Suburbs

Why Suburbia Will Decide the Future

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Welcome to the future of American politics. The US population is changing in major ways that will likely alter the balance in politics and economics to the advantage of Republican-leaning red states, as well as suburbs and exurbs across the country.  read more »

Densification in Toronto: The Evolving Urban Form

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Like many of the world’s largest cities (Note 1), public policy seeks to densify Toronto, which is already the densest urban area (the international term) or population centre (the Canadian term) in North America (as used here, north of Mexico). An urban area is continuously built up urbanization and is routinely at the core of a metropolitan area (in Canada, a Census Metropolitan Area, or CMA).  read more »

Deteriorating Housing Affordability in Canada

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The Frontier Centre for Public Policy has released the 2022 edition of Demographia Housing Affordability in Canada.  read more »

Korea: Moving to the Suburbs of Seoul

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The Seoul metropolitan area (also called the Seoul Capital Area) has continued its strong population growth over the past decade, with the 2020 census indicating an annual increase of 1.0%.  read more »

New Suburbanism

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New Suburbanism advances a set of ideas to deepen the conversation about the synergistic relationship between core areas, suburbs, and rural areas. It challenges the prevailing ideology that density is a virtue. It appeals for an update of planning practice, given the pandemic push and new technology pull. A set of actionable ideas referred to as the Elements of New Suburbanism are presented.  read more »

What COVID Hath Wrought

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Glenn Ellmers’s analysis of COVID and Trump represents a classic, and effective, account of the situation from the perspective of declining liberty and adherence to traditional values.  read more »

More Evidence That Young Americans Are Not Attracted to Dense Cities

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As COVID-19 restrictions lift and cities attempt to stem the population and commercial losses they have sustained over the past two years, many urbanists are still banking that the historic, well-documented trend of young adults flocking to big cities  read more »

America is Quietly Reinventing Itself

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The future shape of post-Covid America is beginning to emerge. As demographic trends and surveys indicate, the pandemic has helped accelerate large, epochal changes in the nation’s geography.  read more »

Americans Prefer Single-Family Neighborhoods

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Many surveys have found that the vast majority of Americans, including Millennials, prefer or aspire to live in single-family homes. But surveys rarely ask whether they prefer that single-family home to be in a low-density neighborhood or if they would mind living next to a bunch of apartment buildings.  read more »

All Major Metropolitan Area Growth Outside Urban Core: Latest Year

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The latest City Sector Model analysis of major metropolitan areas shows that dispersion accelerated in 2020 during the period covered by the American community survey 2020 five- year survey (2016 to 2020). The American Community Survey collects a five year sample that covers virtually all geographies in the United States. The new 2016-2020 sample has an “middle year” of 2018.

The City Sector Model  read more »