Suburbanization

Suburbanization is a population shift from central urban areas into suburbs, resulting in the formation of (sub)urban sprawl. (Sub-urbanization is inversely related to urbanization, which denotes a population shift from rural areas into urban centres.) Suburbanization is a population shift from central urban areas into suburbs, resulting in the formation of (sub)urban sprawl. (Sub-urbanization is inversely related to urbanization, which denotes a population shift from rural areas into urban centres.) Many residents of metropolitan regions work within the central urban area, and choose to live in satellite communities called suburbs and commute to work via automobile or mass transit. Others have taken advantage of technological advances to work from their homes. These processes often occur in more economically developed countries, especially in the United States, which is believed to be the first country in which the majority of the population lives in the suburbs, rather than in the cities or in rural areas. Proponents of containing urban sprawl argue that sprawl leads to urban decay and a concentration of lower income residents in the inner city. In the United States, suburbanization began to occur in mass amounts after World War II, when soldiers returned home from war and wanted to live in houses outside of the city. During this time America had a prosperous postwar economy, there was more leisure time available and an increased priority in creating a family unit. Throughout the years, the desire to separate work life and home life has increased, causing an increase in suburban populations. Suburbs are built for particular groups of people and around certain industries like restaurants, shopping, and entertainment which allows suburban residents to travel less and interact more in the suburban area. Suburbs in the United States have also evolved by increases in technology, which allows residents to work from home rather than commute. Recent developments in communication technology, such as the spread of broadband services, the growth of e-mail and the advent of practical home video conferencing, have enabled more people to work from home rather than commuting. Although this can occur either in the city or in the suburbs, the effect is generally decentralizing, which works against the largest advantage of the centre city, which is easier access to information and supplies due to centralization. Similarly, the rise of efficient package expresses delivery systems, such as FedEx and UPS, which take advantage of computerization and the availability of an efficient air transportation system, also eliminates some of the advantages that were once to be had from having a business located in the city. Industrial, warehousing, and factory land uses have also moved to suburban areas. Cheap telecommunications remove the need for company headquarters to be within quick courier distance of the warehouses and ports. Urban areas suffer from traffic congestion, which creates costs in extra driver costs for the company which can be reduced if they were in a suburban area near a highway. As with residential, lower property taxes and low land prices encourage selling industrial land for profitable brownfield redevelopment. Suburban areas also offer more land to use as a buffer between industrial and residential and retail space to avoid NIMBY sentiments and gentrification pressure from the local community when residential and retail is adjacent to industrial space in an urban area. Suburban municipalities can offer tax breaks, specialized zoning, and regulatory incentives to attract industrial land users to their area, such as City of Industry, California. The overall effect of these developments is that businesses as well, and not just individuals, now see an advantage to locating in the suburbs, where the cost of buying land, renting space, and running their operations, is cheaper than in the city. This continuing dispersal from a single city center has led to other recent phenomena in American suburbs, the advent of edge cities and exurbs, arising out of clusters of office buildings built in suburban commercial centers on shopping malls and higher density developments. With more and more jobs for suburbanites being located in these areas rather than in the main city core that the suburbs grew out of, traffic patterns, which for decades centered on people commuting into the center city to work in the morning and then returning home in the evening, have become more complex, with the volume of intra-suburban traffic increasing tremendously. By 2000, half of the US population lived in suburban areas. In many countries of Europe, sometimes cities became seen as dangerous or very expensive areas to live, while the suburbs were seen as safe places to live and raise a family. There are periods of opposite developments like urbanization. During Communism, most socialist countries in the Eastern Bloc were characterized by under-urbanization, which meant that industrial growth occurred well in advance of urban growth and was sustained by rural-urban commuting. City growth, residential mobility, land and housing development were under tight political control. Consequently, sub-urbanization in post-communist Europe is not only a recent but also a particular phenomenon. The creation of housing and land markets and state withdrawal from housing provision have led to the development of privatized modes of housing production and consumption, with an increasing role for private actors and, particularly, for households. Yet, the regulatory and institutional frameworks indispensable to a market-driven housing system – including housing finance – have remained underdeveloped, particularly in south-eastern Europe. This environment has undoubtedly stimulated housing self-provision. Clearly, different forces have shaped different outcomes. Long-suppressed urbanization and a dramatic housing backlog resulted in extensive peri-urban growth in Tirana (Albania), which during the 1990s doubled the size of the city whereas war refugees put pressure on cities of former Yugoslavia. Elsewhere processes of suburbanization seemed dominant, but their pace differed according to housing shortages, available finance, preferences and the degree of 'permitted' informality. The process was slow in Prague during the 1990s and more apparent after 2000, when housing affordability improved. Conversely, Slovenian and Romanian suburban developments visibly surrounded cities/towns during the 1990s. Nonetheless, socialist legacies of underdeveloped infrastructure and the affordability crisis of transition differentiate post-socialist suburbs from their Western counterparts. Various degrees of informality characterized suburban housing from illegal occupation of public land (Tirana), illegal construction on agricultural private land (Belgrade) to the unauthorized but later legalized developments in Romania. Suburban housing displayed a chaotic/unplanned character, especially in south-eastern Europe, where the state retains a degree of illegitimacy. Excepting scattered for-profit housing, much of the new detached suburban houses seem self-developed. Allegedly, owner-building has become a household strategy to adapt to recession, high and volatile inflation, to cut construction costs and, finally, to bridge access to housing. The predominantly owner-built feature of most suburban housing, with the land often obtained at no cost through restitution policies or illegal occupation, allowed a mix of low-/middle-income households within these developments.