing what we thought was best for our kids, don't you think that we might just end up being a HUGE blessing to a bunch of other kids? Even if it was by accident, imagine the effects. What if God's people were like that?

[Ryan DeBarr]

Stew,

I'd agree with you that the loss of the inner cities was a travesty that is in many ways due to selfishness on the part of middle class whites. But honestly, it was also partly due to race riots where people had their homes and business torched. That's all in the past, but the present reality is that their shadow remains and large city politics are such that school reform is very difficult.

I definitely don't think children should be sheltered- and I don't think it helps make strong Christians. As a former Fundamentalist, I know tons of people who were very sheltered and their faith was not made stronger.

However, I think there's a balance between having our kids experience reality and throwing them into an almost impossible situation. I'll probably send any children I have to a public school but I would NOT want them to attend the Baltimore City public school system.

There are too many people for us all to have a half acre and a 2800 sq. ft. home in close proximity to a large city. We need the kind of density found in large cities. Energy is getting too expensive for exurbs to remain practical. But there are some real hurdles in the way and I don't think it's realistic to say that putting your kids in inner city schools is going to get us there.

[Joe Kennedy]

You know, all of you could move to New Orleans and rebuild there. The school system stinks and the next hurricane to come (I predict early August) will destroy it for good, but it's urban and there's definitely nowhere else to expand. Any takers?

Yeaaahh, didn't think so.

[stew]

Joe - why don't you move to inner-city Memphis with me? That's where most of your former New Orleans peeps ended up anyways... B.B. King, BBQ and sweet tea - who could ask for more?

[Anikisan]

Stew, you wrote:

"Where in the world does anyone, please tell me, find "safety" as a top value and motivation for the decision-making of a Christian?"

Here it is:

1 Corinthians 7:26-27
"I think that in view of the present distress it is good for a person to remain as he is. Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be free. Are you free from a wife? Do not seek a wife."

And…

1 Corinthians 7:32-34
"I want you to be free from anxieties. The unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord. But the married man is anxious about worldly things, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided. And the unmarried or betrothed woman is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit. But the married woman is anxious about worldly things, how to please her husband."

A little oblique I know but still germane. It gets more complicated with kids. I don't think Paul is saying being concerned about your family's safety is wrong, just that being single eliminates those concerns.

The one gripe I have about allot of pushy neo-urbanists is that they tend to be single or w/out kids or they live in dinky cities. LA/NY/Chicago are places a father needs to consider the costs (including safety) very carefully.

[billmelone]

I'm with all of you generally in terms of issues over living in the city. Heres one area that I'm wondering about though--can you and your suburb/exurb church partner with a church that is already in the innercity (theres lots of them here in philly) as a legitimate way to at least get the church in America started on reaching out to the cities? I would consider christians actually living in the city a better thing but ministry needs to be done through local churches so what do you think about churches and cities, not just individuals and cities?

[stew]

Anikisan - I appreciate your feedback, and for pointing out those verses. I'm having a hard time, though, figuring out how those verses can be interpreted to mean that "safety" should now be a top priority for Christians. I could, however, interpret that verse to mean what it says - as a husband my interests will be divided.

You're right, it gets more complicated with kids. I understand what you mean - I have a 17-month-old boy and a girl due in July. Living in the inner-city doesn't get easier when you have children. And it certainly doesn't get safer. But, again, please tell me where "safety" is a top priority for me, or for any believer for that matter. Is it even in the Top 3, the Top 10?

I'm not saying "be stupid and wreckless" and throw wisdom out. I just want, with my words and lifestyle, to challenge our American, cultural, lopsided values that always make us scared to go places that *might* be dangerous.

"And looking out into the crowd, Jesus began to teach them, saying, 'Blessed are the safe'..." What??

Yes, I would consider myself to be a pushy neo-urbanite (only because, as James Montgomery Boice pointed out, cities are unbelievably under-represented by believers). No, I am not single or without kids (in that order, thankfully). And no, unfortunately, you don't have to go to NY/LA/Chicago to be challenged. Memphis, where I live, has the nation's second-highest violent crime rate among large cities. In addition, the rate of robbery and burglary are among the nation's highest. It also happens to be the 2nd most segregated city in the U.S. Pretty sorry track record. But a great place to do ministry.

[Anikisan]

Stew,

I think you're making priority distinctions that aren't demanded. In other words, Jesus gave us many commands but I suppose the most all-encompassing would be "follow me." Unfortunately (or fortunately) he didn't tell us exactly what that means in every situation and so we have to pray and ponder wisely.

Ponder wisely. Here's where we have to be careful with our own decisions and very, very charitable with others. We are nowhere commanded to go to cities though history ends in a garden city. The entire organs of our western society (civil, entertainmnt, educational) today is more antithetical to families then perhaps at any other time in history. In the past the organs worked for the family now they actively subvert it. I can't demand that people move back to cities because Christ never commanded it.

I was a gang-banger and lived in El Barrio out in LA and later pastored in East LA. I'm a little exhausted with the endless problems caused by dangerous inner-city living. I want my kids to grow up in a safe environment. I really wanted to go back to pastor in the inner-city but realised it wasn't what was best for my family now. Perhaps, as an empty-nester it will be the right time.

[stew]

Ankisan - You make a great point about the potential distinctions. You're right - Jesus doesn't tell us exactly what He means when He says "follow me". It was never my intention to make priority distinctions. Only to point out the strategic nature of city work. Not to the exclusion of any other work, just pointing out the great disparity that lies between what is and what could be in God's kingdom.

Thanks for the wisdom - you have experiences I can't even identify with, but it sounds like they have given you a tender, father's heart. I appreciate and can learn from that...

[Matt Stokes]

Joe: Lori and I hope you're doing well, but there is no way I'd move to New Orleans. I loathe that sort of humidity. And it's a hard town to be a vegetarian.

Stew: Edifying words to consider. Thank you.

[Joe Kennedy]

Stew: Hah, thanks, but amidst all the chaos in New Orleans, I have a pretty good thing going. I need to finish what I started there.

Matt: Thanks, I am. And the humidity is the second most evil aspect to the city.