Building a better burb
By: J. David Chapman/March 16, 2017
I have written in this column in the past about Oklahoma’s propensity for sprawl. This sprawl has created opportunities for communities surrounding our large cities. The two metropolitan areas of Tulsa and Oklahoma City have been built on successful suburban communities. These suburbs are still relatively successful with good schools, manageable poverty rates, low real estate prices, and low crime. Experts are starting to question the sustainability of America’s suburbs and documenting problems and issues that are starting to show up in these communities.
As of 2014, 46.7 million people in the U.S. lived below the federal poverty line, which was $24,230 for a family of four. This number was essentially unchanged from poverty’s recession-era peak. What had changed was the spread of poverty beyond its historic urban and rural home into suburbia. The poor population in America’s suburbs climbed by 65 percent between 2000 and 2014, more than twice the pace of growth in core cities. In fact, for the first time suburbs became home to the nation’s largest poor population.
I have reported concerns in the past with the auto-centric nature of suburban communities challenging city resources as the infrastructure ages, requiring expansion, repair, and replacement. The car-dependent nature also creates challenges for low-income citizens who struggle with transportation costs without available public transportation. This lack of public transportation is a significant barrier to employment for the poor to reach employment and critical supportive services.
Suburbs are also less likely to have the needed social safety net. Analysis from the Brookings Institute finds that poor people’s requests to nonprofit groups for making housing payments, paying bills, and purchasing food have increased significantly in the suburbs from those that have never sought help before. The suburban safety net is often stretched thin across a large service delivery area as compared to urban core environments.
The remarkably high growth of suburban poverty contradicts most Oklahoman’s commonly held perception of suburbs as leafy subdivisions, gated communities, and wealthy refuges from poverty in urban Oklahoma City and Tulsa. The redrawing of America’s poverty map should cause Oklahomans to question long-held myopic views of the people and communities that typically see poverty’s effects. We should start now to break down urban-suburban silos and develop innovative regional approaches to tackle poverty that encompass both city and suburb.
J. David Chapman is an associate professor of finance and real estate at the University of Central Oklahoma (jchapman7@uco.edu).