Gun violence and car violence collude with sprawl

In 2020 gun violence overtook car violence in being the number one killer of children. According to a recent study in the Psychology of Violence isolation is one of the biggest predictors for the potential of violent mass shootings. People who live with a person who has a gun inside the house are seven times more likely to be shot and killed by the person with the gun and 84 percent of the time, the person murdered is a woman. 

The whiter schools in the suburbs and exurbs have the most fatal shootings and urban schools with a greater population of minorities have a higher frequency of shootings. Car and gun violence are symptoms of urban sprawl. Neither of those are better outcomes.

Urban sprawl is the movement of people and places to undeveloped places of nature such as green spaces, farms & orchards, deserts,  and wetlands — it impacts all socioeconomic classes and both urban and suburban communities. In addition to car dependency it also results in social isolation. 

Living on the edges of urban sprawl in the suburbs and exurbs are typically transit deserts which force long solo commutes. The configuration of neighborhoods with single family homes have been shown to be socially isolating —and in men that often manifests as violence. It might be why women in the United States are 28 times more likely to die by firearm than in peer nations.

The working class are being driven out to the exurbs that dot the nether regions of our major cities, while the dwindling middle class leaps head first into the newest suburb often named after the natural feature that was destroyed.  The tall oaks were all chopped down for Oak Ridge. The consequence of this poorly planned development is sleep deprivation for children and adults, creeping existential dread from the social isolation that turns those different from you into the potential enemy that wants to harm you, and car crashes, on purpose or accident, we can only guess if those are “accidents.” 

Other studies show that suburbia appears to be unhealthy for your mental health. Suburban populations have higher suicide rates than their urban counterparts. 

This is not an argument of if suburban, exurban or urban is better. Regardless geographic layout —the us vs. them that urban sprawl creates is a harmful dynamic. Its harm manifests itself in different ways in different geopolitical formations.

The problems of hypersegregation have long been documented through the study of forced sprawl by redlining. 

There are those who say that people have the right to live where they want. But it appears we are subsidizing rugged individuals’ panic rooms masquerading as houses. And do people really want to live under the land of sprawl?  Why do people choose to vacation in contrived communities like the Magic Kingdom or luxury locations like Mackinac Island that reminds one of urban centers?

Who would not want to get to work in 20 minutes on a relaxing bus, subway, or by bicycle? Who wouldn’t want fine dining, culture, and shopping within a walkable radius from home? 

In urban America peoples’ habitations have been decanted into the sprawling hinterlands with two-hour honk filled commutes because they can’t afford to be where they want to be.  Few will admit it, because it is humiliating to admit that you are too poor to live in the often mostly monoracial and monoclass Camelots that are many of our urban centers.  But instead of being embarrassed we should be furious. 

There was a time among the middle class when suburbia was high status —that is no longer the case. Suburbia has become poorer. Schools attached to property taxes have been de facto defunded by tax uprises owing to declining median incomes. Most can not afford a new car in the mass transit deserts with  long commutes, so they are leasing or driving an old car into the ground. The percentage of renters of the suburban American dream have grown. 

The idea of using your home for a safe retirement by building equity in the suburbs and exurbs are becoming unobtainable. 

Midrange and starter homes are being gobbled up by private equity firms forcing first time homebuyers and fresh divorcees to forgo ownership, remain renters and commuters, subsidizing the rich corporation’s mortgage payments.

People’s entire lives have become tools for the extraction of wealth that can be moved through them. 

And the extraction is slowly killing people. 

Often, the suburban per capita rate of crime is HIGHER partly because of the lack of eyes on the street. 

The website Nextdoor paints a picture of suburban America that seems increasingly unsafe and unwelcoming with a world filled with “strangers.”  Your opinion of your neighborhood actually declines with your participation in this fear mongering website and you become more fearful of your neighbors. Is it the website or suburbia that drives you mad?

Sprawl is killing our communities and it is killing us. It is imperative that we engage in practices that eliminate sprawl in our metro areas. We need to provide the working class with accessible housing in our metro centers. The funding of public transit must be prioritized, so that driving a car is no longer a necessity. This is not a battle between urban and suburban living, this is a battle of what can we do to reimagine what community can be in the modern United States.