I had my first taste of a collapsing exurb last night. On our way home from the beach, a friend and I decided to put the GPS through its paces and have the thing find us a grocery store close to our route. It put us at a Giant slightly north of Baltimore. Or rather, the ghost of a Giant, with the outline of the logo still visible where it had been ripped away. We passed through spectral scenes of shiny, empty office parks nestled between country bars and thriving tattoo parlors. For some reason, the eeriest most melancholy sight was the boarded up IHOP. When IHOP has left you, you really have been abandonned.
This is the housing bubble made visible--the hope with which developers built shiny new communities for people with modest incomes, and the swift ferocity with which credit contraction and high gas prices crushed those happy hopes.
« Humans are complicated, part 11,284 in a continuing series | Main | I've been memed » Exurbs delenda est21 Jul 2008 08:59 am Comments (34)
Wait a minute, Megan: "slightly north of Baltimore"? This sounds more like an older inner suburb than an "exurb." If you'll share the ZIP code, perhaps some Baltimorons can give us a better geo-demographic profile of the community in question. (I live in the remote exurbs of DC, and the IHOP here is still in business, along with Denny's, Waffle House, Bob Evans, etc.) 
The IHOP in the community where I live - which I suppose is an exurb - went out of business a few years ago, yet the town seems to be doing just fine. Basically, the problem was that the IHOP stunk.
Fascinating. Do you have pictures? Taken on that shiny new iphone?
Isn't that how the Baltimore exurbs *always* look?
My first thought when I heard "abandoned Giant slightly north of Baltimore" was the one at Joppa and Perring Parkway in Parkville, but I don't think there is a closed iHop near there, although there are some tattoo parlors. And that closed Giant probably has more to do with the shiny new Safeway across the steet, complete with Starbucks, than general economic malaise. As someone who lives slightly North of Baltimore (near a Giant that seems to be doing quite well), I'm very curious where this is.
"Slightly north of Baltimore" is pretty non-new-exurban - it's mostly older suburbs built to take advantage of the proximity of Penn Station. The urban belt that intervenes between Penn Station and delightful (and comparatively dense) neighborhoods like Homeland and Govans is is, however, straight-out-of-"The Wire" grim - it makes Georgia Avenue look like the Champs Elysees. It's the only place I can remember seeing houses cinderblocked up. But I have spent a lot of time looking at those North of Baltimore suburbs - Mt Washington, Homeland, Towson - and I have to tell you, they beat an urban area all hollow once it comes to raising kids. And the ones I have seen are pretty vibrant.
"shiny, empty office parks" Empty! On Sunday night! Imagine! The economy must have cratered!
I think there's a closed IHOP near Perry Hall, right where 95, 695, and Rt. 1 all meet at the north end of 695. But the Giant over there was open and thriving last I checked.
Like Ostap, I wonder about the phrase, "shiny, empty office parks". Are they empty this morning?
Parkville would hardly qualify as an exurb. Coming from the Beach assuming you were coming down 95 from Delaware, you would have to get out near Churchville and Elkridge for exurb status, and even then most people I know who live out there do not commute to Baltimore. While the housing bubble has had an impact on a lot of communities up there, they are not being impacted nearly as much as communities in Western Loudon and Prince William Counties in Virginia. If you ended up in Essex, Middle River or even Rosedale, you were in an area where economic stagnation has nothing to do with the housing bubble. Mad Anthony - It has been awhile since I lived in the Parkville area. Is The Christian Soldier Gun Shop still on Harford Road near 695? I never went in there, but it was always my favorite store name.
My guess is Megan was coming back from a NJ beach. If it was from Delaware beach, then she's got to be afraid of bridges. Which beach did you go to Megan?
I'm not sure you can generalize much of anything about the US from what goes on economically in Maryland. It's such a unique mishmash of economic conditions with Baltimore to the east and DC to the west, Bethesda, poor rural areas, the wealthiest majority African-American county in the US and so on. At any point, you can be just a few miles (sometimes only an hour or less away by car) from a country club, a poor housing project and a dying farm.
When IHOP has left you, you really have been abandonned. I don't know about that. There are tons of alpine A-frames housing Chinese, Thai, and Indian places; one suspects they are abandoned IHOPs rather than purpose-built for Asian cuisine.
Ha, Mr. Cowen beat me to it. As somebody who grew up in Northern Virginia, I must warn you that a good portion of Maryland has looked as you described for the last 20 years... save Bethesda, Annapolis and a few other small pockets.
The death of the suburbs has been greatly exaggerated. The thought makes new and old urbanists salivate, but they won't get to dine. 90% of all metropolitan growth has been in the burbs since the last census and shows little sign of abating. Growth patterns and types of growth will change with credit problems and energy costs but changing the trend is like raising taxes to balance the Federal budget.
As another person who lives in a suburb slightly north of Baltimore (Perry Hall in my case), I am also confused at this post. The housing market around where I live has softened considerably, but most local businesses are doing quite well. Supermarkets and drug stores are being added, not subtracted, because the population has boomed recently with all the new housing developments. The business infrastructure is just now starting to catch up to the population. From the description of bars and tattoo parlors, my guess is that she was driving along Route 40 up near APG. Which has never really been a thriving suburban community, although the tens of thousands of new jobs coming in from BRAC might make it that way in another 5-10 years.
As somebody who grew up in Northern Virginia, I must warn you that a good portion of Maryland has looked as you described for the last 20 years... save Bethesda, Annapolis and a few other small pockets. No, a good portion of Maryland does not look like that. To make such a statement only shows that you have not spent any time there. You can't even say that all of Baltimore is like that.
Yuppies eunt domus!
Yuppies eunt domus! "People called Yuppies, they go the house"?
I too am curious what "slightly north of Baltimore" means. In fairness, "Baltimore" is itself ambiguous. There is Baltimore County and Baltimore City. The city is for all practical purposes a seperate county, and has been since the mid-19th century. So if the "Baltimore" Megan was slightly north of was the city, she was in Baltimore County and probably inside the beltway. If it was the county, then she was considerably further out, probably in Harford County. Parts could qualify as exurban, and there might be a neighborhood such as she describes.
Worse Latin than Megan's even. If "Yuppies go home!" is what you want to say, you should use the imperative form of the verb and (I think) the ablative form of the noun. Yuppies ite domo! may not be right, but it's certainly closer.
"Romani eunt domus" was a gag in Monty Python;s Life of Brian. A colonized Judean is caught by a Roman centurion painting "Romani eunt domus" (Romans go home/People called Romans they go the house) on a wall. A Latin grammar lecture ensues, and the Judean is left to paint Romani ite domun 500 times on the Coliseum wall. Just read Roac's comment in John Cleese' voice, then segue to the Sex Ed--Lecture and Demonstration scene of Meaning of Life.
Don't bother, I'll do it for you, I do a pretty good John Cleese voice. Despite having somehow missed ever seeing Life of Brian. P.S. This new post-rationing feature is pretty stupid in my opinion.
I don't think it's intended as post-rationing, is it? Its main effect seems to be an error message, causing some posters (like me sometimes) to use the back button and hit post again, only to find later on two copies of the same post.
I'm curious about where Megan saw this as well, having grown up in Harford County (just northeast of Balto). Harford had a population explosion in the 80s and early 90s, and conventional wisdom attributed it to commuters pushing further north away from the city. Anecdotally, though, it seems like most people I knew and know in the area work either in the county (mostly blue collar or military stuff) or, less frequently, in adjacent suburbs like Hunt Valley or Towson. I agree with dantonj. This must have been a NJ beach (Wildwood? Cape May?), or else Megan wouldn't have found herself slightly north of Balto. Also, there are no beaches in MD, as Marylanders just go "deon dooda shoor."
Did Scipio Africanus start this phrase out with the imperative, 'Carthage must be destroyed!' This was about 149 BC. Carthage at that time I think had rebuilt itself as a trading center but did not pose any military threat to the Romans. I think the Romans started out with a celebrated screw-up of military technology. Carthage was a naval force; the Romans developed some kind of dropping ramp that would, at the end, impale a ship for boarding. It turned out to be hard to make contact and the Romans lost a division trying it out. Perhaps the saying of a Mexican president, 'Poor Mexico; so far from God, so near to the United States' had it's origin in his reflecting on the history of Carthage and Rome. It would have suited that situation better.
EDGEWOOD!!!
Actually, Cato the Censor was the one addicted to the phrase "Carthage must be destroyed" and he and Scipio Africanus were political enemies. In fact, Cato succeeded in driving Africanus into exile where he died in the mid 180s BC long before Carthage was in fact destroyed by the Romans...
I thought about this a little more, and I still can't figure out where Megan was. My first thought was up by Aberdeen, but at that exist (#85) there are 2 strip malls on either side of the road, both with open and operating supermarket. One exit down (80), again there's a strip mall with an open supermarket immediately off the exit. Anything north of there is not a Baltimore suburb, even straining the definition. The next exist down is Route 24 (77.) Here again, there's an older establish strip mall with an open supermarket a block off the exit, and another block away has a huge fairly new development with a bunch of big box stores, including the largest Target in the state of MD. The only possibility I can think of is the mountain road exist (74.) That area is very residential and there's not much in the way of businesses around the exit. It's possible with all the new developments up at exit 80 and down in the white marsh/perry hall area (exit 67), that some businesses might have left the Mountain Road area. Regardless, this area is not a newly developed exurb--it's a fairly old and established area. Heading farther south you hit White Marsh which has boomed recently, and then you hit the Baltimore Beltway and are into the city. Whatever you'd call that area, exurban it ain't.
. Also, there are no beaches in MD, as Marylanders just go "deon dooda shoor." We always went "Down 'nee Auchun" to Ocean City Maryland.
Hmm. Conditions in my Baltimore exurb some 500 miles to the southwest sound exactly the same! Of course, they moved the Walmart across the street to a larger location (okay, that was 10 years ago, but let's not split heirs!), Walgreen's is building brand-new stand-alone stores here for the first time, while competitors CVS and Rite Aid do the same, abandoning their general purpose strip-mall locations in favor of property that conforms to their corporate design. Unemployment is up to its normal levels after falling a micron or two during the boom, and preferred, "ambitiously priced" real estate that failed to sell during the housing boom continues to go unsold. If the sky isn't falling, I just have to wonder what sort of apocalypse we're now facing. Is that horsemen I spy on the horizon?
That should be, I believe, Exurbes delenda sunt. For the first thing, it is Exurbes delendae sunt. Exurbs, exurbis, third declension feminine (urbs is feminine). delendae is a feminine plural nominative gerundive (also known as the future perfect participle). Delenda is only a plural for the neuter gender. Did Scipio Africanus start this phrase out with the imperative, 'Carthage must be destroyed!' Grammatically, this is not an imperative. It is a Future Passive Paraphrastic.
Megan, have you been reading Gladiator-at-Law before bedtime again?
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That should be, I believe, Exurbes delenda sunt.
Posted by roac | July 21, 2008 9:27 AM