Suburbs

Moving Away from Density to Less Dense Detached Housing Areas

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Further evidence of the continued dispersion of the US population is revealed by an examination of net domestic migration data  read more »

I'm Not an Urbanist. I'm an Urban Sociologist.

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I’ve written a lot about how growing up in Detroit was instrumental in my desire to improve and revitalize cities. Watching a city being hollowed out and disgraced in the ‘70s and ‘80s can have that impact.  read more »

City Suburb Relationships — Where the Midwest is Worst

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Does anyone really think about the relationship a city has to its surrounding metro area? It means a lot more than you might think.  read more »

Four Decades of Work Access (Commuting) in Los Angeles

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This article describes work access in the Los Angeles combined statistical area (Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties) from 1980 to 2022, using US Census Bureau data.  read more »

Downtowns Don't Matter Anymore

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Joseph Lawler’s learned essay on induced demand, looking at the case of highway expansion in Austin, Texas, is fair-minded, but somehow seems more about theory than actual reality. He talks about downtown as if it really mattered all that much. It doesn’t.  read more »

Americans Accelerate Move Away from Density

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For more than 75 years America has been dispersing away from dense urban cores, with nearly all population growth in neighborhoods with a suburban form  read more »

Are Progressives to Blame for the Worsening Housing Crisis?

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In recent years, housing has emerged as arguably the key driver of class divisions in the Western world. For decades, working- and middle-class people could dream reasonably about buying a house  read more »

Millions Move Away from Density in Just Three Years

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Between 2020 and 2023 (annual population estimates, as of July 1), more than 3.2 million US residents moved from counties with higher urban population densities (number of urban residents divided by urban square miles), to counties with lower urban densities.  read more »

Progressive Geography's Intellectual Dead End

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Americans are familiar with steep political divisions on issues like race, class, and gender. Perhaps less understood, but arguably more definitive, is the widening gap between the cognitive elites concentrated in big cities and the rest of the country.  read more »

Massive Shift from Urban Cores to Suburbs and Elsewhere

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Moving Away from the Major Metros: The recent Census Bureau population estimates release revealed a massive shift of domestic migrants away from the major metropolitan areas  read more »