Suburbs
losing families to new developments far from cities
By Jonathan Poet
Associated Press Writer
COLLINGDALE, Pa. — The neatly aligned rows
of attached homes were once inhabited by the families of workers
who toiled in nearby factories.
Eighty-five-year-old Tony DeVito was one of them,
working at a now-closed Westinghouse factory in nearby Lester, where
hundreds of employees made turbines. And while plenty of people
still pass the handful of Collingdale’s downtown shops on their
way to the trolley to Philadelphia, the borough’s population
is falling. The 2000 census put it at 8,664 residents, down 18 percent
from its 1970 peak of 10,605.
“I don’t know what it’s going to
be like in, say, another 10 years. I don’t think this neighborhood
will be any better than some places in Philadelphia. It’s heading
downhill,” said DeVito, standing on the front porch of his
early 1900s brick rowhouse. “Taxes are pretty high. ... I would
like to move out farther, near my brothers and sisters.”
Across the country, old, often small suburbs such
as Collingdale that were among the first to welcome the cities’
middle class are seeing their populations dwindle or stagnate while
outer suburbs grow. The people who remain tend to be older, poorer
and in greater need of social services — from elderly care
to unemployment assistance. And that, experts say, could threaten
the long-term economic and social health of the region.
Nowhere is the national shift more apparent than
in Delaware County in suburban Philadelphia. The gridlike streets
of its older, inner-ring suburbs just outside the city limits are
filled with older homes. The western towns, on the other hand, are
dotted with farms, bright strip malls and brand-new developments
where three-bedroom, two-bath houses start around $250,000.
Roughly bisected by Interstate 476, Delaware County’s
boroughs and townships between the highway and Philadelphia saw
a population decline of about 2.2 percent between 1990 and 2000.
To the west of the highway, farther out, the number of residents
grew by almost 5 percent.
The trend can be seen in older cities across the
country, in suburbs outside Detroit, Pittsburgh, even Boston.
And for every shrinking suburb such as Collingdale
or Northwoods, Mo., near St. Louis, there is a Collegeville, Pa.,
or Wildwood, Mo., outer suburbs where the population ballooned about
90 percent during the 1990s.
The explanations are numerous.
Among the clearest is the availability of cheap
land. Americans’ love for their cars and tolerance of long
commutes has only bolstered the shift.
That’s what is happening in Collegeville,
about 25 miles northwest of Philadelphia.
Judy Miller, a real estate agent for 19 years,
said pharmaceutical companies have drawn thousands of workers to
the area. Other residents simply prefer a place where new luxury
homes sit next to wide-open farms.
“People tolerate the commute because they
want to be in a more rural area. We have all the conveniences here,
all the shopping they need, good schools,” Miller said. “They’re
willing to commute to get more house for their money.”
Those left behind by the migration create greater
demand for social services.
“You had poorer communities being asked to
provide more services for people who increasingly couldn’t
pay for the services,” said Bill Fontana, executive director
of the Pennsylvania Downtown Center, a nonprofit group that encourages
downtown development. “It’s a real nasty downward spiral.”
It’s much the same as the downward spiral
that has threatened big cities for decades.
But the suburb’s size works against it.
“Many of these communities are small in terms
of population and tax base,” so falling tax revenues can more
easily hurt city budgets, said Barry Seymour of the Delaware Valley
Regional Planning Commission in Philadelphia.
That’s a problem facing Bucks County. Home
to one of the original car-centric suburbs, Levittown, its older
bedroom communities are competing with new housing developments
25 miles from downtown Philadelphia.
Manufacturing was strong when the old suburbs were
built in the 1950s and ’60s. But manufacturers, from steel
plants and their ancillary businesses to textile mills, moved away,
taking jobs with them.
For example, Fairless Works, a sprawling U.S. Steel
plant along the Delaware River, once employed more than 8,000 workers
who each year made more than a million tons of cold rolled steel
and tin mill products. Today, all that’s left on the site,
where overgrown grass is overtaking corrugated metal buildings,
is a remnant of the business and a few hundred workers.
But the county is trying to turn things around
by helping the communities find ways to reuse industrial sites,
subsidize public transit and use tax breaks to encourage development
along the river, said Lynn Bush, executive director of the county
planning commission.
Officials want to improve public access to the
river — the county has about 75 miles of Delaware Riverfront
— by converting old industrial sites to housing, office buildings
or parks.
Known for its quaint antique shops and farmland,
Bucks County also has an aggressive program to save open space,
funded by a $59 million bond issue approved by voters in 1996.
“We’re trying to focus on what’s
really important to us, what makes Bucks County special,” Bush
said. “We need to recognize that it’s a waste of resources
to abandon the useful.”
Indeed, experts say turning around the population
declines and improving the economic health of older suburbs depends
on taking advantage of their strengths, such as the quality of older
houses.
“The older suburbs have better locations,
transportation, rail services that new suburbs might not have,”
Seymour said.
The same notions apply to commercial activities,
such as shopping. Unique shops and personalized service go a long
way toward keeping alive small, downtown shopping districts.
Elaine Hubing, owner of The Country Hub gift shop
in downtown Ambler, has been in business 15 years.
“It’s a different feeling, a more personal
feeling. That’s what we strive for,” Hubing said. “The
people who come in don’t like malls. We keep hearing from our
customers, ’I love shopping in small towns.”’
On the Net:
Delaware Valley Regional
Planning Commission
Pennsylvania
Downtown Center |
