New Geography

Category: Suburbs

  • America’s Most Suburbanized Cities

    Recently, The Wall Street Journal and Newsday, in a photographic spread, trumpeted the 70th anniversary of Levittown, the New York suburban development that provided the model for much of the rapid suburbanization that occurred after the Second World War in the United States. Levittown’s production line building also set the stage for the similar suburbs of cities in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere.

    Over the last seven decades, the United States has become a predominantly suburban nation. In 2011-2015, 85 percent of the population in the 53 major metropolitan areas (over 1,000,000 population) lived in the suburbs or exurbs. This is based on analysis at the small area level (zip code tabulation areas) from the American Community Survey that classifies population based on demographic data (Figure 1).

    Generally similar findings have been made about Canada and Australia by research teams led by Professor David L. A. Gordon of Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. Gordon and his Canadian team pioneered this type of analysis, which is not dependent on core municipality versus surrounding area analysis. Core municipalities often do not reflect the realities of metropolitan areas because they vary so greatly in their share of metropolitan area population. For example, the city of Atlanta has only 8 percent of the metropolitan area population, while San Antonio has more than 60 percent of the metropolitan area population.

    Suburban Nation: United States

    Many people, including urban analysts, are unaware of the extent to which American cities have become suburbanized. But the former mono-centricity that characterized most metropolitan areas at the end of World War II has been replaced first by multi-centered suburban employment development (polycentricity) and more recently by dispersion of employment. As early as 2000, more people worked in dispersed worksites in the major metropolitan areas, including New York, than in the downtowns (CBD’s) and suburban office centers, according to research by Bumsoo Lee and Peter Gordon. City Sector Model analysis shows that CBDs lost two percent of their market share from 2000 to 2015, based on a City Sector Analysis of County Business Patterns data. It seems likely that the trend of dispersion has continued (Figure 2).

    We took a look at the population distribution of the 53 major metropolitan areas (those with more than 1,000,000 population) to rate down by the extent to which they are suburban. The City Sector Model classifies the population of any area where there is an employment density of 20,000 or more as a CBD considers the urban core inner ring to have population densities exceeding 7500 per square mile. Such densities were characteristic of pre-automobile urban areas in the United States. According to estimates prepared by the Urban Land Institute, in 1920 the 24 urban areas with more 250,000 residents had an average population density of 7500.

    As it turns out, 10 metropolitan areas have virtually no urban core population by this definition. To rank these metropolitan areas by their extent of suburbanization, we broke the 10 way tie by ranking the metropolitan areas by the extent of their exurban population. Exurban areas have very low population densities (250 per square mile or less) and are generally outside the urban area, which includes all contiguous built up area, surrounded by rural territory.

    Seven of the 10 most suburban cities are in three states. Three are in Florida and two each in North Carolina and Arizona. They are listed in the Table 1, and data is provided for all 53 in Table 2.

    Table 1
    Most Suburban Cities: (Metroplitan Areas)
    1 Charlotte, NC-SC
    2 Riverside-San Bernardino, CA
    3 Raleigh, NC
    4 Orlando, FL
    5 Birmingham, AL
    6 Jacksonville, FL
    7 Phoenix, AZ
    8 San Antonio, TX
    9 Tampa-St. Petersburg, FL
    10 Tucson, AZ
    Out of 53 with more than 1,000,000 population

    The Most Suburban: Charlotte, NC-SC

    Charlotte turns out to be the country’s most suburban metropolitan area. The exurban commuting patterns of Charlotte expanded substantially over the 2000 to 2010 decade, which resulted in the largest geographic expansion of any major metropolitan area. Its exurban population is 51 percent and its urban population density is approximately 1,700.

    2nd Most Suburban: Riverside-San Bernardino, CA

    Second ranked Riverside-San Bernardino, which in many ways is an extension of the Los Angeles metropolitan area (and is included in the Los Angeles combined statistical area), ranked as the second most suburban city. However, like other California cities, Riverside-San Bernardino is comparatively dense as an urban area, ranking above both Chicago and world renown densification model Portland as the 11th densest major urban area in the nation.

    3rd Most Suburban: Raleigh, NC

    At the opposite end of the density scale is third ranked Raleigh, a high tech center with an exurban population of 42 percent. Raleigh has an urban area population density of approximately 1,700, about the same as top ranked Charlotte and 16th ranked Atlanta.

    4th Most Suburban: Orlando, FL

    Fourth ranked Orlando has an exurban population of 34 percent and is suburban by nature. This is not surprising considering that it is virtually all new, having principally been developed since Walt Disney World made its decision to locate there and other entertainment venues followed.

    5th Most Suburban: Birmingham, AL

    Fifth ranked Birmingham, Alabama’s largest city, had far slower growth than most major metropolitan areas of the South. In 1950, the metropolitan population was approximately 20 percent behind Atlanta, according to the 1950 census. Now, virtually all-suburban Atlanta has grown to nearly 5 times that of Birmingham since that time. Even so, Birmingham has expanded to have the lowest density of any principal urban area in a major metropolitan area.

    6th Most Suburban: Jacksonville, FL

    Sixth ranked Jacksonville, another all-suburban metropolitan area has an exurban population of 25 percent.

    7th Most Suburban: Phoenix, AZ

    Phoenix, like Orlando is virtually all a postwar product. With its 100 percent suburban population, 19 percent of it is in the exurbs ranking Phoenix as seventh most suburban. Phoenix is the largest among the all-suburban cities, with more than 4.6 million residents and is likely to displace San Francisco to become the nation’s 11th largest metropolitan area this year, and could take 10th position away from Boston by the 2020 Census.

    8th Most Suburban: San Antonio, TX

    San Antonio, ranked as eighth most suburban, with an exurban population of 17 percent.

    9th Most Suburban: Tampa-St. Petersburg, FL

    Tampa – St. Petersburg ranks as the ninth most suburban city, with a 14 percent exurban population. Like San Antonio, Tampa has a comparatively strong downtown area, but its inner densities do not reach the levels necessary for population to be classified as urban core.

    10th Most Suburban: Tucson, AZ

    Tucson, the newest entry among the nations 53 major metropolitan areas takes the 10th position and rounds out the cities that are 100 percent suburban.

    Other Cities

    Nashville and San Jose ranked 11th, but are very different. Nashville, as the capital of Tennessee, has a comparatively strong CBD, but the urban area is one of the least dense. On the other hand, San Jose, which is really an extension of the San Francisco metropolitan area and a part of the San Francisco Bay combined statistical area has a weak CBD, but a very high urban area density. San Jose ranks after only Los Angeles and San Francisco in its urban density and ahead of the sprawling New York urban area.

    There are a total of 34 metropolitan areas that are 95 percent or more suburban. These include examples such as Atlanta, at 99.2 percent San Diego at 98.9 percent Sacramento at 98.3 percent, Austin and 97.9 percent, Denver at 96.9 percent and Portland at 90.0 percent.

    Los Angeles, with the nation’s densest urban area, is 89.4 percent suburban, nearly matched by Seattle’s 89.3 percent.

    A number of older cities are overwhelmingly suburban as well, such as St. Louis at 88.4 suburban, Minneapolis-St. Paul at 86.8 percent, Washington at 83.3 percent, and Milwaukee at 76.6 percent. Chicago, Philadelphia, Providence, San Francisco – Oakland and Buffalo are all more than 70 percent suburban.

    Boston and New York are considerably less suburban than the other 51 major metropolitan areas. Boston is 64.3 percent suburban, while New York is the only major metropolitan area that has a larger urban core population than its suburban and exurban area. New York is only 46.7 percent suburban.

    Fast Growing and Automobile Oriented

    As with all suburban areas, these suburban cities are automobile oriented. The journey to work transit market shares average 1.7 percent, one third of the national average for all areas. They are also among the fastest growing, with six ranking in the top 10 for 2010 to 2016 growth. A close look shows that the American urban form is changing, but not in ways commonly discussed among planners, urban land speculators and many academics.

    Table 2
    Cities (Metropolitan Areas) Ranked by Extent of Suburbanization
    Major Metropolitan Areas: 2011-2015
    Share (%) of Metropolitan Population by Sector
    Rank Metropolitan Area % Suburban CBD Urban Core: Inner Ring Earlier Suburbs Later Suburbs Exurbs
    1 Charlotte, NC-SC 100.0% 0.0% 0.0% 10.2% 39.2% 50.6%
    2 Riverside-San Bernardino, CA 100.0% 0.0% 0.0% 28.9% 29.6% 41.5%
    3 Raleigh, NC 100.0% 0.0% 0.0% 7.4% 56.8% 35.8%
    4 Orlando, FL 100.0% 0.0% 0.0% 15.7% 50.6% 33.7%
    5 Birmingham, AL 100.0% 0.0% 0.0% 41.6% 25.2% 33.2%
    6 Jacksonville, FL 100.0% 0.0% 0.0% 25.6% 49.0% 25.4%
    7 Phoenix, AZ 100.0% 0.0% 0.0% 29.1% 52.0% 18.9%
    8 San Antonio, TX 100.0% 0.0% 0.0% 38.6% 44.1% 17.3%
    9 Tampa-St. Petersburg, FL 100.0% 0.0% 0.0% 44.2% 41.7% 14.1%
    10 Tucson, AZ 100.0% 0.0% 0.0% 46.9% 41.0% 12.2%
    11 Nashville, TN 99.8% 0.2% 0.0% 24.4% 36.9% 38.5%
    12 San Jose, CA 99.8% 0.1% 0.1% 77.5% 9.3% 13.0%
    13 Houston, TX 99.6% 0.4% 0.0% 33.2% 50.0% 16.4%
    14 Dallas-Fort Worth, TX 99.5% 0.2% 0.3% 33.7% 43.1% 22.7%
    15 Virginia Beach-Norfolk, VA-NC 99.5% 0.0% 0.5% 45.9% 38.0% 15.7%
    16 Atlanta, GA 99.2% 0.2% 0.6% 14.8% 70.8% 13.6%
    17 San Diego, CA 98.9% 0.0% 1.1% 61.3% 30.9% 6.7%
    18 Sacramento, CA 98.3% 0.0% 1.7% 37.7% 40.9% 19.8%
    19 Memphis, TN-MS-AR 98.1% 0.0% 1.9% 39.9% 35.3% 23.0%
    20 Austin, TX 97.9% 0.4% 1.7% 15.4% 63.0% 19.6%
    21 Las Vegas, NV 97.6% 0.4% 2.0% 16.2% 77.7% 3.8%
    22 Oklahoma City, OK 97.2% 0.4% 2.4% 34.1% 32.6% 30.6%
    23 Miami, FL 97.1% 0.3% 2.6% 50.0% 44.8% 2.4%
    24 Denver, CO 96.9% 0.5% 2.7% 42.7% 42.7% 11.4%
    25 Grand Rapids, MI 96.5% 0.0% 3.5% 33.0% 15.4% 48.0%
    26 Salt Lake City, UT 96.5% 0.0% 3.5% 47.9% 39.2% 9.3%
    27 Richmond, VA 95.6% 0.0% 4.4% 38.5% 38.4% 18.6%
    28 Columbus, OH 95.3% 0.0% 4.7% 28.5% 38.6% 28.3%
    29 Indianapolis. IN 95.0% 0.3% 4.6% 27.3% 42.6% 25.2%
    30 Kansas City, MO-KS 94.8% 0.2% 5.0% 37.5% 26.9% 30.4%
    31 Detroit,  MI 93.7% 0.1% 6.1% 60.2% 16.6% 17.0%
    32 Louisville, KY-IN 91.2% 0.5% 8.3% 44.5% 26.0% 20.8%
    33 Cincinnati, OH-KY-IN 90.0% 0.6% 9.4% 40.3% 27.9% 21.8%
    34 Portland, OR-WA 90.0% 0.7% 9.3% 36.0% 39.7% 14.3%
    35 Los Angeles, CA 89.4% 0.4% 10.1% 76.1% 5.3% 8.0%
    36 Seattle, WA 89.3% 1.1% 9.7% 35.9% 40.7% 12.6%
    37 New Orleans. LA 89.1% 0.2% 10.7% 50.3% 7.0% 31.8%
    38 Hartford, CT 88.7% 0.1% 11.2% 77.4% 1.0% 10.3%
    39 Rochester, NY 88.6% 0.3% 11.1% 46.8% 7.9% 34.0%
    40 St. Louis,, MO-IL 88.4% 0.1% 11.5% 39.6% 26.1% 22.7%
    41 Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN-WI 86.8% 0.5% 12.7% 31.4% 33.7% 21.7%
    42 Baltimore, MD 84.3% 1.4% 14.3% 42.0% 20.6% 21.8%
    43 Pittsburgh, PA 84.1% 1.3% 14.5% 56.0% 5.0% 23.1%
    44 Washington, DC-VA-MD-WV 83.3% 1.6% 15.1% 28.2% 36.6% 18.4%
    45 Cleveland, OH 78.3% 0.0% 21.7% 48.5% 13.6% 16.2%
    46 Milwaukee,WI 76.6% 1.6% 21.7% 50.7% 10.5% 15.4%
    47 Chicago, IL-IN-WI 74.2% 1.2% 24.6% 44.9% 18.5% 10.8%
    48 Philadelphia, PA-NJ-DE-MD 74.1% 0.9% 25.0% 50.5% 15.1% 8.5%
    49 Providence, RI-MA 73.9% 0.6% 25.5% 47.9% 2.8% 23.1%
    50 San Francisco-Oakland, CA 73.0% 3.3% 23.7% 54.0% 7.6% 11.4%
    51 Buffalo, NY 71.0% 0.3% 28.7% 51.3% 3.1% 16.6%
    52 Boston, MA-NH 64.3% 3.2% 32.5% 48.6% 3.6% 12.2%
    53 New York, NY-NJ-PA 46.7% 6.5% 46.8% 35.2% 5.5% 6.0%
    Derived from American Community Survey using City Sector Model

     

    Wendell Cox is principal of Demographia, an international public policy and demographics firm. He is a Senior Fellow of the Center for Opportunity Urbanism (US), Senior Fellow for Housing Affordability and Municipal Policy for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy (Canada), and a member of the Board of Advisors of the Center for Demographics and Policy at Chapman University (California). He is co-author of the “Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey” and author of “Demographia World Urban Areas” and “War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life.” He was appointed to three terms on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission, where he served with the leading city and county leadership as the only non-elected member. He served as a visiting professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, a national university in Paris.

    Top photograph: Exurban Charlotte, by author.

  • Preparing For The Infinite Suburb

    A Q&A With Alan Berger and Joel Kotkin.

    Third in a series of conversations during Infrastructure Week. See the previous Q&A with Dan Katz, Transportation Policy Counsel at Hyperloop One, and Parag Khanna, Geo-strategist and author of Connectography.

    The suburbs are back. In April, New York Magazine sounded the alarm that “more and more people are fleeing New York.” Time discovered just a few weeks ago that millennials are moving to the suburbs in droves. Recent studies have shown that millennials associate homeownership with the American dream more so than Generation X or baby boomers. As the world rapidly urbanizes, suburban migration presents an opportunity to define what this growth will look like — and how it might fit in more synergistically with urban cores and rural communities.

    Alan Berger (left) and Joel Kotkin (right), co-authors of Infinite Suburbia

    The truth is that the suburbs never fell from favor, we just stopped noticing that they became another form of the city. The shape of suburbia is an obsession for MIT professor Alan Berger and his co-author Joel Kotkin. Alan runs the MIT Norman B. Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism and teaches in the Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, while Joel is a writer and Professor of Urban Studies at Chapman University in California. Prof. Berger is also a judge for our Hyperloop One Global Challenge.

    The two of them accurately highlighted this suburban resurgence long before it was popular, so we picked their brains about how they foresee emerging technology like Hyperloop playing a role in the trend. We discussed how new transportation modes might support suburban mobility and, perhaps, reshape suburbia as we know it.

    H1: We hear you have an upcoming book called Infinite Suburbia. What does “Infinite Suburbia” mean?

    Alan: The book’s title is meant to be polemical and measurable. Global urbanization is heading towards infinite suburbia. Around the world, the vast majority of people are moving to cities not to inhabit their centers, but to suburbanize their peripheries. Why? For many reasons, and almost always by their own choosing. Thus, when the United Nations projects the number of future “urban” residents, or when researchers quantify the amount of land that will soon be “urbanized,” these figures largely reflect the unprecedented suburban expansion of cities. By 2030, an estimated nearly half a million square miles (1.2 million square kilometers) of land worldwide will become urbanized, especially in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. In the United States alone, an additional 85,000 square miles (220,000 square kilometers) of rural land will be urbanized between 2003 and 2030 . Given that these figures represent the conversion of currently rural land at the urban fringe, these lands are slated to become future, seemingly infinite suburbias.

    Joel: In the United States, 69 percent of the population lives in suburbs. As late as 2010, over 75 percent of American jobs lay outside the urban core. Many other developed countries are also majority-suburban. In the global South, it is estimated that 45 percent of the 1.4 billion people who will become new urban residents will settle in peri-urban suburbs — areas where urbanized and rural areas meet . The sheer magnitude of land conversion taking place, coupled with the fact that the majority of the world’s population already lives in suburbs, demands that new attention and creative energy be devoted to the imminent suburban expansion.

    Projected Growth in Urbanized LandSource: Past and projected rural land conversion in the US at state, regional, and national levels

    H1: You point to suburbia as a truly global phenomenon. What does this say about common values across cultures?

    Joel: This reflects essential human desires for personal space, contact with nature, safety and, in some cases, better educational options. Dense cities are attractive particularly to those with high incomes and those without children. When people get into their thirties, and start contemplating a family, or simply a quieter life, they usually head to suburbia.

    H1: Why do the suburbs get such a bad rap?

    Joel: It started early on in Britain, where suburbs offended many of the same people who are offended now — the intelligentsia, artists and gentry. Suburbs have been associated with crassness, ugliness and blamed for the decline of cities. Unlike urban cores, suburbs have few boosters; most media and major academic institutions are clustered in denser, inner city areas. Planning departments have long ignored them, or tried to figure out how to undermine them. Now, the greens are also a factor, weighing against suburban life. Simply put: everyone of consequence generally hates them, except for the vast majority of metropolitan residents who live there.

    H1: What do you think earlier proponents of moving from cites got wrong, how can we harness new technology in a way that offers greater choice and sustainability?

    Joel: The initial problems came from not confronting such issues as quality of life, social space and walking opportunities. Some tract suburbs provided better, often more affordable housing, but with little in the way of social amenities. Fortunately this is changing in many new developments, as can be seen in places like Woodlands and Cinco Ranch outside Houston, or Valencia and Irvine in Southern California.

    Alan: My research group at MIT is currently working on a project that envisions the future of the American suburb past 2060. We have focused on the continued development of polycentricity in metropolitan areas and a tendency to expand in space as transportation technology, infrastructure, and policies allow. The framework of polycentricity will be carried forward because of spatial economics and the lowering cost of distance to affect location decisions. This future could plausibly include Level 5 autonomy (no human intervention required) for most vehicles in operation, where all driving situations can be handled by an autonomous driving system (car, truck, or all-terrain vehicle). Zero carbon emissions and Level 5 automation are absolutely in the near future, probably before Generation Z is buying cars for themselves.

    Personal transportation modes will remain dominant in suburbia, but shared automobiles will transform the need for bus/rail service in suburbs. All of this assumes that consumer adoption and regulatory approval are achievable and that there is ubiquitous, reliable, and secure, low-cost wireless connectivity to the Internet-of-Things. Research suggests that level 5 autonomy will lead to 80% accident reduction.

    The new spatial economics of automation will create huge environmental dividends. Reduced paving will lead to less urban flooding, less forest fragmentation, soil conservation, more groundwater recharge, and more landscape to use for common goods. Total automation will radically change the daily needs of various population segments. I can imagine increased long-distance commuting and mobile office vehicles, drone delivery for many errands, on-demand care and newly mobile elderly segments, and the elimination of drunk driving to name a few.

    Future Suburban FabricConceptual view of future suburban fabric – Image Credit: Matthew Spremulli, MIT Center for Advanced Urbanism.

    H1: Alan, you’re one of our esteemed judges for the Hyperloop One Global Challenge. Reviewing the applications – or engaging with teams and stakeholders at the event – what was one of the biggest surprises for you?

    Alan: At a recent review of the U.S. finalist proposals in Washington D.C., I was pleasantly surprised by what I would describe as ‘regional optimism’. There was great enthusiasm and acknowledgement that we need to disrupt the broken transportation systems that are not serving emerging regional economies well. For instance, many individual cities talked about how connecting with regional partners would rejuvenate cities well beyond their own borders. There was a palpable energy to fix things and to pragmatically solve big problems that have national implications, not just local ones. It is truly rare to be in a room all day (literally 9 straight hours) with state and local agency heads from all over the U.S., the people in the day-to-day regulatory and political trenches of their cities, and hear them dream about the future in such uninhibited ways.

    H1: You’re at a dinner party and a colleague proclaims Hyperloop only makes sense for intercity transport. How do you respond?

    Alan: I would politely tell my colleague she needed to think about the broader applications of the infrastructure. The Hyperloop’s value is exponentially greater than that of the technology itself. Like other new infrastructure, it will be joined with other innovations — ‘packetized’ — creating a multiplier effect. In the case of the Hyperloop, when a pod reaches its exit it will begin to function as an autonomous vehicle and completely solve the ‘last mile’ problem. The passenger will continue to ride in the same car until it reaches its final destination. What a “city” is will be redefined in the extended regional context of commuting extra long distances in short times.

    H1: You’ve mentioned that even though more than 70 percent of people in the U.S. live in suburban areas —the suburbs are still growing. How can the U.S. successfully accommodate growing suburban interest and what can be done to invest in/revitalize/repurpose existing suburban infrastructure?

    Joel: The key thing is to take advantage of new technologies. An overwhelming dependence on the personal car, and the ineffectiveness of rail transit (as can proved in declining market shares in many markets) — means some new approaches are necessary that are more effective and less costly. Billions have been spent on light rail and subways in dispersed urban areas like Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas and Atlanta but this has not increased transit share. New technologies will soon make these systems even less relevant and useful.

    Alan: Joel is absolutely correct that tech innovations will change the infrastructural situation in suburbia. I think the key issue here is how we define and fund old vs. new infrastructure. There’s little recognition that we need new forms of transport, and that building new infrastructure is not the same as modernizing old infrastructure. Of course, repairing bridges and helping to maintain state and national infrastructure are roles the federal government should and must continue to play. Despite that, the federal government needs to step into the future if America is going to continue to be the great transportation innovator that developed our magnificent web of trains, planes and automobile routes on a scale never seen or even imagined before.

    In addition to new forms of infrastructure, government needs to re-think transportation capital. Our federal funding model is stuck in the 1950s, servicing city cores with inefficient mobility. There aren’t any signs that it’s going to finance the innovative infrastructure projects we need for more spread out city forms. Private investors are best positioned to understand and act on the future growth dynamics that will make these new modes succeed.

    H1: Before “sprawl” became a contested word, Frank Lloyd Wright was famous for calling for more decentralization and opportunities for individuals to move away from the city. On the introduction of the automobile he wrote, man is “like a bird born in captivity, which finds the door opened. Soon he will learn that he can fly; and when he learns that he is free, he is gone.” In what ways do emerging technologies today have the power to give people greater choice to decide where to live, work, and experience leisure time?

    Alan: Wright’s Broadacre City should be reimagined with a Hyperloop! But seriously, we can’t sacrifice the need for environmental safeguards, or for safety and security in infrastructure. Neither should the federal government dictate things like location choice by telling people where to live. Our government has to be a partner, not an obstacle in these arenas. It should be developing streamlined, efficient, modern regulations that enable the rapid growth of new transportation technologies — technologies that are themselves key to an environmentally sustainable future. Government should refocus the federal funding apparatus, this time as an active participant in public-private partnerships — the so-called Three Ps.

    Joel: The new systems, like Uber and Lyft, allow suburbanites greater flexibility at the same time the internet provides opportunity to turn the home into a primary workplace. In the future, the move towards Hyperloop technology and automated vehicles will further shatter the isolating aspects of suburban living. The beauty of suburban living — quiet, safe, allowing space — really evolves if you can strip out the maddening commute by car or even train.

    This piece first appeared on the Hyperloop One blog.

    Alan Berger is Professor of Landscape Architecture and Urban Design at Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he teaches courses open to the entire student body. He is founding director of P-REX lab, at MIT, a research lab focused on environmental problems caused by urbanization, including the design, remediation, and reuse of waste landscapes worldwide. He is also Co-Director of Norman B. Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism at MIT (LCAU).

    Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com. He is the Roger Hobbs Distinguished Fellow in Urban Studies at Chapman University and executive director of the Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism. His newest book is The Human City: Urbanism for the rest of us. He is also author of The New Class Conflict, The City: A Global History, and The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050. He lives in Orange County, CA.

    Header image credit: MIG|SvR.

  • The Evolving Urban Form: Prague

    Prague is the capital of Czechia, a nation most readers have probably never heard of. Last year, the Czech Republic adopted a new name that does not reveal its governance structure (republic). The new name has not enjoyed widespread acclaim. The union of Czechoslovakia, which dates from the end of World War I, split peacefully in 1993, resulting in the creation of Czech Republic and Slovakia.

    Prague, like its central and eastern European cousins, Warsaw, Budapest and Bucharest, has experienced substantial decentralization of its population following the collapse of communism. As economies improved and more housing choices opened up, many residents opted to move to outer parts of the core cities or even beyond to suburban and exurban areas.

    Today, the municipality of Prague has approximately 100,000 more residents than in 1980. Yet, the distribution of the population is quite different than before. Then, the central and inner districts of the city had a population of approximately 980,000, while the outer districts were home to 200,000. The latest Czech Statistical Office estimates (for January 1, 2017) show the center and inner districts have declined to approximately 785,000 residents. The city’s outer districts have experienced all of the population increase, more than doubling to above 460,000.

    Meanwhile, two-thirds of the growth (Graphic 1) has been in the suburbs of the Středočeský region (Central Bohemia), which surrounds Prague (Graphic 2).

    The Historic Inner District

    Prague’s central district (District 1) comprises the pre-transit walking core of the city. It stretches across the Vltava River (Smetana’s “The Moldau”) from Wenceslaus Square across the Charles Bridge to Prague Castle, the site of St. Vitus Cathedral. The district also includes the Old Town Square. The population of District 1 dropped from 53,000 in 1980 to 29,000 in 2017, a decline of 44 percent.

    The most recent historic events have virtually all taken place in District 1. The 1968 revolt against Soviet control occurred in Wenceslaus Square and was put down by Warsaw Pact military action and tanks, with a loss of 500 Czechoslovakian citizens.

    This was the end of Alexander Dubček’s “Prague Spring” attempt to liberalize communism. Dubček rose from head of the Slovak communist party to leader of the Czechoslovakian communist government. Dubček, however, was luckier than Imre Nagy of Hungary, the communist leader who paid for his liberalizing tendencies by being executed after the 1956 rebellion.

    Wenceslaus Square, named after St. Wenceslaus, Duke of Bohemia, was also the center of the “Velvet Revolution”. Led by Václav Havel, he became Czechoslovakia’s first president following the fall of communism. The communist parliament building (Graphic 3) played a major role, as described by prague-stay.com:

    “This Communist eyesore, loathed by many, loved by few was built after the old Exchange building was destroyed from 1966 – 1973. This glass monstrosity with its two giant pillars is still complete with nuclear shelters. The demands of the Velvet Revolution were accepted here in 1989 and the building was once home to Radio Free Europe who rented the location from former president Vaclav Havel for a very small fee per year (rumor has it that the fee was 1 CZK).”

    I watched Dubček, an unsurprising supporter of the Velvet Revolution, from the building’s gallery in his role as chairman of the national parliament in 1991. Soon after, the national parliament relocated from the building, which is now part of the National Museum. The main building is shown in the top photograph (my photo was not used because of the present scaffolding being used in its refurbishment).

    There is a memorial to victims of the 1968 Warsaw Pact action in front of the main building (Graphic 4), with a barbed wire wreath. Graphics 5 to 7 are also of Wenceslaus Square, which some travel guide books point out is more of a boulevard than a square.

    Old Town Square is shown in Graphics 8 to 12. Charles Bridge is illustrated in Graphics 13 to 16. This historic bridge was built between 1357 and 1402. The approach to Prague Castle and related views are in Graphics 17 to 21. Other views of the inner district are in Graphic 22 (the National Theatre) and Graphic 23.

    Inner and Outer Districts of Prague

    The inner districts (2 through 10) were mainly developed during the mass transit area. The outer districts, where all the city’s growth has occurred, have generally lower population densities. There are some detached houses in the outer districts. Besides the historical buildings, Prague, like other European cities, is in many ways spatially dominated by the automobile, with its narrow, crowded streets and parking on sidewalks. (Graphics 24 to 27).

    The Suburbs

    The Středočeský region surrounds Prague and contains both suburban and exurban development (Graphics 28 to 36), including new construction (Graphics 30 to 36). The Středočeský suburbs exhibit a high quality of suburban infrastructure for eastern Europe, including sidewalks in most cases and curbs. However, the quality of the visible suburban infrastructure falls considerably short of that enjoyed by suburban residents of the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, where for decades nearly all suburban development has included these features, as well as streets wide enough for parking and cars to pass one-another in opposite directions.

    The Prague Area: Dominating Czechia’s Population Growth

    As is occurring in Tokyo-Yokohama and Budapest, the Prague area is capturing nearly all the national growth, at 86 percent. This includes 58 percent in the suburbs and 28 percent in the outer districts. This is a far greater percentage than Prague’s 25 percent of the population in 1980. (Graphic 37).

    Prague’s Popularity

    For nearly three decades, Prague has been the capital of a nation free to set its own course, the longest period since the 1918 establishment of Czechoslovakia. Prague has become particularly popular among foreign tourists. Trip Advisor ranked Prague 5th among the cities of Europe last year, trailing London, Paris, Rome and Barcelona and ninth in the world. It is no minor accomplishment to edge out cities like Vienna, Amsterdam, and Budapest.

    Wendell Cox is principal of Demographia, an international public policy and demographics firm. He is a Senior Fellow of the Center for Opportunity Urbanism (US), Senior Fellow for Housing Affordability and Municipal Policy for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy (Canada), and a member of the Board of Advisors of the Center for Demographics and Policy at Chapman University (California). He is co-author of the “Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey” and author of “Demographia World Urban Areas” and “War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life.” He was appointed to three terms on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission, where he served with the leading city and county leadership as the only non-elected member. He served as a visiting professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, a national university in Paris.

    Top photograph: National Museum. Main building. By Jorge Láscar [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

  • The Best Small and Medium-Size Cities For Jobs 2017

    Much of the U.S. media tends to see smaller cities as backwaters, inevitably left behind as the “best and brightest” head to the country’s mega-regions. The new economy, insists the Washington Post, favors large cities for start-ups and new businesses. Richard Florida has posited the emergence of a “winner take all urbanism” that tends to favor the richest cities, such as New York and San Francisco.

    However this paradigm may reflect cosmopolitan attitudes and rivalries between large cities more than reality, with its complications and nuances. Smaller cities have long been disadvantaged in their ability to attract the most elite companies and Americans on the move, but that may well be changing. Following a post-financial crisis period in which many domestic migrants headed to the big cities, the latest Census data suggests that the flow is now going the other way, with the native born moving to smaller places with between 500,000 and a million people. The new trend in migration, notes the Atlantic’s Derek Thompson, a confirmed big city booster, has been a “great hollowing out,” with Americans leaving places like New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco for the suburbs and less costly, usually smaller cities. (Note that at least in New York’s case, foreign immigrants have been taking their places.)

    To be sure, many smaller towns are suffering, and the bottom of our annual survey of employment trends in America’s 421 metro areas is dominated by them, starting with last place Beckley, W.V.; followed by Johnstown, Pa.; Charleston, W.V.; Weirton-Steubenville, Ohio; and Peoria, Illinois. Yet at the same time small city America — which we define as metro areas with less than 150,000 jobs — accounted for seven of the 10 cities where job growth has been the strongest.

    2017 Best Cities Rankings Lists

    Methodology

    Our rankings are based on short-, medium- and long-term job creation, going back to 2005, and factor in momentum — whether growth is slowing or accelerating. We have compiled separate rankings for America’s 70 largest metropolitan statistical areas (those with nonfarm employment over 450,000), as well as medium-size metro areas (between 150,000 and 450,000 nonfarm jobs) and small ones (less than 150,000 nonfarm jobs), the latter two of which are our focus this week, in order to make the comparisons more relevant to each category. (For a detailed description of our methodology, click here).

    The Utah Model

    What makes for successful smaller cities? There’s no simple formula, but several characteristics loom prominently. One is the extent and quality of its amenities: Many of our top cities are in attractive locations near mountains or the ocean, and tend to be home to colleges and universities. And, almost without exception, they are located in less costly, lower-tax states. Finally, it doesn’t hurt to be relatively close to a bigger urban area and a large airport.

    All these characteristics apply to the best metro area for jobs in 2017 — Provo-Orem, Utah. Located an hour south of Salt Lake City and its big airport, the Provo-Orem area has a population of 603,000 and sits alongside the scenic Wasatch Mountains. It’s home to the well-regarded Brigham Young University. Last year the metro area’s job count expanded an impressive 4.4%, and employment is up 29.2% since 2011. As one might suspect in a college-oriented area, the biggest growth has been in fields that tend to hire educated people, such as business and professional services, in which employment grew 5.8% last year, financial services (up 6.7%) and the information sector (plus 5.8%).

    But Provo is not alone in outstanding job growth in the Beehive State. In addition to its largest metro area, Salt Lake City, which ranks 13th, the small city of Saint George ranks third. Also benefiting from a scenic location in the state’s rugged southwestern corner, it’s less of a college town than a retirement and tourism magnet, which explains much of its 5.7% job growth last year. This was driven in large part by big expansions in health and education, with employment in those sectors up 4.6% last year and some 31.8% since 2011.

    Another Utah superstar is 18th-ranked Ogden-Clearfield. Its 2.9% job growth last year was driven in large part by financial services, with employment up 5.7%, and education and health, up 5.9%.

    So what accounts for one relatively small state that’s home to only 3.1% of the U.S. population placing four cities in the top 20? Among the factors: the nation’s fastest population growth, a highly favorable business climate (Gov. Gary Herbert has made cutting red tape a priority of his administration), a burgeoning tech sector and a Mormon-influenced social culture that seems to encourage citizen engagement in local affairs.

    Other Hot Spots

    The other smaller boom towns are a varied lot, although all share locations in low tax, light regulation states. Some bigger cities — San Francisco, Seattle, San Jose — seem to have found a way to keep growing in higher cost environments, but this does not seem to be the case for smaller cities. Virtually all the small communities in our top 20 — with the exception of No. 8 Fort Collins, Colo., — come from such reddish states as the Carolinas, Texas, Idaho and, of course, Utah.

    Most of the fastest-growing metro areas tend to be in what some have called “amenity regions.” This is certainly the case for Ft. Collins, No. 9 Gainesville, Ga., No. 10 The Villages, Fla., and No. 17 Boise, Idaho. Many of these places, notably the Villages, are attractive to retirees and downshifting boomers while others may also lure young families.

    Yet there are some wide differences among our top small cities. Smaller cities often have very distinctive economies dominated by one or two industries. Sixth-ranked Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers, a metropolitan area that sprawls between Missouri and Arkansas, is dominated by two forces, Bentonville-based Walmart, and a burgeoning retirement/tourism sector tied to its location in the scenic Ozarks. The area which enjoyed 3.3% job growth last year, and 20.4% since 2011, was paced by an expanding professional and business services sector, up a sizzling 8.0% last year; other dynamic sectors include financial services, up 4.5% last year, as well as the education and health, which grew 4.0%.

    Charleston-North Charleston, which ranked 4th on our list with a 3.2% job growth rate last year and 17.6% since 2011, epitomizes the new dynamic small cities. Not only does the area boast a charming ante-bellum urban core, and some of the country’s best food, it has also become attractive to companies seeking to lower costs. The city is home to Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner assembly plant and to Mercedes-Benz’s $500 million Charleston plant, which will add 1,300 jobs over the next few years. It is also about to house Volvo’s first North American manufacturing plant – a $500 million investment that could add up to 4,000 jobs home. Charleston has also emerged as something of a millennial draw as well, with the largest percentage of residents aged 25 to 34 of any midsized city.

    2017 Best Cities Rankings Lists

    The Future of Smaller Cities

    In contrast to the conventional wisdom, smaller cities may have a brighter future than many expect. Of course, it’s hard to see a rapid turnaround in some deindustrialized cities, particularly in the Midwest. Many energy-dependent cities are down sharply in our ranking from a year ago, including Baton Rouge, La., which dropped 97 places to 191st, and Bismarck, N.D., which plummeted 119 places to 221st. The Trump administration certainly has made noise about helping the energy industry, but the cold reality of the current global oversupply of oil suggests these places won’t be rebounding much in the near term.

    Right now, prospects seem best for amenity rich areas, in part because they appeal to both aging boomer and younger families. The scenic Pacific Northwest is home to many gainers this year, including Olympia-Tumwater, Wash., which gained as impressive 64 places from last year to 21st, Wenatchee, which rose seven spots to 22nd, and Bellingham, which jumped 100 places to 63rd.

    In the South, the attractive coastal city Wilmington, N.C., rose 76 places to 54th, and the Florida beach towns Northport-Sarasota-Bradenton, climbed 28 spots to 35th while Punta Gorda gained 26 places to 39th.

    The future of smaller American cities, in some senses, parallels that of their larger counterparts. Some areas seem positioned for further growth, while many others are stagnating or even dropping. The small city is far from obsolete, with a good number of them poised to expand strongly in the years ahead.

    This piece originally appeared on Forbes.

    Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com. He is the Roger Hobbs Distinguished Fellow in Urban Studies at Chapman University and executive director of the Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism. His newest book is The Human City: Urbanism for the rest of us. He is also author of The New Class Conflict, The City: A Global History, and The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050. He lives in Orange County, CA.

    Dr. Michael Shires primary areas of teaching and research include state, regional and local policy; technology and democracy; higher education policy; strategic, political and organizational issues in public policy; and quantitative analysis. He often serves as a consultant to local and state government on issues related to finance, education policy and governance. Dr. Shires has been quoted as an expert in various publications including USA Today, Newsweek, The Economist, The Sacramento Bee, San Francisco Chronicle, and LA Times. He has also appeared as a guest commentator on CNN, KTLA and KCAL to name a few.

    Photo by City of St. George (City of St. George) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons

  • The Evolving Urban Form: Budapest

    The Budapest area has lost population overall since 1980, having fallen from 3.03 million to 2.99 million in 2016, according to Hungarian Central Statistical Office data as reported by citypopulation.de (Graphic 1). This 1.3 percent loss is smaller than the national population loss over the same period of 8.2 percent. Moreover, during the last five years, the Budapest area is estimated to have gained 1.7 percent, even as Hungary lost 1.1 percent. In this regard, the trend in Budapest has been similar to that of Warsaw, with stronger population growth than in the nation as a whole, but at the same time greater population growth outside the urban core.

    The Budapest area described in this article includes two of Hungary’s county level jurisdictions (megyék), the core municipality of Budapest and Pest, which surrounds Budapest with inner and outer suburbs. Each of the county level jurisdictions is further divided into districts.

    Urban Core Districts

    Budapest’s center spans the Danube River and includes District I (former Pest) and District V (former Buda). These districts largely encompassed the “walking city” that existed before the coming of transit in the 18th century. Walking cities have especially high densities, and were subject to huge population losses when after transit and the automobile arrive. For example, from 1860 to 2010, core walking arrondissements (I through IV) of the ville de Paris have lost nearly 75 percent of their population (earlier comparisons are not readily available because new arrondissement boundaries were adopted in 1860).

    Similarly, since 1980, the former walking center of Budapest has lost 44 percent of its population. The largest loss occurred in the decade following the exit of Soviet influence, between 1990 and 2001. Over the past five years, these two districts have experienced a small population reversal, having increased approximately four percent.

    On the east side of the Danube, there are a number of high density districts adjacent to District V (Districts VI, VII, VIII, IX, X and XIII). These largely developed in the mass transit era and have suffered less serious losses. Since 1980, these districts have loss 29 percent of their population. Again, the greatest declines were between 1990 and 2001. However, modest losses continue and the most recent five year loss more than offset the gains noted above in the inner core districts.

    Budapest’s urban core is renowned for its magnificent buildings, largely from the 19th century. Its core is a feast of architecture rivaling such urban showpieces as Paris, Barcelona and Buenos Aires.

    The urban core of Budapest includes the Royal Palace (Graphic 2) on the west side of the river and Parliament on the east side. There is the notable ‘Chain Bridge,” which opened in 1848 and still handles pedestrian, transit and highway traffic (Graphic 3).

    Parliament was completed in 1904, when Budapest was one of the two capitals of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, under the dual monarchy (top photograph and Graphics 4 and 5). It is, in my view, one of the most distinctive seats of government in the world, having features that resemble those of the Palace of Westminster in London and a dome resembling that of the U.S. Capitol. Its distinctive reddish roofs are seen in current river cruise PBS television commercials.

    The Parliament is in Kussuth Square (Graphics 6 and 7), which was at the heart of the 1956 rebellion against Soviet rule, which resulted in a death toll of 2,500, followed by the loss of 200,000 refugees. There is now a memorial to the event below Kussuth Square, with exhibits tied together by a lighted red line symbolizing the bloody event (Graphic 8).

    The urban core also includes the Opera House that reminds one of the Garnier Opera in Paris. There are many more examples of ornate architecture, principally from the 19th century (Graphics 9 to 17), extending to “Heroes Square,” where Imre Nagy, Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Hungarian People’s Republic (the national leader) was reburied, after having been executed for leadership of the 1956 rebellion.

    Other City Districts

    The other 15 districts of Budapest have lost six percent of their population since 1980. These districts are newer, have lower population densities and are more automobile oriented (Graphic 18). However, since 2011, these districts experienced a three percent increase. The other districts have more than 70 percent of Budapest’s population, and this increase was enough to produce an overall two percent increase for Budapest county between 2011 and 2016. Even so, Budapest county has lost 15 percent of its population since 1980.

    The Suburbs (Pest County)

    The only part of the Budapest area that has grown since 1980 is Pest County, with its inner and outer suburbs (Graphics 19 and 20). Overall, Pest County has grown 27 percent. The eight inner suburban counties experienced the bulk of the growth, adding 50 percent, while the 10 outer suburban counties added four percent to their population.

    In the Soviet era, high rise apartment blocks were the rule, while there was little construction of detached housing. Following the Soviet exit, suburbanization developed rapidly, with considerable single family detached housing construction (Graphics 21 to 22). Houses continue to be under construction, both in existing suburban areas and in greenfield areas (Graphics 23 to 28), some in the Buda Hills, with stunning views of the city. This greenfield development appears to have stronger infrastructure regulations, illustrated by unusually wide (for Europe) suburban roadways and complete sidewalk development, even before house construction begins (Graphic 29).

    Progress in Budapest

    Hungary faces serious challenges, particularly due to its substantial population losses. Yet, as in the case of Tokyo-Yokohama, a national capital in a nation losing population can prosper by capturing nearly all of the nation’s growth. This is also the reality in the Budapest region, where recent modest population gains have been achieved, even as the nation continued to lose population. Over the last three decades, Budapest has moved quickly from the excessive political and economic controls to a new future of people-centered modernity that the more fortunate cities in North America, Europe and Oceania were able to embrace much earlier.

    Wendell Cox is principal of Demographia, an international public policy and demographics firm. He is a Senior Fellow of the Center for Opportunity Urbanism (US), Senior Fellow for Housing Affordability and Municipal Policy for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy (Canada), and a member of the Board of Advisors of the Center for Demographics and Policy at Chapman University (California). He is co-author of the “Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey” and author of “Demographia World Urban Areas” and “War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life.” He was appointed to three terms on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission, where he served with the leading city and county leadership as the only non-elected member. He served as a visiting professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, a national university in Paris.

    Top photograph: Parliament from across the Danube (by author).

  • America the Cheap

    America is a price dominant culture, and we need to take responsibility for that when we complain about bad customer service, poor infrastructure, etc. Certainly American business and political leadership could be better, but they aren’t the ones who decided to shop at Wal-Mart instead of the local store (favoring short term financial gain over long term community loss). Nor are they the ones who force us to vote for politicians promising something for nothing.

    This is the subject of my latest City Journal piece, “America the Cheap“:

    American politicians understand this. That’s why they frequently promise voters something for nothing, or free stuff with other people’s money. Republicans promise to “eliminate fraud and waste” or to increase government revenues somehow by slashing taxes, or through some other cost-free method. Democrats say that they are going to tax “the rich,” such as when New York City mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio said that he would give all New Yorkers free pre-K education, funded by a special surtax on high-income households (i.e., somebody else).

    European social democracies offer extensive government services and generously funded safety-net programs. But these come with high taxes for the average citizen. Few American politicians are willing to advocate explicitly for that. They keep promising citizens a free lunch. And why not? It seems to be what we want to hear: there’s some magic elixir that can transmute lead into gold.

    The populists are right that corporate, governmental, and cultural elites have too often let America down, and even sometimes acted disgracefully. But that doesn’t mean that the man on the street is off the hook. Just because someone else is guilty doesn’t mean that we’re all innocent. If populism takes a high view of the ordinary citizen, then it should also recognize the importance of these citizens’ decisions in shaping the world we live in.

    Click through to read the whole thing.

    Aaron M. Renn is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor of City Journal, and an economic development columnist for Governing magazine. He focuses on ways to help America’s cities thrive in an ever more complex, competitive, globalized, and diverse twenty-first century. During Renn’s 15-year career in management and technology consulting, he was a partner at Accenture and held several technology strategy roles and directed multimillion-dollar global technology implementations. He has contributed to The Guardian, Forbes.com, and numerous other publications. Renn holds a B.S. from Indiana University, where he coauthored an early social-networking platform in 1991.

    Photo Credit: Mike Kalasnik, CC BY-SA 2.0

  • The Ghost of Mamie Eisenhower

    There’s a certain amount of nostalgia these days for 1950’s suburbs when men were men and ladies mopped linoleum floors in white pumps and pearls. I’m not entirely sure that world ever really existed precisely the way it was portrayed on black and white television, but we seem to want it to be true.


    Here are examples of the most common version of 1950’s suburban homes. Soldiers returning from World War II eagerly bought them with heavily subsidized mortgages. They were based on the Levittown model of modest mass produced houses stamped out by the tens of thousands in potato fields all across North America. 875 square feet. Three small bedrooms. One bath. A little eat in kitchen. No garage. No air conditioning. And this kind of home was a spectacular improvement over the accommodations most families had experienced during the Great Depression of the 1930’s and wartime rationing of the 1940’s.

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    But by today’s standards these homes are often considered substandard. In fact, in many communities homes like these are now illegal to build because they’re so cheap and unimpressive that they might attract “the wrong element.” This subdivision has been in decline for years. The manufacturing jobs that once supported these families dried up long ago. The next generation who managed to get university degrees and work their way up the economic food chain moved to more exclusive locations farther away from the old city center. The population of this tract has contracted by 17% since the 2000 census. Today the largest segment of the remaining population in this neighborhood earns $10,000 or less per year. Many are elderly pensioners or people on public assistance. Some of these homes languish on the market and eventually sell for as little as $25,000. Homes in better condition consistently sell for $50,000 to $60,000 – largely because banks won’t write mortgages for less.

    If you take a ten minute drive out along the aging 1950’s commercial corridors that compliment these residential subdivisions you quickly discover the scope of the problem. The most common criticism of this environment is that it’s soul crushingly ugly. The presumed remedy is to make it “pretty” by planting flowers, mandating more attractive signage, and flying American flags everywhere. There’s a concerted effort to replace the dead drive-thru burger joints and empty muffler shops with shiny new drive-thru burger joints and muffler shops. But ugliness isn’t the problem and newness isn’t any kind of solution.

    Insolvency is the problem. This landscape doesn’t generate enough value to support the required infrastructure that supports it. The majority of the land along this commercial strip is surface parking lots, landscaped berms, and storm water retention ponds. None of that pays taxes, employs people, or adds value to the town. The best discount tire shop in the world can’t spin off enough revenue to carry the public burden of suburban roads, sewers, water systems, schools, police, and so on. Ugly is just the icing on the cake.

    But then I discovered this bit of Dwell Magazine style new construction. The fashionable Mid Century Modern lines are a kind of Walter Gropius meets Mies Van Der Rohe meets Frank Lloyd Wright homage to Mamie Eisenhower’s bygone Atomic Ranch America with all the latest “green” bells and whistles. So why did someone spend so much money on this property in this location? Well…

    It’s a peculiar sweet spot if you’re paying attention. The schmaltzy 1950’s tract homes are built right on the edge of an old 1890’s neighborhood. When the subdivision was new people were eager to escape the cramped apartments and run down housing stock of traditional urbanism and reveled in the privacy, personal space, and greenery of the fresh suburban living arrangement. They drove away from Main Street on the newly widened highways toward a glorious Jiffy Lube and Dairy Queen future. Meanwhile, the old neighborhood suffered institutional neglect and was abandoned to slumlords and marginalized minority populations for decades.

    Today there’s a renewed appreciation for historic districts. The economic and cultural pendulum is swinging back again, particularly among post college Millennials. The center of this traditional neighborhood is a five minute bicycle ride from those cheap 1950’s tract homes. As prices for venerable properties rise and availability tightens the little tract homes may seem a lot more viable. This is especially true as Millennials begin to have children and start looking for affordable property close to civilization, but with a little patch of garden. Zoning regulations and building codes make it almost impossible to alter existing homes in the older neighborhood. But the small homes and large lots of the suburban subdivision are significantly easier to add on to and modify. These homes can turn away from the depressing sprawl along the highway and turn back toward Main Street. Given enough time and incremental investment this could be one of the more desirable places to live in the years to come.

    And there’s one more aspect to these homes that I find particularly appealing. There’s a significant amount of land that lends itself to serious gardening and a conspicuous lack of Home Owners Association rules and regulations. Combined with the close-in location and genuinely affordable price point these homes are ideal for varying degrees of suburban homesteading. This sort of thing may seem peculiar to most people at the moment, but it could be a prominent selling feature in the future. Time will tell.

    John Sanphillippo lives in San Francisco and blogs about urbanism, adaptation, and resilience at granolashotgun.com. He’s a member of the Congress for New Urbanism, films videos for faircompanies.com, and is a regular contributor to Strongtowns.org. He earns his living by buying, renovating, and renting undervalued properties in places that have good long term prospects. He is a graduate of Rutgers University.

    All photos by Johnny Sanphillippo

  • The Sad State of the University Degree for Planners & Designers

    For the past four decades, technology has improved nearly all aspects of our life – except for the physical land development patterns of our cities. The 1960’s suburban pattern, still in use today, is unsustainable. However, the ‘architectural’ answer to the ‘planning’ problem of sprawling subdivisions has been to simply go backwards to the gridded past.

    Without a high degree of architectural and landscaping detail, this model, known as New Urbanism, does not work. As such, there are few (if any) affordable New Urbanist non-subsidized developements. The Congress of New Urbanism (CNU) boasts of their success in gentrification, but instead of reinventing ‘design’ to address the problems, the architect’s answer is to make site plan function as if it as a simplistic rectangular floor plan.

    The CNU objective is to create a pedestrian oriented society and do everything possible to do away with car ownership. To combat suburban sprawl, they attack those who invest in suburban homes even though they represent 80 percent of the housing market growth. Even with the nearly three decades New Urbanists have promoted this singular solution, there are relatively few actual CNU projects.

    One of the largest groups of CNU followers are university professors who teach young, impressionable minds that suburbia is terrible and only high density is the answer. These students go deep into debt thinking that they will be part of a vast new era of change, however, when they look for employment in the real world, they are miserably unprepared. The technical skills taught in Urban Planning and GIS (Geographic Information Systems) revolve around software and training supplied by ESRI, and for architectural or civil engineering students, most likely an AutoCAD targeted module like Civil3D or Revitt, the current industry-leading software products.

    To understand why this is a problem, I will share experiences with graduate students hired as interns, not mentioning the school. I am based in Minneapolis.

    I interviewed a graduate from the Urban Studies program a few years ago who did not understand what an easement or a right-of-way was. He had no classes on how a plan or plat was put together, along with no design courses, no knowledge of surveying or civil engineering which is the basis of all redevelopment and growth. I decided to take on the challenge and hired the student to teach him basic things you would think would be taught to a graduate student.

    A few months ago, I took an intern (same university) graduating this spring in GIS and mapping. Again, you would think the basic premise of mapping would be an intricate knowledge of surveying and subdivision planning, at least. But nay, nay – none was taught. I asked, why a career in GIS? He said that his first intention was to become a civil engineer, but they immediately placed him in the mathematically demanding structural side of civil engineering, which proved too much for him. Instead of having a dedicated civil ‘site’ engineering course with simplistic math to learn, he made the choice to become a GIS technician. Again, going massively into student debt. These interns were both taught a targeted social engineering agenda that ignored where most of the growth was, and will continue to be, the suburbs.

    Four decades ago, before software and New Urbanism existed, students were taught design. Slowly, a metamorphosis occurred from a hands-on approach to one where the designer is limited by the functions of the technology being taught. I began developing software four decades ago and within a decade began to realize software was not actually about design. It is about how fast the end user can produce that architectural or civil engineering plan, which is slowly but surely destroying design.

    This is why it seems like every new apartment building or commercial center looks as if the same architect was used – in a way it is, because the architect is more software, not a person. Today’s CAD and GIS software has reduced design to replicable keystrokes in predetermined software functions, which dumbs down design and promotes the cookie-cutter monotony typical of all suburban subdivisions and urban redevelopments.

    For the past 26 years, in order to remedy this situation, our studio developed pioneering technology enabled methods to design over 1,000 land developments in 47 states and 18 nations to date. These methods have a demonstrated average reduction of infrastructure by 27 percent, without a density loss or reduced existing regulatory minimums, as compared to conventional design methods.

    When compared to the New Urbanism taught in universities, we have seen examples where infrastructure is reduced by up to 60 percent with our methods. Reduced right-of-way can provide a density increase without sacrificing space and privacy – valued by the suburban dweller. The increased open space allows better models for vehicular and pedestrian connectivity and efficiency, as well as a coordination of architecture and site design to enhance views, curb appeal, value and livability, while reducing environmental impacts.

    By curing the ills of suburbia, we deflate the CNU agenda, so it is no surprise few professors embrace the reinvention of planning, both in design and in regulation writing.

    A dozen years ago we began investing heavily in creating a new form of technical solution. Software in the form that exists today simply automates past methods. We needed to develop a product that would educate the advanced design methods and not rely on the ‘paint by numbers’ solution that limits possibilities. Software is a tool. The saying – “If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail”, is true of the CAD and GIS products being taught. We needed to teach our market-proven design discoveries and develop a completely different kind of a tool that would not limit the art of design.

    As the architect Frank Gehry stated: “Creativity is about play and a kind of willingness to go with your intuition. It’s crucial to an artist.” Art cannot happen with the current ‘paint by numbers’ approach. Nor can growth be functional when graduates today have only a singular skill – either architecture, engineering, mapping, or social engineering (i.e. what used to be known as planning). Design must function better, and without a general knowledge of all these skills there cannot be progress for the masses who cannot afford nor desire to live in overly dense gentrified neighborhoods.

    To tear down this roadblock to sustainability, design education and technology needed to merge engineering, surveying, architecture, and planning to eliminate the barriers to sustainability in the current uncollaborative design industry. This is why we called our new system LandMentor.

    Planning commissions routinely approve and deny submittals by developers in the exact same form as 60 years ago – a two dimensional plan projected on a screen. To solve this problem we incorporated the first application using virtual reality for public land development approval which harnesses video gaming that can be mastered in minutes, eliminating the high costs and complexity of CAD and GIS that discourage 3D use. No longer will planning commissions and council members need to imagine what the development will look like when completed – with VR they will see and feel it.

    Students spend years learning complex CAD and GIS technology that have made these software giants billions of dollars. There is little time left for the students to learn how to be leaders in design and decision making. Our all-inclusive core system (no modules or options) eliminated cumbersome commands harnessing a patented user interface. Our goal was to educate the use of software, the land development process, innovative design methods, as well as the use of 3D and VR, in less than two weeks.

    To enter a market saturated with CAD and GIS software is a daunting and seemingly impossible task. A few months ago I came across PlanningTank.com, a blog frequented by urban study and GIS students who were complaining that their education was not going to empower them to change the world. I contacted this group and asked them, what if we could provide the technology and training that would change the world? What if we provided this system (marketed at the time for $50,000 a seat) exclusively to students at no charge for a one year license? What if we provided a second free year to the top 33% of the students who demonstrated the most dedication to learn and experiment?

    Today, through PlanningTank.com, we hope to create a grassroots movement that will empower the future leaders of growth to make sustainability something real. Students in urban studies, civil engineering, surveying, planning, architecture, landscape architecture, real estate, and construction have a single system to learn that can replace or supplement other technologies. Those who dedicate the time and effort will not need to go further into debt and will be highly desirable and functional as they enter the employment marketplace.

    Rick Harrison is President of Rick Harrison Site Design Studio and Neighborhood Innovations, LLC. He is author of Prefurbia: Reinventing The Suburbs From Disdainable To Sustainable and creator of LandMentor. His websites are rhsdplanning.com and LandMentor.com

  • California: The Republic of Climate

    To some progressives, California’s huge endorsement for the losing side for president reflects our state’s moral superiority. Some even embrace the notion that California should secede so that we don’t have to associate with the “deplorables” who tilted less enlightened places to President-elect Donald Trump. One can imagine our political leaders even inviting President Barack Obama, who reportedly now plans to move to our state, to serve as the California Republic’s first chief executive.

    As a standalone country, California could accelerate its ongoing emergence as what could be called “the Republic of Climate.” This would be true in two ways. Dominated by climate concerns, California’s political leaders will produce policies that discourage blue-collar growth and keep energy and housing prices high. This is ideal for the state’s wealthier, mostly white, coastal ruling classes. Yet, at the same time, the California gentry can enjoy what, for the most part, remains a temperate climate. Due to our open borders policies, they can also enjoy an inexhaustible supply of cheap service workers.

    Of course, most Californians, particularly in the interior, will not do so well. They will continue to experience a climate of declining social mobility due to rising costs, and businesses, particularly those employing blue-collar and middle-income workers, will continue to flee to more hospitable, if less idyllic, climes.

    California in the Trump era

    Barring a rush to independence, Californians now must adapt to a new regime in Washington that does not owe anything to the state, much less its policy agenda. Under the new regime, our high tax rates and ever-intensifying regulatory regime will become even more distinct from national norms.

    President Obama saw California’s regulatory program, particularly its obsession with climate change, as a role model leading the rest of the nation — and even the world. Trump’s victory turns this amicable situation on its head. California now must compete with other states, which can only salivate at the growing gap in costs.

    At the same time, foreign competitors, such as the Chinese, courted by Gov. Jerry Brown and others to follow its climate agenda, will be more than happy to take energy-dependent business off our hands. They will make gestures to impress what Vladimir Lenin labeled “useful idiots” in our ruling circles, but will continue to add coal-fired plants to power their job-sapping export industries.

    Read the entire piece at The Orange County Register.

    Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com. He is the Roger Hobbs Distinguished Fellow in Urban Studies at Chapman University and executive director of the Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism. His newest book, The Human City: Urbanism for the rest of us, was published in April by Agate. He is also author of The New Class Conflict, The City: A Global History, and The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050. He lives in Orange County, CA.

    Photo: By User “Neon Tommy” (https://www.flickr.com/photos/neontommy/8117052872) [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

  • The Shape of Things to Come

    After several years of traveling around the country in the presence of city planners, economic development officials, elected representatives, engineers, production home builders, professional consultants, and groups of concerned citizens I’ve come to my own personal unified theory of America’s land use future. The short version is that we’ve got the built environment that we have and the overwhelming majority of it isn’t ever going to change much. If you want to know what things will look like in thirty or forty years… look around. That’s pretty much it.

    There’s so much of it… tract homes on cul-de-sacs, suburban office parks, strip malls, big box stores, light industrial parks, self storage facilities, garden apartment complexes… even if society wanted to radically transform the landscape (which is absolutely not the case) it would be a sixty or seventy year endeavor. Personally, I won’t live long enough to see that shift. But business-as-usual isn’t an option either regardless of what most people might prefer. What will change is the way the existing landscape will be valued and inhabited.

    Communities are hitting a financial wall. Current tax revenue is entirely insufficient to cover the ongoing maintenance of municipal infrastructure – and by “infrastructure” I mean public services and staffing levels as well as the physical roads, pipes, and civic buildings. There simply isn’t enough productive private economic activity to support the underlaying public chassis that’s been built since World War II. So we’re in for a great deal of deferred maintenance, failed pension obligations, reductions in services, higher taxes (which will be called “user fees” and “code enforcement”) and ultimately default on public debt. That’s already baked in to the cake almost everywhere.

    There are only two options moving forward. We can build more productive stuff on the existing infrastructure, or we can reduce the amount of infrastructure to come in to balance with the available productive capacity. So we’re going to do both – not necessarily on a voluntary basis. And the results will be unevenly distributed.

    Some places will continue to be maintained pretty much as they are largely by skimming revenue from other locations. Other spots will decline, lose value, become politically and culturally disposable, and be allowed to crumble. Still other districts will intensify and gain value and significance through infill development. I say this with a fair amount of confidence because that’s been the historic pattern for a very long time.

    There are people who advocate for small scale incremental infill development that could double or triple the productive capacity of a place gradually over time. A one story building could become a two story building. A two story building could become a three story building. Small cottages could be built in back gardens. A vacant lot could be filled with a small productive structure with a business on the ground floor and an apartment or two upstairs. It could be intimate and charming like the Norman Rockwell Main Street towns of a previous era. But the current regulatory framework doesn’t permit such a process. Neither does the popular culture that sees such infill as a direct assault on the American Dream. The cost and complexity of navigating multiple opaque and unresponsive bureaucracies is generally greater than the ultimate value of such modest projects. So it’s simply not going to happen.

    Infill development needs to be large, complex, and expensive enough to overcome the administrative and cultural friction. A two hundred unit apartment complex with five stories of structured parking works just fine. It may be wildly out of character with the existing neighborhood. It may load up the area with additional traffic congestion. It may be far too expensive to meet the need for working class housing. It may concentrate ownership in to very few hands. It may be built in an otherwise diffuse suburban landscape where walking and transit are unviable. But it can be built while smaller things can’t. Shrug. Whatever.

    New subdivisions with comfortable attractive middle class homes sprout on the side of the freeway like mushrooms after a good rain. These are pleasant places to live. People like them. They’re profitable to build. Municipal officials embrace growth and development. This is how things are supposed to be.

    A few miles away is yesterday’s version of growth and progress. Property values have declined. Businesses have moved away. The schools have lost their appeal. Municipal revenues have crashed. People and money are disappearing. This isn’t an anomaly. It’s the natural consequence of things playing out to their logical conclusions. This is the shape of things to come.

    John Sanphillippo lives in San Francisco and blogs about urbanism, adaptation, and resilience at granolashotgun.com. He’s a member of the Congress for New Urbanism, films videos for faircompanies.com, and is a regular contributor to Strongtowns.org. He earns his living by buying, renovating, and renting undervalued properties in places that have good long term prospects. He is a graduate of Rutgers University.

    All photos by Johnny Sanphillippo