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Suburbs: The Geography That Won't Die

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For a half century, suburbs have been blamed for just about everything --- from racial division to obesity and even global warming. Yet desperate as life in the burbs is said to be, the majority of Americans -- and roughly 85% of those in metropolitan areas -- still live in the classic, tree-lined, single-family house and auto-dominated communities that, whether in core city boundaries or not, are essentially suburban communities.

Increasingly, new urbanists, many greens and developers believe that the suburbs peaked, and face an irrepressible decline as the masses swarm into the inner cities. "We've reached the limits of suburban development: People are beginning to vote with their feet and come back to the central cities," said HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan in 2010.

Too bad Mr. Secretary didn’t talk to the people over at the Department of Commerce who run the Census. In fact, America’s population growth in the 2010 decennial Census was more suburban than in the previous decade. In the 2000s roughly 90% of metropolitan growth was in the suburbs, somewhat higher than in the previous decade. Overall, notes demographer Wendell Cox, since 1990 the country’s metropolitan regions have gone from 82 to 86% suburban.

But the anti-suburban crowd never allows facts, however recent, to stand in their way. Now, they insist, since the housing bust of 2008-2011, everything changes, and people have seen the light. And to be sure, in the pits of the economic slowdown, growth rates in suburbs slowed, and in many areas dropped below the urban cores.

More recently, however, the growth pattern towards suburban lifestyles has once again resurged. In the 2010-2013 period the percentage of growth in suburbs was basically the same as its overwhelming share of metropolitan population. In only six of the nation’s 52 metropolitan areas with over one million people did the core city grow more than the suburbs. Most rapid growth, it appears, is once again in the much disdained exurbs. "The suburbanization of America marches on,” concludes Trulia economist Jed Kolko.

So what of the future? One can expect some urban growth to continue, driven, in some places, by youth migration and a small cohort of empty nesters as well foreign investors. But the vast majority of millennials -- some 70% -- already live in suburbs.  And although some boosters suggest millennials “hate” suburbs, a survey conducted by Frank Magid found that, in imaging their “ideal” place to live, more than twice as many picked the suburbs to the inner city. The desire for homeownership, among the older millennials, according to several surveys, was even stronger than among boomers.

Time is on the suburbs side, as long as the economy does not tank. An analysis of age cohorts done for Forbes by demographer Wendell Cox found that as people leave their twenties, as millennials are starting to do, they tend to move towards suburbs and to those regions, notably in the south and Intermountain West, where suburban-style living prevails. The other key source of demographic growth, immigrants, are already swarming into the cities; roughly 6o% of the population growth among Asians, the largest newcomer group in the last decade, took place in suburbia.