SuburbsMustReads

Must Read Articles on Suburbs

Joel Kotkin, “Don’t Bet Against the Single-Family House,” Newgeography.com, February 28, 2012. Summary: pundits on both the left and right assure us that the single-family home has gone the way of the dodo. Yet people’s preferences and the new multigenerational suburban home will win the day.

Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais, “Twenty-First Century Electorate’s Heart is n the Suburbs,” newgeography.com, May 29, 2010: Summary: Even as the nation conducts its critically important decennial census, a demographic picture of the rapidly changing population of the United States is emerging. It underlines how suburban living has become the dominant experience for all key groups in America’s 21st Century Electorate.

Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais, “The Millenial Metropolis,” newgeography.com, April 19, 2011. Summary: According to the most recent generational survey research, done for Washington-based think tank, NDN, by Frank N. Magid Associates, 43 percent of Millennials describe suburbs as their “ideal place to live,” compared to just 31 percent of older generations. In the same survey, a majority of older generations (56%) expressed a preference for either small town or rural living.

Joel Kotkin, “Why America’s Young and Restless Will Abandon Cities for Suburbs,” newgeography.com, July 20, 2011. Summary: census 2010 shows young adults joining blacks in the exodus out of big cities to the suburbs. This is contrary to the myth of urban boosters that the suburbs suffer from a “brain drain” of young people because they lack high density, “affordable” housing.

Walter Russell Mead, “The Death of the American Dream Part I and II,” American Interest Blog, June 2, 2011. Summary: Mead talks about the relationship between the family farm of the 18th century and home ownership in the 20th century and the American creed of self-reliance. He suggests home ownership won’t go away as the American Dream, but will evolve to include the home as an income producing place of business (like the old family farm) and a multigenerational domicile.

Michael Auslin, “Salvaging the American Dream,” The American, June 14, 2011. Summary: Auslin reviews Walter Russell Mead’s ruminations on the American Dream.

Robert Bruegmann, “How Sprawl Got a Bad Name,” The American. Summary: An excerpt from his landmark book Sprawl (University of Chicago Press), Bruegmann discusses the deep roots and anti-suburban sentiment among the west’s intellectuals.

The attack on sprawl, the conclusion is, is an attack on the middle class, which intellectuals have longed believe play only a negative role in the creation of great cities.

Rachel DiCarlo, “Hit the Road: The fallacy of anti-car environmentalism,” Weekly Standard, January 25, 2006. Summary: DiCarlo gives a thorough trouncing of the arguments against the car.

Anthony Downs, “What Does Smart Growth Really Mean,” Planning Magazine April 2001. Summary: the renowned planner describes dispassionately the ins and outs of this much overused term, especially the potential conflicts, contradictions, and problems of the various elements of “smart growth.”

Joel Kotkin, “Suburbia Forever—Get Used to It,” The American Enterprise, Jan/Feb. 2005. Summary: the most interesting demographer and urbanist in America explains the near universality of the suburban ideal. Despite complaints, it’s what most people want.

Thomas Sowell, “How Smart Are We?,” Creators Syndicate, July 27, 2010. Summary: The eminent political economist says we mistakenly base policy on social science ideas that there is little evidence to support.

David Brooks, “Relax. We’ll Be Fine,” New York Times, April 6, 2010. Summary: review of Joel Kotkin and Steven Rose’s books, The Next 100 Million and Rebound, respectively. Following these authors, Brooks maintains the suburbs are part of America’s great advantage going forward.

Ryan Streeter, “Societal Trends—And Other Good News,” March 25, 2010. Summary: Streeter review Joel Kotkin’s book, The Next 100 Million and decides the suburbs are the future. Main thing he likes in Kotkin is Kotkin’s belief that Americans are trending conservative in terms of family, marriage, and children.

George Will, “Avaricious Developers and Government Twist the Meaning of “Blight”,” Washington Post, January 3, 2010: Summary: Discusses how developers and the courts in New York State have manipulated the term “blight” to abuse the power of eminent domain. The courts have said that removing “blight” serves a “public purpose,” the criteria by which government can condemn property and take possession of it.

Joel Kotkin, “The Myth of Superstar Cities’,” Wall Street Journal, February 13, 2007. Summary: Kotkin takes on the critics that say the cities and regions must attract only the creative elites and the enterprises they value (stadiums, performing art centers, upscale shopping) in order to revive their economies.

Alan Altschuler, “Inequality, Segregation, and the Metropolitan Governance,” page 1-3 in in The Challenge of Urban Governance, Taubman Center for State and Local Government, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Summaray: Altschuler believes small, fragmented government allows communities to pick and choose who will locate there, reinforcing inequality.

Howard Husock, “The Case for Breaking Up the Cities,” pages 4-6 in The Challenge of Urban Governance, Taubman Center for State and Local Government, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Summary: In contrast to Altschuler above, Howard Husock believes many small, fragmented governments give people choices in determining the package of government services they desire, and therefore is more efficient than large centralized governments.

Joel Kotkin, “Urban Plight: Vanishing Upward Mobility,” The American, August 31, 2010. Summary: Big cities like New York and Los Angeles having shrinking middle classes, a change from their historic role as incubators of the American middle class.