Tuesday, February 26, 2008

The Next Slum

The Atlantic Magazine recently wrote an article titled, The Next Slum, about the rapid decline of new suburban tract housing as the real estate market takes a down turn and homeowners are now making life style changes to live closer to where they work. The suburbs of Charlotte, which have been particularly hit hard by the real estate crises as has many communities across the nation, has seen McMansion neighborhoods that were built during the real estate boom of a years ago turn into slums.

Atlantic Magazine writes:

"At Windy Ridge, a recently built starter-home development seven miles northwest of Charlotte, North Carolina, 81 of the community’s 132 small, vinyl-sided houses were in foreclosure as of late last year. Vandals have kicked in doors and stripped the copper wire from vacant houses; drug users and homeless people have furtively moved in. In December, after a stray bullet blasted through her son’s bedroom and into her own, Laurie Talbot, who’d moved to Windy Ridge from New York in 2005, told The Charlotte Observer, “I thought I’d bought a home in Pleasantville. I never imagined in my wildest dreams that stuff like this would happen.”

Who would have ever thought that suburban tract housing located in the fringes of American cities would become America's next slums. What is your opinion? Have you observed any suburban blight in your local metropolitan region?

To read the entire article, click here.

2 comments:

Don said...

Yes, and it has been going on for quite some time.

The Next Slum sounds kinda harsh, though.

Toure Zeigler said...

Interesting, as a Maryland native I really havent seen this occured other then inner-ring suburbs which are declining due to their age and other social issues. I have seen new suburban commercail centers fail that temporarily blighted a neighborhood but I've never seen new housing turn into a struggling neighborhood within a few years like what happened in Charlotte.

True, Next Slums is kind of harsh, I prefer using the word blighted.