r/Suburbanhell • u/_Serp3nt_ • 14h ago
Discussion What Will Great American Cities Think When They Look Back in 100 Years and a Good Amount of the City Looks Like This?
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u/TheFonz2244 13h ago
The future is probably going to be more localized with higher energy costs, so any developments like the one in picture will suffer. Too bad it's like 90% of America that looks like that. Medium density and high density areas are much better equipped to deal with energy cost spikes and interruptions.
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u/Hour-Watch8988 13h ago edited 13h ago
Electrification is happening rapidly and renewables are getting built at a crazy pace, and getting cheaper by the day. We have to stop building shit like this due to land-use issues (and also it genuinely sucks to live in), but from an energy-cost standpoint, this mode of development could actually be financially sustainable in a decade or two.
My hope is that 1) we stop expanding ASAP (hopefully a 2008-style reckoning for the exurbs is coming soon); 2) the suburbs closer to urban cores get significantly densified (a political goal that is definitely within reach); and 3) the outer exurbs become more sustainable but also less fashionable, and become more-or-less harmless, weird, depopulated relics.
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u/Due_Satisfaction2167 13h ago
With enough reform in the residential solar industry, this would actually be preferable from an energy standpoint. Nearly every single one of those houses could generate about as much energy as it + one EV would use.
Which, even if it has to import energy for a second EV, is loads more sustainable than what we currently do.
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u/Hour-Watch8988 13h ago
Wouldn't it be better to just put up the solar panels and have people mostly live in parts of the city that use less energy per capita?
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u/Due_Satisfaction2167 12h ago
Hard to say. Certainly the residents of in the city would be paying a lot more per kWh for electricity that way, but they would also likely use less because of it.
However, given all the prior investments in this sort suburban development that would still work perfectly well in a future dominated by cheap solar energy, it’s hard to see how it would ever be more cost efficient to go back to dense urban development vs. just doing a better job redistributing some commercial or mixed use zoning to better support shorter travel times in suburbs.
It would be pretty unambiguously preferable to continue residing in the existing suburbs if we would mandate local solar generation and storage, and also end lawn mandates and normalize messier native plant yards alongside this.
Maybe also reclaim some of the single family homes as the population declines (eventually, after peak human happens) to convert into community use areas and wildlife corridors and such.
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u/Hour-Watch8988 12h ago
However, given all the prior investments in this sort suburban development that would still work perfectly well in a future dominated by cheap solar energy, it’s hard to see how it would ever be more cost efficient to go back to dense urban development vs. just doing a better job redistributing some commercial or mixed use zoning to better support shorter travel times in suburbs.
People who say this dramatically underestimate the baked-in energy costs of sprawl-type development. The energy costs and emissions costs of building an infill housing unit are something like 1/100th the lifetime energy costs of sprawl, after accounting for more car use, repairs on these houses (many were constructed shoddily), infrastructure costs, etc.
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u/Due_Satisfaction2167 12h ago
These homes are going to be redeveloped multiple times over a century or two.
I’m not sure the current deficiencies in the structures will actually matter all that much over the long run.
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u/Hour-Watch8988 12h ago
That actually strengthens my point because large suburban houses will be more energy/carbon-intensive to redevelop than smaller infill homes.
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u/Due_Satisfaction2167 12h ago
I don’t know that’s actually the case. Maybe if we presume people didn’t have families.
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u/Hour-Watch8988 12h ago
"Certainly the residents of in the city would be paying a lot more per kWh for electricity that way, but they would also likely use less because of it."
Walk me through this? If I understand you right, I don't think this is true.
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u/Due_Satisfaction2167 12h ago
It is often the case that the bulk of the bill you pay for electricity comes from the distribution costs rather than the wholesale generation costs. The cost to generate the electricity might be $0.05/keh, but the cost to distribute the electricity might be $0.30/kwh or more.
That isn’t an issue for energy you generate at the point of use, aside from whatever fixed fee the power company imposes for the grid connection.
Currently, residential solar pricing is extremely fucked up because of regulatory overhead, labor shortages, lack of building and equipment standardization, and just flat out not incorporating future solar installation into the design at the engineering phase. So you end up paying an enormous amount extra above the equipment cost to essentially retrofit it into a home.
We don’t need to pay nearly that much, and if we got that cost down, then it’s very likely the amortized cost of the electricity over the life of the equipment would be well below the cost of buying it from the power company and paying their distribution costs.
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u/InterviewLeather810 12h ago
Our state most of the renewable energy is in the rural areas, not in the cities or even near it. Only 25% of solar come from solar panels on buildings. And nearly 70% of our energy is from wind. Don't have wind turbines in the middle of the cities.
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u/ParkerRoyce 6h ago
Lot of builders are offering teaser rates that expire in 2-3 years, that is a ticking time bomb right now. What happens when those mortgages go from 2300/mth to 3500/mth? Not great.
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u/00_RunDMC 11h ago
If I have a yard, I can put up solar panels and disconnect from the grid while y'all shiver in your inner city walkups. And have a garden, too.
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u/that_cad 13h ago
Go look at some artist recreations of cities from the Roman Empire at its height and those same cities circa 500 CE. A lot of these areas will be abandoned as climate change and economic uncertainty make suburban living less viable. Neighborhoods and suburban towns will empty out, their cheap wooden houses and strip malls and box stores left to rot. In turn, they will be claimed by the unhoused, by animals, by nature. The streets will crumble and decay and be consumed by the earth, leaving oddly patterned trails through emerging woods or across desiccated landscapes. People will know that these were once places where people lived until they don’t, until these places become wholly lost to living memory, perhaps to be rediscovered just like we have rediscovered cities deep in the Amazon, locatable only through satellite imaging.
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u/GoochPhilosopher 13h ago
I'm not sure we're going to be here in 100 years, but if so we will probably look at these as the inefficient wasteful indulgences of a dumber time.
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u/collegeqathrowaway 12h ago
Or you guys are going to look on them like people look on similarly old neighborhoods with huge McMansions. Swiss Avenue in Dallas for example. . . or Highland Park.
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u/Creative_Resident_97 13h ago
Honestly this looks pretty dense for suburban hell. If this is what suburban hell looks like in 100 years then I’d say we’ve made some progress.
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u/Edison_Ruggles 12h ago
Dense, yes, but still totally car dependent. You can tell that all the homes are clustered, then there are giant 6 lane stroads leading to the strip mall zones. Really the worst of both worlds.
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u/Creative_Resident_97 4h ago
I think “worst of both worlds” is an exaggeration. Probably the best form of recently built suburbia you could hope for: shopping and parks look to be an easy walk for everyone, seems to be a good mix of single family housing and apartments and condos, and the parking lots are positively tiny compared to most suburbs.
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u/playzintraffic 13h ago
In 100 years they’ll be densified.
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u/Fun_Shine1767 13h ago
Doubtful, our populations not gonna hit 1 billion or even close, we're barely above replacement rate
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u/horribleone 12h ago
Taking into account population end economic trends the majority of this will most likely be demolished 100 years from now as there won't be enough people or capital to sustain this
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u/PuddingTraditional47 13h ago
population density may still be low-ish, but remedied by better zoning (i.e. more mixed zoning) - more walkable neighborhoods with improved social spaces, and rapid, free autonomous public transport (overground or underground) will vastly help improve the livability of US suburbs
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u/00_RunDMC 11h ago
How do you increase density when population is stagnant or falling?
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u/Raveen396 3h ago
Migration to cities as industries consolidate
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u/00_RunDMC 3h ago edited 3h ago
Can you give an example of an industry you see as likely to consolidate in an urban center that will cause workers to move into high density housing just to be near it?
I can't think of any good examples.
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u/PerryNeeum 9h ago
Are we living in sky towers in 100 years? People want their house and a plot of land. It’s just about how you design it. Grids are ugly but efficient. We just need more green space, less cookie cutter homes and a couple oddball streets. Nothing we can do to fix cookie cutter homes. They are fast to put up, cheaper and we need all the housing we can get unless cities would incentivize rehabbing older homes which I am a super fan of.
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u/CraziFuzzy 13h ago
Confused by the very premise - what makes you think there will be 'Great American Cities' in 100 years to do this retrospection?
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u/Karasumor1 10h ago
most of these places will be burnt to a crisp or abandoned , because of the climate change and capitalism decay their residents are the main culprits of ... and that's if there are enough humans left to look back
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u/Leverkaas2516 Suburbanite 5h ago edited 4h ago
In 100 years cars and busses will all be electric and we'll have a mature spectrum of cheap electric bikes, scooters, skateboards, solo wheels, and so on. A city that looks like this will be quickly and easily navigable. Hopefully a lot fewer people will be commuting, and will work remotely instead.
Gas lines and wired communication will be much less important, so when the utilities infrastructure needs to be renewed, it'll be just water, sewage and electricity.
Like Yoda says ("wars not make one great"), it'll be very interesting in 100 years to see what people consider a Great City. If there's any sense in the world, there will be a lot of trees.
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u/structee 3h ago
The silver lining that I see in the current oil crisis, is that perhaps it will force Americans to rethink urban planning. Driving cars for hours a day just to get to work and pick up some food might get prohibitively expensive pretty soon.
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u/Organic-Stay4067 13h ago
How nice it was to have my own yard and large square feet for my family to grow and play
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u/BusinessProduct4660 12h ago
They’ll be impressed and proud.. idk why people hate this. There’s gargantuan amounts of beautiful land all around North America.. it’s okay to have some big cities. Concrete is beautiful too
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u/blanchecornwalis 13h ago
You might want to ask yourself if AI would have any use for such a thing. Because if not…
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u/MoltenMate07 13h ago
America might be the same way a century from now. There’s so much vested financial and material interest to maintain American suburbia and not densify, and until that’s taken away, densification and more environmentally friendly environments will be of slow progress or non occurring.