From the archives | New suburbs, old pains in Sun Belt

This story originally published Sept. 15, 1982. It is being republished as part of the commemoration of USA TODAY's 40th anniversary on Sept. 15, 2022.

In the aggressively adolescent Sun Belt, there's something new these days: its suburbs, like those of older cities to the north, are grappling with growing pains.

In Irvine, California, the national recession is taking its toll.

In Katy, Texas, a struggle is emerging over zoning laws.

In Rosewell, Georgia, development is outstripping support services.

"Sun Belt suburbs are beginning to reflect the problems that other (older) suburbs typically have," says University of Colorado urban planner Dr. Marshall Kaplan.

A Rand Corp. report for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development – Troubled Suburbs: An Exploratory Study – highlights the problems that could come.

With 16 yardsticks of demographic, social, economic and fiscal change, Rand researchers measured 11,191 communities – nearly one-fifth of all suburbs in the country.

Most of them were older communities which had their greatest growth just before or after World War II. Eighty-four "troubled" suburbs – Hoboken, New Jersey, Alton, Illinois, Compton, California and Highland Park, Michigan along them – were isolated with extreme measurements on four or more of the standards.

The newer Sun Belt suburbs aren't "troubled" yet. But they show those symptoms – unemployment, rising crime, tax squeezes, governments unable to cope with the pressure.

In Irvine, a suburb of Los Angeles, a major influx of pharmaceutical, electric and aerospace companies swelled the population from 15,000 in 1970 to almost 70,000 a decade later.

But now construction – bustling in the late 1970s with more than 4,000 new homes being built – is at a standstill.

Business has peaked. Irvine Mayor Larry Agran says the tax on hotel and motel bills is going from 6 percent to 8 percent to raise a needed $500,000 a year.

Unemployment – a remarkably low 3.5 percent in the late 1970s – has shot to 8 percent, with major employers like Occidental Petroleum, Beckman Laboratories, Smith Tool and Sperry Univac laying off workers.

As for crime: Statitics show that suburban crime is growing at a faster rate than in many central cities.

Irvine's rate in 1981 matched that of the much older New Jersey suburb of Clifton; of some 3,200 crimes for the year, 2,940 were burglaries or larcenies. Mayor Agran links Irvine's sharp rise in burglary to the fact that in many households husband and wife both work, leaving neighborhoods deserted in the daytime.

In Katy – a plains community of 7,500 just 30 miles west of Houston – the Western spirit of laissez faire and a 300 percent population increase in just 10 years have put junkyards and auto repair shops next to residences. A zoning ordinance is on the ballot Jan. 15.

"It will be a must sooner or later," says Katy insurance agent Marvin Sanders. "I'm for it. I don't know if it will solve all the problems, but it will place some restrictions on commercial development in residential areas."

Katy's annual growth rate is projected to continue at 10 percent, and many residents worry about the encroachment of Houston on an agricultural community best known for soybeans and rice.

Bonded debt will increase by $1.3 million this year to pay for sewers and roads; lacking a zoning law, Katy can't extract improvements from developers. And without a strong business base, Katy to raise 65 percent of its annual budget from property taxes – which are rising at the rate of 3 to 4 percent a year.

"I moved out of Houston to Katy because it was small and quiet. It's growing a little too fast," said Carlton Smith, a resident of Katy for seven years. "I plan to move out."

And in the rolling hills of Chattahoochee Valley north of Atlanta, commercial, industrial and residential development in Fulton County has overwhelmed towns like Roswell and Sandy Springs. Roswell quadrupled its population to more than 23,000 between 1970 and 1980, and now county planners are colliding with the town's fathers and their all-out drive for growth.

To relieve highway congestion the county had planned to widen the Crossville-Woodstock Road and complete a major artery to speed traffic morning and evening. But Roswell had allowed residential development, and the new residents said no to the widening.

" I don't think they cared," says Fulton County Senior Planner Tom Ulbricht, who also noted that Georgia, like much of the Sun Belt, pursues growth aggressively. He calls such struggles "turfism."

Urban planner Kaplan said Sun Belt suburbs face problems beyond services stretched to the breaking point. Many lack established governments that can solve the problems quickly.

In the unincorporated parts of Fulton County there were no fire and police departments. So the State Legislature had to step in to create a special tax district to collect some $5.7 million annually for protection. Residents for the unincorporated areas pay from $30 to $70 each – without having voted for the tax.

Can anything slow the march toward decay? John Pincus a senior Rand Corp. economist and co-author of Troubled Suburbs, says the federal government should shift more attention to the problems of the suburbs. But spending cutbacks make that unlikely in the immediate future, Kaplan believes any major federal involvement is over at least for the next decade.

Meanwhile, growing suburbs try to cope; some do better than others.

Irvine has the advantage of a master plan for growth that put manufacturing and office buildings in six carefully placed clusters. The suburb grew up around a branch of the University of California that had developed the plan. Public improvements such as roads and sewers had to go in before the buildings. But even with that, said Agran, the growth was so rapid – population was increasing by 15,000 a year – the public works still fell behind. Now, with the annual growth slowed to under 5,000, he expects to get caught up.

Irvine resident Sylvan Hersh is getting caught up, too. The recession brought a layoff from his biochemist's job at American McGaw Hospital Supply and he's painting his four-bedroom townhouse.

He had planned to wait, but then came the letter from the University Community Beautification Committee. You need paint, it advised – now.

"If we still lived back east in Philadelphia, no one would have cared," observed Sylvan's wife, Anita. In Irvine they do, so the Hershes painted.

To them and their neighbors, each coat of paint is another layer of protection against the decay that drove them to southern California six years ago.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Sun Belt suburbs reflect problems of older subrubs