From Bad To Worse: Could Natomas and Oak Park swap places?

It's like the real estate version of an unholy mating between The Parent Trap and A Nightmare on Elm Street: planners think today's suburbs are well on their way to becoming tomorrow's slums:

As Leinberger notes, new suburbs tend to be situated far from public transport, social services and commerce, so they are particularly bad places for people who can't afford cars. The housing stock isn't terribly flexible. Compared to the sturdy older buildings in the city that got chopped up into apartments, it's not easy to take a production-built house with three bedrooms and turn it into good multifamily housing. What's more, the neighborhood infrastructure isn't designed for higher density or commercial uses: The streets are often thinner, the pipes and drainage not built for heavier use.

Newer suburbs are also financially vulnerable: They depend on developers' fees and property taxes to pay for the communities. "When the growth stops and the property values fall," says Leinberger, "suddenly you're going to have this wicked situation where social costs are rising as funding dries up, but without any other tax sources from commercial or industrial activity."

Uh-oh, I think we're kinda screwed. The good news is that the trend toward more urban development is greener and healthier - "walkable" neighborhoods will be the rage of the future.

But that doesn't help poor Natomas, does it. It's been built and what's been built is bad. That should mean hope for Oak Park though, its smaller scale and proximatey to the city center should help it, right?

I would think cities like Tracy - which are like one big Natomas - probably have the most to fear.