Correspondent Shaila Dewan with an interesting piece today on a theme we’ve been following: Is Suburban Sprawl on Its Way Back?
With the housing market showing something of a recovery pretty much across the nation, will we see a rebound in sprawl — in the building of far-flung suburban communities far from the metro areas that they rely on.
From Dewan’s analysis, which looks specifically at Ostego, MN, with emphasis added:
Some experts say it is only a matter of time before [homebuilders and buyers] work their way back out [to the farthest suburbs and available land]. But others, like Leigh Gallagher, the author of “The End of the Suburbs: Where the American Dream Is Moving,†argue that the return of the housing market does not mean the return of sprawl.[…]
Couples are marrying later and having smaller families — by 2025, she says, the majority of suburban households are expected to have no children. Teenagers are increasingly opting to go without driver’s licenses. Millennials, economically strapped and witness to the housing crisis, say they prefer to live in urban environments. Boomers are reconsidering their large houses and landscaped yards.
The price of sprawl has become increasingly undeniable. Moderate-income families have seen their transportation costs balloon to more than a quarter of their income. Cities have discovered that low-density developments fail to pay for their own infrastructure. More recently, a new study of economic mobility suggested that sprawl, and its accompanying lack of transportation options, prevented access to higher paying jobs.
The whole piece is well worth a read.
One lingering question for a small metro area like Savannah: how do these trends here compare to much larger metro areas like the ones typically discussed in analyses like this one?
If Dewan’s name looks familiar to you Savannah residents, you might be recalling that she wrote “36 Hours in Savannah, Ga.” back in 2007.