by James A. Bacon
Joel Kotkin is at it again. The anti-Smart Growth crusader insists that the Burbs are Back. Writing in Forbes, he cites data compiled by his ideological pal Wendell Cox to argue that suburban and exurban counties have made a come-back since the dark days following the 2007-2008 real estate crash and recession.
Writes Kotkin of the period since 2010:
Of the 10 fastest-growing large counties all but two — Orleans Parish, home to the recovering city of New Orleans, and the Texas oil town of Midland — are located in the suburban or exurban fringe of major metropolitan areas. … More people aren’t moving “back to the city” but further out. In the last decade in the 51 largest U.S. metropolitan areas, inner cores, within two miles of downtown, gained some 206,000 people, while locations 20 miles out gained over 8.5 million.
It now seems clear that the preference for single-family houses did not change in the recession, but was just stunted by it. With construction starts up again — more than two-thirds single family — this trend is beginning to re-assert itself.
As examples, Kotkin points specifically to the population growth of outlying Loudoun County and Prince William County in Northern Virginia.
For the purposes of argument, let’s accept Kotkin’s point that jurisdictions on the metropolitan fringe are gaining population faster than those in the urban core. Does that justify his conclusion that “the preference for single-family houses” did not change in the recession? I think not.
There are two important points worth making.
First, the idea of “preference” is meaningless in the absence of price. My personal automobile preference is for a brand-new Porsche 911. Unfortunately, I cannot afford it, so I drive an 11-year-old Mercedes CLK 320 instead. The fact that I drive a dinged-up Mercedes does not change the fact that I prefer a Porsche. Likewise, many people would prefer to live in safe neighborhoods closer to the urban core, where they enjoy easier access to jobs, shopping and amenities. But the scarcity value of the preferred locations drives up the price, so not everyone who would like to live there can afford to. So, many people settle for less desirable locations in outlying areas that they can afford.
Second, the movement of population to the suburban/exurban counties is a function of supply, not demand. People are moving to those locations because that’s where the houses are, not because they prefer those locations. The real estate boom of the 2000s created a huge overhang of houses and lots. By contrast, the process of adding new housing in the urban core by densifying human settlement patterns is an inherently prolonged and painstaking process. As super-low mortgage rates goose the quantity demanded of new housing in the past two or three years, builders have found it far easier to dust off the pre-cession building plans in the ‘burbs than find re-development prospects in the city. So suburban single-family dwellings are what gets built, and that’s what people have to buy if they want their own place.
Bacon’s Bottom line: Kotkin is right about the facts but he draws the wrong conclusion. Instead of building more in the suburbs and exurbs, we need to make it easier to densify in the urban core. There is more than enough land there to handle projected population growth. We need to eliminate the zoning, regulatory and financing obstacles to re-developing it.
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