Bounded Vs. “Boundless”: Why Comparing Cities With Suburbs Is Crazy

Core cities of metro areas will always come to a defined end. Individual suburbs do too, but the idea of suburbia keeps on expanding. Why do we compare them this way?

An image of a planned community in Lancaster, CA from 2008. Source: gettyimages.com

Last month, economist Jed Kolko posted a study on Matt Yglesias’ Slow Boring

newsletter, noting that “cities aren’t back.” Is that true? If we choose to evaluate cities and their suburbs using the same metrics, that’s true. But whether we can – or should – is another question altogether.

Kolko listed three key findings in his city vs. suburb analysis. This is taken straight from his Slow Boring post:

· “Both urban residential areas and downtown neighborhoods have grown more slowly since 2019 than before the pandemic, falling farther behind suburban growth in the vast majority of metro areas.

· Home prices have risen more slowly in urban areas than in suburban and rural areas, pointing to a shift in demand away from cities rather than just constrained supply.

· The people who led last decade’s urban revival — college-educated young adults without school-age kids — are increasingly choosing suburbs.”

Kolko also says that recent changes in immigration, both before and during the Covid pandemic, had a disproportionate impact on urban places, positively and negatively. He notes that urban places are more dependent on international immigration than suburban places. Immigration was driving growth in urban places for much of this century, until the pandemic. Immigration took a downturn during the pandemic but rebounded as pandemic impacts receded. Urban places have seen some growth from immigration, but not to the extent that domestic migration is bringing in people to suburban places.

In essence, Kolko says that the data shows that Americans prefer suburbs over cities, and that we’re simply returning to that status quo.

But what if I said that’s not how we should look at cities or suburbs?

Here’s an analogy for you. I’m the father of two sons. My youngest son is 19. He stands about 6’3”. Me? I’m 6 feet tall. From his early years it was evident he’d be a tall kid. He was taller than most kids in every grade in school. He passed my height when he was a junior in high school.

I stopped growing when I was about 19 or 20. Is it fair to compare my lack of growth since then to my son’s rapid growth during his teen years? Even if he sprouted during his teen years yet still ended up shorter than me, one could say he outpaced my growth.

Does anyone ever say “humans aren’t back” because they fail to grow beyond puberty and early adulthood?