The Suburban Flight

Fortunately, new research has shown that my generation, Americans in their teens and twenties, have a much different mindset from the Baby Boomers, who after World War II shaped the America we see today. Accounting for half of the population, they are heading into retirement age and want to leave their large homes for smaller living spaces in neighborhoods with more walkability. And along with them, today’s younger generation is moving into the work life and family life, wanting a more communitarian, small-scale lifestyle shaped by human interaction and walkability in an urban or semi-urban neighborhood. Suburban sprawl does not appeal to many of them because suburbs are not as livable as they once seemed. 

Christopher B. Leinberger, professor of practice in urban and regional planning at the University of Michigan, claims that property values in urban, walkable neighborhoods are increasing, while property values in fringe suburbs are decreasing. He claims that we have “over-invested in the wrong places” and that today’s market demands mixed-income city environments and walkable suburbs, which will promote sustainability and generate job creation (Leinberger).  He bases this on a Realtors survey which shows that “only 12 percent of future homebuyers want the drivable suburban-fringe houses that are in such oversupply” (cited in Leinberger). It is not within government control that Boomers will be selling their houses over the next few decades, and it does not help the situation that homes were “built with cheap materials” (Leinberger). The cyclical downfall that happened to the North End and Morning Side Heights as described in Jacobs’ book is now happening to suburbs which are “turning into slums, with abandoned housing and rising crime.”