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| We've always viewed our nation as a place with unlimited land and natural resources.-- PETE SAUNDERS |
Ten years ago, I was gearing up to teach the next generation of first-year Coe College students about urbanism. Maybe that's why Holy Mountain was full of urbanist basics like cities blowing their stash on big amenities, gentrification, and suburban sprawl. My post on suburbia was full of assumptions that now seem very much of that time. Following Leigh Gallagher's The End of the Suburbs: Where the American Dream is Moving (Portfolio/Penguin, 2013) I expected suburbia to be transformed by increasing economic inequality, consumer preferences for urban living, environmental issues, fiscal issues, corporate clustering, and secular declines in urban crime.
When I revisited the topic six years later, those assumptions already looked dated. "Since I wrote [the 2016 post], the return to the city appears to have ebbed; it's early to judge, but it's certainly not proceeding at the pace of 2005-2015 (Frey 2022, Cortright 2020). Meanwhile, American society has been shaken by a series of earthquakes" including the Trump administration, Black Lives Matter protests, the pandemic, altered workplaces, economic changes, and climate disasters. There was a trend of suburbs adopting urbanist elements like central squares, small businesses, and bike trails.
Today I read two essays on suburbia, which is indeed transforming, in some places, but very much maintaining its preeminence in American geography. Bill Fulton (2026), an urbanist I admire but not enough to pay for his Substack, answered a question from someone in Texas about the Dallas metropolitan area, which is growing by leaps and bounds, even as "Downtown Dallas specifically is sucking wind" (questioner's wording). This is not what we were asking ten years ago, when McDonald's was moving its headquarters from Oakbrook to Chicago, and CRST moved from the edge of town to downtown Cedar Rapids (Cortright 2016, Smart Growth America 2015). There may be more to this behind the paywall, but the discussion of metro Dallas sounds like we're back to the 1980s, and 2005-2015 never happened.
Addison Del Maestro (2026) examines the housing crisis from the perspective of high-demand, high-price cities. More people seem to want to live in the hottest cities than can fit there, which drives prices up, making them unaffordable. While it's also true that "lots of smaller cities and towns have also seen price increases, because basically all communities pulled back on housing production for a few decades," some cities have features or cultures that attract a disproportionate percentage of the mobile population. I conclude that, while San Francisco prices spiral--their price-to-median-income ratio is over 10!--those who can't afford them retreat to the suburbs, somewhere or other. In Cedar Rapids, you could buy a downtown condo for $400K, or you could pay half that for something 15 minutes' drive away. So, you get some of the amenities of urban living at an affordable price. Note that Del Maestro is still assuming consumer preference for urban amenities.
Pete Saunders (2026), however, argues consumer preferences for new construction are even stronger than those for urban living. He cites a study by economist Kenan Fikri showing that the Economic Innovation Group's measure of the most prosperous neighborhoods--measured a variety of ways, notably not including taxable value per acre--shows the most prosperous are also the newest. Saunders reflects:
Historically, I understand why Americans have always favored new over old. We've always viewed our nation as a place with unlimited land and natural resources. We have a residential and commercial development investment structure that adheres to the same philosophy that bank robber Willie Sutton used when asked by a reporter why he robs banks: "Because that's where the money is." We can go anywhere. We can do anything. We've put no limit to our desires.
Does it matter where people choose to live? Well, yes it does. This is a blog about public policy, though, not individual ethical choices, and I'm not here to argue that people should never choose to live in low density areas. (Contrast that stance with that of Ross Douthat, cited in Del Maestro's post, who wants to "break up" existing high-demand cities, where it should be said a lot of people also live.) But we should not ignore the social costs of sprawl, particularly on municipal finances and the natural environment (but also community feeling and physical fitness). The future of suburbia seems strong; but will it prove adaptable to big changes coming?
Saunders, again:
In a nation that's prospered with the expansion of suburbia and the Sun Belt, what happens when they feel a tinge of obsolescence? When the five-bedroom, 4,000 square-foot McMansion can't be sold because the nation is getting older and has smaller households? We'll see.
If experience is any predictor, it won't spur a rush back to central cities, but rather to a new version of suburbs. And the most vulnerable will, again, be left in the dust, not to mention the natural world.
ORIGINAL POST: "The Future of the Suburbs," 18 July 2016
SEE ALSO: "The Future of the Suburbs (II)," 8 August 2022. Compare the current versions of the American Prairie Project...
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| house (Source: drhorton.com) |
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| townhouses (Source: drhorton.com) |
...with what they were showing four years ago:
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| (Source: cedar-rapids.org) |
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