Blurred Lines: An Interview with ‘The End of the Suburbs’ Author Leigh Gallagher

Leigh Gallagher, author of The End of the Suburbs, talks about changing demographic trends, housing subsidies and how the delineation of “suburb” and “city” is getting fuzzier.

An exurban development outside Tucson, Ariz. that never got completed. Credit: Flickr user Dia-trib3

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A quick Google News search for the word “suburbs” on a recent Wednesday evening yields stories about MSX International moving its headquarters from outside Detroit and into its downtown, the way growing suburban poverty is affecting U.S. politics, and how more baby boomers are heading into cities.

This anecdotal zeitgeist seems to bear out the thesis of Leigh Gallagher’s new book, The End of the Suburbs: Where the American Dream is Moving. But as the Fortune editor acknowledges in her book and in our follow-up discussion to my review, the delineation of “suburb” and “city” is also getting fuzzier.

Next City: Even reporters that followed the housing crash seem to be following suburbanized statistics like New Housing Starts again, as if it’s a given that we should be collectively happy that suburbs are picking up. Doesn’t it seem like we are cheering as builders put the same intoxicant into the veins of our economy that led to this last downturn?

Leigh Gallagher: There is this sort of cheering, without any self-referential language about “let’s be more careful this time.” Folks are saying [in the press] that it’s harder to get a loan, but that that’s a problem. That’s the discussion.

It’s funny: If you look at the numbers, multi-family has done a lot better in the last few years. Multi-family is through the roof, whereas single-family homes have lagged. When you drill down through the numbers, you get a different narrative. But yes, the psyche seems to be, “This is fabulous and wonderful, and let’s bring out the champagne.”

Levittown, N.Y., the prototypical postwar suburb. (AP Photo/Levittown Public Library, File)

NC: Do you get a lot of pushback from folks about the idea that the suburbs are subsidized?

Gallagher: No. In general, I am getting a lot less pushback than I thought. Maybe I shouldn’t say that, because it will invite more. I was really prepared to get a lot of hate mail. I am challenging suburbia, and it’s what we stand for as a culture. Especially that notion that, from the start, that the suburbs were a top-down thing.

One of the common criticisms of people from the right is, “Get out of our houses. Don’t take away our single-family homes.” But, I think that it’s really hard to argue with the fact that those policies were put in place. It’s true. And, I do say, in the book, also, that the market did want it.

NC: Do you think your book is being read a lot in the suburbs?

Gallagher: It seems to be. Just today I got this note after an interview I did: “I really enjoyed this discussion. It’s such an interesting debate. But I love the suburbs.” That was meaningful to me. The hope is that there will be a bit more choice for everyone, rather than one or the other with nothing in between. Then I hear even more from people saying, “Thank God, I live 10 miles from the grocery story. I live 40 miles from my work. This is about time.”

People also really like to talk about their own suburban experience. People who grew up in the ’70s, especially, have a tremendous amount of nostalgia for them, and speak of them in these sepia-toned voices about their experience. But it’s not really that way anymore, for a lot of people.

NC: Did you talk to any politicians about the home mortgage interest deduction? Have you seen any weakening of the stranglehold that the idea has on U.S. thinking?

Gallagher: That’s really tough. I think there is an argument for why it should be reconsidered. It’s very hard to take away a tax benefit. I don’t know that there is a politician out there who would stand up say, “We need to eliminate the mortgage interest tax deduction.” It’s a third rail. Lots of economists agree, but there doesn’t seem to be any budging.

NC: If folks are living a car-based life, they are probably at more danger from a car accident than from, say, crime. But there seems to be a widespread idea that suburbs are safer than the city. I think you’d even find most folks in cities would say suburbs are safer. Whether it’s true or not, that idea seems to persist.

Gallagher: Maybe. But if they said that, they would be going on a stereotypical thinking of how things work. I didn’t actually get this raw data, but crime rates are on the rise in the suburbs. And they are falling in cities. Even anecdotally, you hear about gang rapes or teenage prostitution rings. A friend of mine was staying in Tarrytown, N.Y., and someone was shot outside of her door. Stuff that you never thought you’d see in the suburbs is happening.

And yes, they are dangerous for walking. I don’t know if it’s fair to say you are safer now in a city than in the suburbs. It’s also dangerous to cross a street in New York City. But there are reversals taking place, and I think crime and poverty is one of them.

NC: Your book does a good job of illustrating how suburbs that came up before the car — or early in the days of the car and before the pro-suburb federal policies — are very different from more recent ones. You showed a few different breeds of suburbs out there.

Gallagher: The age and the vintage of a suburb really says a lot about your lifestyle. The model was just totally different back then. Then we just kind of blew it apart, widened everything and supersized it. The idea just sort of mutated and metastasized.

NC: You went into a lot of detail explaining New Urbanism, but also mentioned how some urbanists criticize newer, denser, more walkable places as “New Suburbanism.” Why do you think there are pro-city folks who think new places designed more like cities aren’t good enough?

Kentlands, a New Urbanist development in Maryland.

Gallagher: It raises a kind of interesting philosophical question. What should the goal be: To have everyone move to cities? Or to have a better quality of life wherever you are?

The good thing about New Urbanism is that it recognizes that not everyone wants to live in a Manhattan skyscraper. Those communities are really interesting. It’s like Georgetown is cut-and-pasted into Gaithersburg, Md. (I’m talking about Kentlands there.) It’s really interesting to walk through these places and see what they are trying to build.

But they are expensive to build. They are oftentimes located in these remote places. But if someone is living a life they are happier with day to day, where they wouldn’t have had any other options if that didn’t exist, I think that’s a good thing.

NC: The Buffalo Commons you wrote about was a compelling image. Shifting a bit from that, do you think the day could come when a person can walk into a forest and find the remains of dozens of houses that nature has just grown over and reclaimed?

Gallagher: It’s totally possible. It really is. Buffalo Commons was more a policy-driven thing. But what you’re talking about is if the suburbs just deteriorate and we find suburban fossils. That’s possible in the exurbs. I think closer in that’s probably not going to happen, but anything is possible.

Next up, we will review Calcutta: Two Years In the City by Amit Chaudhuri, due out Sept. 10.

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Brady Dale is a writer and comedian based in Brooklyn. His reporting on technology appears regularly on Fortune and Technical.ly Brooklyn.

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Tags: suburbsurbanism

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