Cities And Suburbs: Get It Together

Fighting to see which development type is best is a no-win game.

Source: finance.yahoo.com

I’ve written some versions of this topic many times over the years. Now it’s time for the latest installment.

Every so often, there are people who want to cast “cities” (here I’m defining them as the core or foundational municipality of a larger metropolitan region) against “suburbs” (the non-core, usually smaller jurisdictions, that have an economic, social and cultural connection to a core city). Every so often, people want to use various metrics to demonstrate that either cities or the collective suburban areas are doing better or worse than the other.

Researchers of all types on either side of the city/suburb divide will cherry-pick data to prove a point about cities or suburbs. I could bore you with a long historical explanation of this divide, but the tl;dr version is that as cities were beset with economic and social issues in the mid-20^th century, and as “suburbs” had grown to a point where they had their own constituency and political representation at the same time, the line between the two was drawn. In the early 21^st century, many cities recovered and saw revitalization. However, those committed to suburbs were quick to suggest that not all is well with cities.

The Covid pandemic period had plenty of examples of this pushed forward by suburban advocates. Two examples stand out. When researchers saw a surge in city out-migration in 2021 and 2022, many were saying the pandemic was causing people to flee cities in favor of more spacious and pleasant suburbs, exurbs and rural areas. Suburbs offered more comfort and protection than the more-crowded cities. When downtown office buildings effectively shuttered because of the pandemic shutdown, and office workers finally took advantage of meaningful ways to work from home, many people were saying that office-centered downtowns that were reliant on office worker traffic were doomed; if a worker could work principally at home, one could live anywhere, potentially threatening the very existence of cities.

Of course, there were city advocates (I include myself) who pushed back on those narratives. For one, I maintained that cities had an “experiential advantage” over suburbs that would survive the pandemic. There are amenities and attractions that cities have that still bring people to cities, and there are people who will still choose to live in an amenity-rich environment.

On the other hand, there are city advocates who are priced out of expensive cities, and getting behind the YIMBY and/or abundance movements to increase the supply of housing in cities and suburbs. Many YIMBY activists have become deeply involved in zoning reform in large cities, promoting the elimination of exclusive single-family zoning districts and increased housing density in transit-accessible areas. To address the same issues in suburbia, many YIMBYs have taken to proposing statewide legislation at state legislatures, encouraging states to take a more direct role in shaping local land use and zoning policy.

In the latest city/suburb divide news, we have President Trump using federal forces in Washington, DC to control crime and lawlessness in the nation’s capital (and yes, I’d characterize this as a city/suburb divide issue). In his press conference last week, Trump alluded to possible similar city takeovers to quell crime across the nation.

I’ve had enough of this. Suburbs aren’t “better” than cities. Cities aren’t “better” than suburbs. Both have merits. Both have faults. Both need each other. The sooner we understand that, the sooner we can get to looking at our metropolitan areas in their fullest context – as connected and interrelated regions.

Truth is, every core city was once the entirety of a metropolitan area that expanded to its administrative limits, and then other jurisdictions followed.

Consider this: in 1920, Chicago was a rapidly growing city of 2.7 million people. In 1889 Chicago annexed more than 125 square miles of unincorporated Cook County townships, doubling its population between 1880 and 1890 (500,000 to 1 million) and tripling its land area (60 square miles to 185 square miles). In 1920, the non-Chicago portions of Cook County and the 12 adjacent counties in northeastern Illinois and northwestern Indiana had a total population of just under one million people. Put another way: in 1920, nearly 3.7 million people lived in what makes up today’s Chicago metropolitan area. A full 75 percent of them lived in Chicago.

Fast forward to 2020. Chicago has a population of… 2.7 million people. After reaching a peak of 3.6 million in 1950 the city lost almost a million residents. The city expanded its boundaries only slightly over the next 100 years, growing to 228 square miles. In fact, Chicago’s administrative jurisdiction has been the same size since the late 1950s.

The story is quite different for the non-Chicago portions of Cook County and the 12 adjacent counties referred to earlier. The rest of the metropolitan area, suburbs, exurbs and nearly rural areas at the region’s periphery, grew to 6.7 million people, or seven times more than 100 years ago. You can see all of this featured in the chart below:

I added the land areas and densities (persons per square mile) to make a point. Yes, Chicago, and many other cities, had its way in terms of economic growth between the 1870s and 1970s, a 100-year period that one could call the Civil War-to-Civil Rights era. Rapid industrialization paved the way for increased prosperity and vastly improved quality of life. That increased prosperity led to people looking at other areas near cities, viewed as open opportunities, to expand growth.

Lightly populated areas near urban centers were bound to grow, and they did. Cities burdened by the strain of constant tumult and transition during a bustling century were destined to see a fall from grace, and they did. Cities were unable to capture all, or even most, of the growth that happened beyond their boundaries. They should not have been expected to. Could cities have been better prepared for the changes that hit them? Perhaps.

In my view, today’s suburbs emerged as a comfortable complement to cities, not an outright alternative. Yet suburbs aren’t perfect, either. Maybe they offer more peace of mind to individuals, but they’re more extractive and less sustainable than cities.

Cities and suburbs aren’t in some race to determine which one is the ultimate development type. They shaped one another, they rely on one another, and their solutions live within both of them.