Wendell Cox writes (pointer via Planetizen):
Most suburban growth is not the result of declining core city populations, but is rather a consequence of people moving from rural areas and small towns to the major metropolitan areas. It is the appeal of large metropolitan places that drives suburban growth.
Larger metropolitan areas have more lucrative employment opportunities and generally have higher incomes than smaller metropolitan areas. This is particularly the case in developing countries. As a result, the big urban areas attract people seeking to escape what are often the stagnant or even declining economies in smaller areas.
A very Jane Jacobs insight, and one I find compelling.
In The Economy of Cities, Jacobs controversially argued that virtually all of economic growth traces back to cities: In her view, cities actually precede agriculture. Early cities, according to Jacobs, spurred agricultural development by providing trading centers for agricultural products.
While it’s common to think of suburbs as draining off city assets, today’s metropolitan areas with their urban cores and suburban and ex-urban rings, are really expanded cities. Up until the early-to-mid 20th century, cities were able to capture peripheral growth by annexing new development, until suburbs figured out they could prosper by becoming independent municipal entities – thus the now famous concentric-ring, or, in some cases, the hole-in-the-donut pattern of our metro regions. The growth of gargantuan mega-regions like the Boston-New York-Washington corridor is essentially the next phase of this process of geographic development.
It’s important to understand how these two interrelated geographic processes – outward geographic expansion and the more intensive use of existing urban space – combine to shape economic progress.
May 22nd, 2009 at 11:54 pm
I was book browsing and saw one called something like “Why I’m Optimistic” with short pieces by several authors. Stewart Brand’s article was about the growth of cities, actually urban areas including suburbs. He repeated the often cited fact that when people move to cities their number of children drops, cities act as birth control. But he also talked about the huge slums around third world megacities and their staggering poverty. He said that the slums don’t create poverty and disease, they make it visible. The people moving to the cities were desperately poor and sick in the country, but spread out and invisible and hard to serve. In cities they’re visible and can organize so governments and international organizations are forced to do something — and they’re more concentrated, so improving their lives is more efficient.
Paul Hawkin makes somewhat the same argument in the book “How Sustainable Is Your City?” He says it takes fewer resources — water, wood, electricity, etc. to provide a decent life in a city than in the country.
May 23rd, 2009 at 6:51 am
While Cox may have a correct insight, I agree with the commenters on his article – the data he provides is too empty to support his conclusion.
I can’t speak to most of his examples, but Stockholm’s central core’s population probably has more to do with the decrease in the size of average household in Sweden and a shift in building locations during that period than a flight from the centre. If building (which appears to be more centrally planned in Sweden than in North America) were to take place in the centre of the city, people would move there, mostly out of necessity – there is a serious housing shortage in Stockholm.