Slumburbs

The suburbs were once the knife tip of American growth, part of the classic American dream, along with a stable job, a family of 3.982 individuals, a pension fund that would probably exist when you reitred, and 1.01 golden retrievers. Why would you live in the noisy, busy, claustrophobic city when you could have your own peace and quiet in the burbs?

Some banking regulations were wiped away, and banks started doing naughty things. They grouped a bunch of subprime mortgages together (mortgages given to people with poor credit scores and high risk of defaulting...think: Ds and Fs for grades). They took these subprime mortgage bundles and slapped a AAA (like A+++) rating on top of them. Repeat, repeat, repeat...until late 2007, when it came back to bite us all in the derrieres. This is what caused The Great Recession of 2008.

With the financial crisis of 2007-2008, lots of people had to foreclose on their homes. Markets went down. Everything was...bad. Through this meltdown, the once peaceful suburbs became slumburbs. Slumburbs is a not-so-nice name for suburbs that were once the crowning achievements of nearby cities that are now, well...kinda slum-ish. The mass foreclosures made some suburbs half-way ghost towns, which in turn took a toll on local businesses previously supporting these communities.

While the financial crisis of '07-'09 may have sparked the discussion around slumburbs, many see now, in retrospect, that suburbs...aren’t so great. American’s middle class is dwindling, and mixed use buildings are coming into vogue, mixing in living with businesses. No more commute from the burbs into the cities, and no more ghost towns. Slumburbs.

The term is even used to talk about redlining. Back in the day, blacks and Latinos were segregated to lower-quality housing and worse loan terms than their white counterparts. The 1968 Fair Housing Act made redlining illegal, bringing racial and ethnic minorities out of the slumburbs that redlining created for them. It's still a work in progress.