12 ms·

Levittown

156 points by burlesona 7y ago

jdlyga 7y ago
Levittown, NY is a pretty interesting place. It was designed for your typical 1950s family with a single car. Nowadays, most people have two cars so you see a ton of cars parked in the street.
AceJohnny2 7y ago
The economic failings of these Boomer towns reminds me of this article in Citylab, about how cities pay for current infrastructure by selling more land for development. It's an unsustainable pyramid scheme. https://www.citylab.com/life/2011/10/suburban-sprawl-ponzi-scheme/242/ https://www.citylab.com/life/2011/10/suburban-sprawl-ponzi-s... Overall, these articles are an interesting insight into the hidden financials of urban development. And, sadly, the failings of those financial schemes.
kissickas 7y ago
The houses that I've seen in Levittown and the nearby towns don't seem particularly empty - is the residential market dying as well or is it actually just the commercial properties? Hicksville, for one, seems to be livelier than ever and full of South Asian families and businesses that have given it a new life (although it looks slightly lower-class than I remember).
- YeahSureWhyNot 7y ago
  the article is talking about the Levittown in PA. btw fuck Hicksville, its overcrowded and has turned into Jackson Heights of Queens. Try driving thru Hicksville at 5PM
  - kissickas 7y ago
    Ah thanks for the correction re: PA. I saw that they were New York Sicilians and didn't pay attention to the fact that I didn't recognize the mall's name.
  - YeahSureWhyNot 7y ago
    do I automatically get downvotes from HN mods for saying 'fuck' ? are you guys sharpening your censorship skills before YC opens china office?:)))
    - dang 7y ago
      Users downvoted. No mods were involved. I imagine they downvoted because of the snarky swipe you took at some other place, but who can say? One thing though: please don't break the guidelines by going on about downvotes like this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - selimthegrim 7y ago
    What’s so bad about Jackson Heights?
- s17n 7y ago
  The article is about Levittown PA
mabbo 7y ago
> This was only made possible by enormous federal subsidies for returning soldiers and huge investments in public infrastructure by the federal government. > People ... couldn’t imagine returning to the city which continued to decline. I begin to wonder whether the demise of the city was really caused by the government subsidies of the suburban lifestyle. It's not that Levittown isn't sustainable anymore, it's that it never was, not on a long term scale. Low density living should be expensive because it is expensive. The government chose to invest in suburbs instead of the city. The city rotted without investment, exacerbating the problem. It's only the last couple decades as governments tightened their coffers that the suburbs have had to carry their own load- and they can't.
- burlesona 7y ago
  “It’s not that Levittown isn’t sustainable anymore, it’s that it never was.” I think this is a key point, really well expanded upon here: https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme
  - clarkmoody 7y ago
    To expand a bit more here, the Strong Towns folks argue that city infrastructure project costs do not factor in long-term maintenance. Growth is the driver of revenue in the short term (building permit fees, more expensive single-family homes paying property taxes). Once growth slows or stops, the party is over. Maintenance costs kick in, and the errors made during the boom time are revealed in the form of broken streets, abandonment, blight, etc. They consult with cities to target a 20-to-1 "return on investment" when taking on infrastructure projects. That means that the costs to build street or water pipes should result in 20x that cost in economic activity.
- mc32 7y ago
  Maybe it makes more sense to say losing population brings about viability issues. If people for whatever reason started to leave Oakland, I’m sure it would implode as much as a Vallejo would if they suddenly had an exodus.
YeahSureWhyNot 7y ago
there is a Levittown on Long Island, New York and its doing just fine economically even though you can tell that the children of the boomers who enjoyed the previous decades aren't so comfortable. Most youth still lives with their parents and drives shit cars.
- spennant 7y ago
  Wikipedia has list of Levittowns https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levittown#Places https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levittown#Places
- ghaff 7y ago
  So better than 2x US median household income. http://www.city-data.com/city/Levittown-New-York.html http://www.city-data.com/city/Levittown-New-York.html I'd have to see data to convince me that an abnormal number of post-college children were still living at home.
mc32 7y ago
Do those Levitt houses have the same cachet as Eichler houses do in the Bay Area? They were both post war answers to demand for quick cookie cutter houses that people would like to live in. Seems Eichler took cues from Lloyd-Wright and hired disciples, so the architecture looks nicer (although his didn’t have to contend with more continental climates), but from a usability and livability PoV, wonder if they deliver equally when it comes to providing a “home “
apo 7y ago
> This was only made possible by enormous federal subsidies for returning soldiers and huge investments in public infrastructure by the federal government. ... Today's government subsidies are creating artificial booms of their own. Credit, higher education, housing. The busts, like the one described in this article, should come as a surprise to nobody, but they will. Mixed in with that surprise may be an interest in finding a scapegoat - and a leader willing to deliver it.
rhizome 7y ago
>This was only made possible by enormous federal subsidies for returning soldiers White soldiers, both via black soldiers being excluded from the GI Bill, and Levittown's own restrictive whites-only covenant. These racist limitations greatly reduced the necessary subsidies.
- spennant 7y ago
  You beat me to it rhizome...
- freddie_mercury 7y ago
  I'll one up you: white male soldiers Women soldiers were also excluded from the GI Bill.
  - desdiv 7y ago
    These sources disagrees with you: >Women veterans, it turned out, were even more interested than their male counterparts in obtaining a college degree; more than 19.5% of 332,178 eligible women veterans elected to attend college after the war as compared to 15% of 15 million eligible male veterans. [0] https://www.womensmemorial.org/history-highlight https://www.womensmemorial.org/history-highlight >African Americans and women were entitled to the same benefits as white men under the GI Bill, but often faced difficulty trying to claim their benefits due to discrimination. [1] https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/postwarera/postwar-era/a/african-americans-women-and-the-gi-bill https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/postwarera... To summarize: 1. Women veteran had the same education benefits as their male counterparts under the law. 2. However, women veteran faced discrimination when trying claim their benefits. 3. Despite the discrimination, women veterans still managed to attend college at a higher rate than male veterans.
    - freddie_mercury 7y ago
      WAACs and WASPs wore military uniforms but were designated as civilians and didn't were counted as veterans until 1977 when Congress retroactively granted them veteran status.
spennant 7y ago
Typically pieces about the Levittowns (there were many such towns) contain at least a cursory acknowledgement of the racism and redlining that surrounded the sales of these homes. A generation of non-minority boomers were able to take advantage of, and build wealth from government subsidies.
- googlemike 7y ago
  Why does that matter? Why do we have to inject race into everything?
  - ghaff 7y ago
    In this case, it's hard to separate race from white migration to the suburbs. You can argue how much was driven by deliberate policy and how much was the result of organic segregation. Nonetheless, it was real and contributed to the fact that even many of today's "elite" US cities were losing population 20 years ago.
    - davidw 7y ago
      > it's hard to separate race from white migration to the suburbs. Here's an entire book dedicated to discussing the government policies that drove separation: https://amzn.to/2Zz4Zeh https://amzn.to/2Zz4Zeh (or get it from your local library!) It's tough reading because a lot of things that happened were pretty ugly.
  - zrail 7y ago
    OP is not “injecting race”. They are pointing out a significant, intentional part of US federal and state policy at the time that the article doesn’t even mention.
  - scarejunba 7y ago
    How is it "injecting" if it happens to just be a thing that's relevant? It's like "injecting" mathematics into computer science.
0x54D5 7y ago
I grew up 15 minutes from Levittown, PA. I even had to do an undergrad research project on it. The development is boring and pointless but packed with lower middle class families. A place where there's only a driveway for one or two cars but there's always 3 or 4 per house and parked all in the street. The houses themselves are all full. The area just west and north of Levittown is actually one of the oldest rich suburbs in America containing Newtown, PA and Washington's Crossing with estates from the 16th century and acres of land. Oxford Valley Mall is far from dead. The food court is always pretty lively on Fridays and Saturdays. The Forever 21 next to the food court is constantly packed with teenagers. I literally went there not long ago with my girlfriend and we had to stand in line at the register. Not exactly dead. The guy just went on a random Tuesday instead of a Saturday. Of course it's going to be dead. The parking lot also has a really good theater seating style movie theater. Both Oxford Valley Mall and Neshaminy Mall are on Route 1 going north out of Philadelphia and also have I-95 going by. Also the Mall has Sesame Street Theme Park right outside it's parking lot and across the street is a whole other plaza containing a Best Buy, A Home Depot, a Lowes, and a bunch of other stuff. Honestly the only reason the mall can't keep full is cause of all the competitions nearby. The area itself is actually super nice just to the west of the mall with lots of properties rising in value. I used to run a Gaming LAN Center in 2005 in Neshaminy Mall. The area is served by FIOS and Comcast. As to why buses come to the mall? Really? Old people like to walk around during the day in the mall just for fun. People also use the bus to get to and from work. Most of the routes are going to and from Philly with a few connecting the various regional rail stations. Growing up we all wished there was just one bus from the center of Newtown to the mall so we wouldn't have to ask our parents to take us. If you actually stay just around Levittown there's a lot of old crap from the 60s in a clearly abandoned and/or ruined state but that's not really indicative of the area.
- aeontech 7y ago
  Off topic: by the way, this your comment (and some earlier ones) are showing up as dead. I vouched for this one to unhide it, but you may want to email the mods to see why your account is flagged.
- vips7L 7y ago
  All of this. I grew up in Levittown, PA. This entire article is false. Just look at the housing prices in Falls or Middletown Townships. While Levittown does have its problems (see the Fairless Hills overdose sign), its no where near as bad as this article makes it seem.
westmeal 7y ago
Live near Levittown and have talked to residents about it. The entire rust belt is going to shit itself soon and who knows how it'll play out.
- vips7L 7y ago
  Most of the article is about Levittown, PA. Its no where near the rust belt.
  - grayed-down 7y ago
    The "rust belt" and it's socio-economic realities meander quite a bit throughout the NE
    - vips7L 7y ago
      Except this particular area isn't the "rust belt".
  - lotsofpulp 7y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust_Belt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust_Belt Easy to way to know where the rust belt is wherever you can expect your vehicle to rust due to salting the roads in winter.
    - vips7L 7y ago
      >It is made up mostly of places in the Midwest and Great Lakes, though definitions vary. Rust refers to the deindustrialization, or economic decline, population loss, and urban decay due to the shrinking of its once-powerful industrial sector. None of these things are true of the area. I've lived here for 25 years.
ethnt 7y ago
There was a great Dollop podcast episode about this: https://thedollop.libsyn.com/310-levittown-the-whitest-suburb https://thedollop.libsyn.com/310-levittown-the-whitest-subur...
jdlyga 7y ago
Levittown, NY is a pretty interesting place. It was designed for your typical 1950s family with a single car. Nowadays, most people have two cars so you see a ton of cars parked in the street. Also, it's outrageously expensive to buy on Long Island.
- StanislavPetrov 7y ago
  You also have way more people living at home into their 20s and 30s, so you get 4-5 cars per house. When cops and prison guards are making $200,000 a year someone has to pay for it.
rootbear 7y ago
I live in Bowie, Maryland, a Levittown suburb of Washington, DC. (We pronounce it BOO-ee, by the way, something Alexa doesn't seem to know.) Unlike the original Levittown, Bowie is doing well. I don't live in a Levitt home, but I did look at quite a few of them when I moved back to the DC area in 1998. I passed on them because I wanted a basement and Levitt houses don't usually have basements, due to the cost. It was interesting to see all the ways in which previous owners had enhanced and renovated these homes. The Smithsonian is having trouble finding one that hasn't been extensively modified. (I ended up in a townhouse, with no mad-science basement, alas, but at least I don't have a large yard to keep up.) When Bowie was built (1964) there was no doubt systematic discrimination against minorities but, interestingly, Prince Georges County is now one of the wealthiest African American-majority counties in the US.
- ejcx 7y ago
  I don't think anything about Bowie or PG county is notable given its location. The entire DC area is propped up by the defense industry. Everywhere else in the country is really different. DC didn't even experience the 2008 great recession
  - rootbear 7y ago
    I don't know why you think we didn't experience the Great Recession. Housing prices crashed all over the DC area, except in Washington proper, which had a lesser decline, due largely to very low inventory. In my area of Prince Georges County, my townhouse lost about 30% of its value and the mega-mansions down the road lost about 50% of their value. Several friends lost jobs and had a hard time finding new ones. Yes, DC is a unique environment in some ways, but we aren't immune to economic downturns.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - lotsofpulp 7y ago
      The metropolitan areas around certain cities, such as DC, are in a much different situation than those that experienced a structural loss in value. Around DC, there might have been a temporary loss in value due to reduced economic activity, but overall, the value trends upwards. But if you look at places from the Northeast (excluding BOS/NYC/PHL) towns, all the way to Midwest to the South that had factories close and not come back, those are still cratered and going down. There simply isn't enough economic activity to support populations, so reduced demand, plus whatever demand there is can't afford to pay much.
eanzenberg 7y ago
And yet we get constantly told that there’s no space for homes and that it’s too expensive to live anywhere. There are plenty of opportunities out there but when everyone wants to live in only the most desirable areas it creates local shortages.
smelendez 7y ago
Interesting, but I don't get a lot of the author's arguments. > And there it is. The dreaded wig shop. Flagship of retail desperation and harbinger of doom. Next stop, evangelical day care centers and government offices to fill the void. What's wrong with any of those businesses? Wig shops seem popular in a lot of places, especially with black women. People willing to spend on beauty are usually a good draw for a mall. Day cares bring in predictable revenue per kid. I've been to mall DMVs and gone shopping afterward. > The buses only exist because the federal government mandates them as a condition of continued highway funding. It’s pointless. What's pointless? The photos show people waiting at the bus stop, so clearly it's useful to someone.
- michaelt 7y ago
  Google tells me there aren't a lot of wig stores, so customers will usually seek out stores - meaning they can often be put in low-traffic low-rent areas.
milkytron 7y ago
Population booms and recessions make me wonder how my current town will survive after the influx of new residents. I grew up not too far from Levittown, PA, and now live in Lakewood, CO. Population here has been exploding and new housing has been on the rise for the past five years. There is currently a ballot to slow new housing projects to 1% growth per year. On one hand, I wonder if it’s just artificial restriction of supply to help property values. On the other hand, I do see reason to limit growth to provide the infrastructure needed as growth continues. I’m not sure how to feel about it. Does anyone have any insight into whether artificial housing restrictions could benefit a municipality in the long term?
- RobertoG 7y ago
  >>"Does anyone have any insight into whether artificial housing restrictions could benefit a municipality in the long term?" I think you can't answer that question without defining what is the intended outcome: what it's a 'benefit'?. If you define the optimal result, in a tautological way, as "whatever the market decide", then, by definition, any restriction is going to be bad. Otherwise, you need to decide what do you want to accomplish (by 'you' I mean the residents of the area) and choose a policy that makes sense.
philjohn 7y ago
Referenced in the musical Little Shop of Horrors in Somewhere That's Green with the words "Not fancy, like Levittown"
unnamed76ri 7y ago
Maybe not relevant to the piece but something not mentioned is that not only would the builders of Levittown only sell to whites but home buyers had to sign a contract not to sell their house to any poc
ryjm 7y ago
Nice Try! just released a great episode about Levittown in Concord Park: https://www.curbed.com/2019/6/13/18662753/nice-try-podcast-levittown-concord-park https://www.curbed.com/2019/6/13/18662753/nice-try-podcast-l...

156 points by burlesona 7y ago

Levittown, NY is a pretty interesting place. It was designed for your typical 1950s family with a single car. Nowadays, most people have two cars so you see a ton of cars parked in the street.

AceJohnny2 7y ago

The economic failings of these Boomer towns reminds me of this article in Citylab, about how cities pay for current infrastructure by selling more land for development. It's an unsustainable pyramid scheme. https://www.citylab.com/life/2011/10/suburban-sprawl-ponzi-scheme/242/ https://www.citylab.com/life/2011/10/suburban-sprawl-ponzi-s... Overall, these articles are an interesting insight into the hidden financials of urban development. And, sadly, the failings of those financial schemes.

kissickas 7y ago

The houses that I've seen in Levittown and the nearby towns don't seem particularly empty - is the residential market dying as well or is it actually just the commercial properties? Hicksville, for one, seems to be livelier than ever and full of South Asian families and businesses that have given it a new life (although it looks slightly lower-class than I remember).

YeahSureWhyNot 7y ago
the article is talking about the Levittown in PA. btw fuck Hicksville, its overcrowded and has turned into Jackson Heights of Queens. Try driving thru Hicksville at 5PM
- kissickas 7y ago
  Ah thanks for the correction re: PA. I saw that they were New York Sicilians and didn't pay attention to the fact that I didn't recognize the mall's name.
- YeahSureWhyNot 7y ago
  do I automatically get downvotes from HN mods for saying 'fuck' ? are you guys sharpening your censorship skills before YC opens china office?:)))
  - dang 7y ago
    Users downvoted. No mods were involved. I imagine they downvoted because of the snarky swipe you took at some other place, but who can say? One thing though: please don't break the guidelines by going on about downvotes like this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- selimthegrim 7y ago
  What’s so bad about Jackson Heights?
s17n 7y ago
The article is about Levittown PA

mabbo 7y ago

> This was only made possible by enormous federal subsidies for returning soldiers and huge investments in public infrastructure by the federal government. > People ... couldn’t imagine returning to the city which continued to decline. I begin to wonder whether the demise of the city was really caused by the government subsidies of the suburban lifestyle. It's not that Levittown isn't sustainable anymore, it's that it never was, not on a long term scale. Low density living should be expensive because it is expensive. The government chose to invest in suburbs instead of the city. The city rotted without investment, exacerbating the problem. It's only the last couple decades as governments tightened their coffers that the suburbs have had to carry their own load- and they can't.

burlesona 7y ago
“It’s not that Levittown isn’t sustainable anymore, it’s that it never was.” I think this is a key point, really well expanded upon here: https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme
- clarkmoody 7y ago
  To expand a bit more here, the Strong Towns folks argue that city infrastructure project costs do not factor in long-term maintenance. Growth is the driver of revenue in the short term (building permit fees, more expensive single-family homes paying property taxes). Once growth slows or stops, the party is over. Maintenance costs kick in, and the errors made during the boom time are revealed in the form of broken streets, abandonment, blight, etc. They consult with cities to target a 20-to-1 "return on investment" when taking on infrastructure projects. That means that the costs to build street or water pipes should result in 20x that cost in economic activity.
mc32 7y ago
Maybe it makes more sense to say losing population brings about viability issues. If people for whatever reason started to leave Oakland, I’m sure it would implode as much as a Vallejo would if they suddenly had an exodus.

YeahSureWhyNot 7y ago

there is a Levittown on Long Island, New York and its doing just fine economically even though you can tell that the children of the boomers who enjoyed the previous decades aren't so comfortable. Most youth still lives with their parents and drives shit cars.

spennant 7y ago
Wikipedia has list of Levittowns https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levittown#Places https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levittown#Places
ghaff 7y ago
So better than 2x US median household income. http://www.city-data.com/city/Levittown-New-York.html http://www.city-data.com/city/Levittown-New-York.html I'd have to see data to convince me that an abnormal number of post-college children were still living at home.

mc32 7y ago

Do those Levitt houses have the same cachet as Eichler houses do in the Bay Area? They were both post war answers to demand for quick cookie cutter houses that people would like to live in. Seems Eichler took cues from Lloyd-Wright and hired disciples, so the architecture looks nicer (although his didn’t have to contend with more continental climates), but from a usability and livability PoV, wonder if they deliver equally when it comes to providing a “home “

apo 7y ago

> This was only made possible by enormous federal subsidies for returning soldiers and huge investments in public infrastructure by the federal government. ... Today's government subsidies are creating artificial booms of their own. Credit, higher education, housing. The busts, like the one described in this article, should come as a surprise to nobody, but they will. Mixed in with that surprise may be an interest in finding a scapegoat - and a leader willing to deliver it.

rhizome 7y ago

>This was only made possible by enormous federal subsidies for returning soldiers White soldiers, both via black soldiers being excluded from the GI Bill, and Levittown's own restrictive whites-only covenant. These racist limitations greatly reduced the necessary subsidies.

spennant 7y ago
You beat me to it rhizome...
freddie_mercury 7y ago
I'll one up you: white male soldiers Women soldiers were also excluded from the GI Bill.
- desdiv 7y ago
  These sources disagrees with you: >Women veterans, it turned out, were even more interested than their male counterparts in obtaining a college degree; more than 19.5% of 332,178 eligible women veterans elected to attend college after the war as compared to 15% of 15 million eligible male veterans. [0] https://www.womensmemorial.org/history-highlight https://www.womensmemorial.org/history-highlight >African Americans and women were entitled to the same benefits as white men under the GI Bill, but often faced difficulty trying to claim their benefits due to discrimination. [1] https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/postwarera/postwar-era/a/african-americans-women-and-the-gi-bill https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/postwarera... To summarize: 1. Women veteran had the same education benefits as their male counterparts under the law. 2. However, women veteran faced discrimination when trying claim their benefits. 3. Despite the discrimination, women veterans still managed to attend college at a higher rate than male veterans.
  - freddie_mercury 7y ago
    WAACs and WASPs wore military uniforms but were designated as civilians and didn't were counted as veterans until 1977 when Congress retroactively granted them veteran status.

spennant 7y ago

Typically pieces about the Levittowns (there were many such towns) contain at least a cursory acknowledgement of the racism and redlining that surrounded the sales of these homes. A generation of non-minority boomers were able to take advantage of, and build wealth from government subsidies.

googlemike 7y ago
Why does that matter? Why do we have to inject race into everything?
- ghaff 7y ago
  In this case, it's hard to separate race from white migration to the suburbs. You can argue how much was driven by deliberate policy and how much was the result of organic segregation. Nonetheless, it was real and contributed to the fact that even many of today's "elite" US cities were losing population 20 years ago.
  - davidw 7y ago
    > it's hard to separate race from white migration to the suburbs. Here's an entire book dedicated to discussing the government policies that drove separation: https://amzn.to/2Zz4Zeh https://amzn.to/2Zz4Zeh (or get it from your local library!) It's tough reading because a lot of things that happened were pretty ugly.
- zrail 7y ago
  OP is not “injecting race”. They are pointing out a significant, intentional part of US federal and state policy at the time that the article doesn’t even mention.
- scarejunba 7y ago
  How is it "injecting" if it happens to just be a thing that's relevant? It's like "injecting" mathematics into computer science.

0x54D5 7y ago

I grew up 15 minutes from Levittown, PA. I even had to do an undergrad research project on it. The development is boring and pointless but packed with lower middle class families. A place where there's only a driveway for one or two cars but there's always 3 or 4 per house and parked all in the street. The houses themselves are all full. The area just west and north of Levittown is actually one of the oldest rich suburbs in America containing Newtown, PA and Washington's Crossing with estates from the 16th century and acres of land. Oxford Valley Mall is far from dead. The food court is always pretty lively on Fridays and Saturdays. The Forever 21 next to the food court is constantly packed with teenagers. I literally went there not long ago with my girlfriend and we had to stand in line at the register. Not exactly dead. The guy just went on a random Tuesday instead of a Saturday. Of course it's going to be dead. The parking lot also has a really good theater seating style movie theater. Both Oxford Valley Mall and Neshaminy Mall are on Route 1 going north out of Philadelphia and also have I-95 going by. Also the Mall has Sesame Street Theme Park right outside it's parking lot and across the street is a whole other plaza containing a Best Buy, A Home Depot, a Lowes, and a bunch of other stuff. Honestly the only reason the mall can't keep full is cause of all the competitions nearby. The area itself is actually super nice just to the west of the mall with lots of properties rising in value. I used to run a Gaming LAN Center in 2005 in Neshaminy Mall. The area is served by FIOS and Comcast. As to why buses come to the mall? Really? Old people like to walk around during the day in the mall just for fun. People also use the bus to get to and from work. Most of the routes are going to and from Philly with a few connecting the various regional rail stations. Growing up we all wished there was just one bus from the center of Newtown to the mall so we wouldn't have to ask our parents to take us. If you actually stay just around Levittown there's a lot of old crap from the 60s in a clearly abandoned and/or ruined state but that's not really indicative of the area.

aeontech 7y ago
Off topic: by the way, this your comment (and some earlier ones) are showing up as dead. I vouched for this one to unhide it, but you may want to email the mods to see why your account is flagged.
vips7L 7y ago
All of this. I grew up in Levittown, PA. This entire article is false. Just look at the housing prices in Falls or Middletown Townships. While Levittown does have its problems (see the Fairless Hills overdose sign), its no where near as bad as this article makes it seem.

westmeal 7y ago

Live near Levittown and have talked to residents about it. The entire rust belt is going to shit itself soon and who knows how it'll play out.

vips7L 7y ago
Most of the article is about Levittown, PA. Its no where near the rust belt.
- grayed-down 7y ago
  The "rust belt" and it's socio-economic realities meander quite a bit throughout the NE
  - vips7L 7y ago
    Except this particular area isn't the "rust belt".
- lotsofpulp 7y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust_Belt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust_Belt Easy to way to know where the rust belt is wherever you can expect your vehicle to rust due to salting the roads in winter.
  - vips7L 7y ago
    >It is made up mostly of places in the Midwest and Great Lakes, though definitions vary. Rust refers to the deindustrialization, or economic decline, population loss, and urban decay due to the shrinking of its once-powerful industrial sector. None of these things are true of the area. I've lived here for 25 years.

ethnt 7y ago

There was a great Dollop podcast episode about this: https://thedollop.libsyn.com/310-levittown-the-whitest-suburb https://thedollop.libsyn.com/310-levittown-the-whitest-subur...

jdlyga 7y ago

Levittown, NY is a pretty interesting place. It was designed for your typical 1950s family with a single car. Nowadays, most people have two cars so you see a ton of cars parked in the street. Also, it's outrageously expensive to buy on Long Island.

StanislavPetrov 7y ago
You also have way more people living at home into their 20s and 30s, so you get 4-5 cars per house. When cops and prison guards are making $200,000 a year someone has to pay for it.

rootbear 7y ago

I live in Bowie, Maryland, a Levittown suburb of Washington, DC. (We pronounce it BOO-ee, by the way, something Alexa doesn't seem to know.) Unlike the original Levittown, Bowie is doing well. I don't live in a Levitt home, but I did look at quite a few of them when I moved back to the DC area in 1998. I passed on them because I wanted a basement and Levitt houses don't usually have basements, due to the cost. It was interesting to see all the ways in which previous owners had enhanced and renovated these homes. The Smithsonian is having trouble finding one that hasn't been extensively modified. (I ended up in a townhouse, with no mad-science basement, alas, but at least I don't have a large yard to keep up.) When Bowie was built (1964) there was no doubt systematic discrimination against minorities but, interestingly, Prince Georges County is now one of the wealthiest African American-majority counties in the US.

ejcx 7y ago
I don't think anything about Bowie or PG county is notable given its location. The entire DC area is propped up by the defense industry. Everywhere else in the country is really different. DC didn't even experience the 2008 great recession
- rootbear 7y ago
  I don't know why you think we didn't experience the Great Recession. Housing prices crashed all over the DC area, except in Washington proper, which had a lesser decline, due largely to very low inventory. In my area of Prince Georges County, my townhouse lost about 30% of its value and the mega-mansions down the road lost about 50% of their value. Several friends lost jobs and had a hard time finding new ones. Yes, DC is a unique environment in some ways, but we aren't immune to economic downturns.
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  - lotsofpulp 7y ago
    The metropolitan areas around certain cities, such as DC, are in a much different situation than those that experienced a structural loss in value. Around DC, there might have been a temporary loss in value due to reduced economic activity, but overall, the value trends upwards. But if you look at places from the Northeast (excluding BOS/NYC/PHL) towns, all the way to Midwest to the South that had factories close and not come back, those are still cratered and going down. There simply isn't enough economic activity to support populations, so reduced demand, plus whatever demand there is can't afford to pay much.

eanzenberg 7y ago

And yet we get constantly told that there’s no space for homes and that it’s too expensive to live anywhere. There are plenty of opportunities out there but when everyone wants to live in only the most desirable areas it creates local shortages.

smelendez 7y ago

Interesting, but I don't get a lot of the author's arguments. > And there it is. The dreaded wig shop. Flagship of retail desperation and harbinger of doom. Next stop, evangelical day care centers and government offices to fill the void. What's wrong with any of those businesses? Wig shops seem popular in a lot of places, especially with black women. People willing to spend on beauty are usually a good draw for a mall. Day cares bring in predictable revenue per kid. I've been to mall DMVs and gone shopping afterward. > The buses only exist because the federal government mandates them as a condition of continued highway funding. It’s pointless. What's pointless? The photos show people waiting at the bus stop, so clearly it's useful to someone.

michaelt 7y ago
Google tells me there aren't a lot of wig stores, so customers will usually seek out stores - meaning they can often be put in low-traffic low-rent areas.

milkytron 7y ago

Population booms and recessions make me wonder how my current town will survive after the influx of new residents. I grew up not too far from Levittown, PA, and now live in Lakewood, CO. Population here has been exploding and new housing has been on the rise for the past five years. There is currently a ballot to slow new housing projects to 1% growth per year. On one hand, I wonder if it’s just artificial restriction of supply to help property values. On the other hand, I do see reason to limit growth to provide the infrastructure needed as growth continues. I’m not sure how to feel about it. Does anyone have any insight into whether artificial housing restrictions could benefit a municipality in the long term?

RobertoG 7y ago
>>"Does anyone have any insight into whether artificial housing restrictions could benefit a municipality in the long term?" I think you can't answer that question without defining what is the intended outcome: what it's a 'benefit'?. If you define the optimal result, in a tautological way, as "whatever the market decide", then, by definition, any restriction is going to be bad. Otherwise, you need to decide what do you want to accomplish (by 'you' I mean the residents of the area) and choose a policy that makes sense.

philjohn 7y ago

Referenced in the musical Little Shop of Horrors in Somewhere That's Green with the words "Not fancy, like Levittown"

unnamed76ri 7y ago

Maybe not relevant to the piece but something not mentioned is that not only would the builders of Levittown only sell to whites but home buyers had to sign a contract not to sell their house to any poc

ryjm 7y ago

Nice Try! just released a great episode about Levittown in Concord Park: https://www.curbed.com/2019/6/13/18662753/nice-try-podcast-levittown-concord-park https://www.curbed.com/2019/6/13/18662753/nice-try-podcast-l...