As a Generation X suburbanite, I was given the opportunity to grow up with one of the more idyllic childhoods ever known to human history. But the unique factors that made the American suburb possible in the first place have been systematically eliminated, thereby rendering them, like the USA itself, unsustainable.
Visit old neighborhood for the first time since 2009. 30% of the houses have been on the market for 5 years. Average age has doubled, nobody who grew up there can afford to live there. Aunt gets emotional talking about the lack of kids in the neighborhood on Halloween. House across the street is a revolving door of Indian immigrants with vehicles and garbage on the lawn. Was my hometown just unlucky, or has the upper middle class suburb died a slow painful death in the past 15 years?
Unfortunately, the Boomers who raised their children in the suburbs were never committed to those communities the way people who grew up in small towns and city neighborhoods were. The suburb was populated by transients; the homes were never designed or intended to be handed down over the course of generations, nor, for the most part, were they. Everything from property and inheritance taxes to reverse mortgages and Boomer consumption patterns militate against the survival of the suburb in America.
Contra the lies of the Hellmouth’s urbanites, Suburbia was a wonderful place to live, even if it was a consequence of American atomism and the geographic dispersion of the American family. But it’s hard to imagine much of it lasting another 70 years.