Suburbs: Still Bashing Cities, Are You?
Are suburbs "winning" against cities in the post-Covid era? No. And their stubbornness is reminiscent of 1970s-era American cities. Source: monarchgard.com
Suburbanists: can we stop with the myopic focus on extraneous data points to indicate the rise of the suburbs and the ultimate fall, once and for all, of cities? Please? Things aren’t turning out quite the way you might think they are.
Every week another data point comes out to suggest that suburbs are winning, but more importantly, cities are losing. The post-Covid work-from-home phenomenon has permanently diminished the market for office space in downtown business districts. WFH millennials, often cited as the most urban generation in the last century, are increasingly choosing suburbs for quality schools and quiet lifestyle. Internal Revenue Service migration data, which tracks tax filing addresses annually, continues to find that people are leaving cities in favor of suburbs. The same data also finds that, in what I consider the urban-to-suburban shift writ large, people are leaving costly coastal cities and downtrodden Rust Belt cities for cheaper Sun Belt locales. Crime is turning people away from cities. Progressive ideology and the sense that cities are ungovernable is turning people away from cities.
All of these things are happening. Yet none of these things, individually or collectively, signifies that this is the End of the Urban Era ™.
Last week I kicked off a lengthy Twitter thread with the provocative quote:
"The absolute most significant trend in American urbanism since WWII is the diminishment of Rust Belt cities. First misunderstood, later just forgotten. And our lack of understanding and knowledge of the Rust Belt keeps us from making ALL cities better."
Perhaps that was a bit of hyperbole as I was lashing out at the fading narrative about Rust Belt cities. I’m definitely ride-or-die for the Rust Belt. But I’d say that the flip-side of that very same trend is the acknowledgement of the importance of the global city and the global economy today. East and West coast cities found a way to prosper in the second half of the 20th century. The issues they face today – excessively expensive, deep economic and social inequality, inexplicable homelessness, to name three – are outcomes of their successes, not their failures.
More to the point: coastal cities learned to adapt to changing economic conditions, and to use their strengths to their advantage. The kind of adaptation experienced by coastal cities hasn’t always come easily to the suburbs of coastal cities (hello, NIMBYism), nor to the mostly suburban-like Sun Belt metros. Adaptation is the key to urban success.
For example, let’s take the issue of WFH’s impact on commercial office space. It’s become a very serious concern for New York City, San Francisco, Chicago and other large cities nationwide. But instead of waiting on the private sector to figure out the winners and losers in the office market, cities are focusing on their amenity advantage – still-dynamic commercial and mixed-use corridors, cultural and institutional spaces, elite universities and medical centers, magnificent public spaces – while also contemplating how to get more residents closer to those amenities, and more cheaply.
Contrast the above with the often-vacant and generically-amenitied office parks of suburbia. Many such office parks have vacant office space that hasn’t completely recovered from the Great Recession. I don’t see much urgency in the suburbs to adapt office uses into something else; I see a reliance on commercial brokers to find tenants in an ever-shrinking office market. It reminds me of cities chasing new manufacturing plants to supply new manufacturing jobs for its residents. It’s not coming back.
Similarly, many (but not all) suburbs lack many of the amenities that make city living attractive. Walkable, mixed-use districts? Some, but not all. Great bars and restaurants, or museums? Again, some but not all. And with a healthy NIMBY faction ready to supply resistance to change that creates more a more city-like environment, many suburbs will struggle with any similar transition.
An interesting op-ed in today’s Muncie Star-Press newspaper brings this point home. You may not think that the opinion of an economics professor at a university in a small Midwestern city matters here, but I think he represents the opinion of those from places that see affordability as the path forward. He’s wary:
“Indiana, and much of the Midwest and South, have modest building restrictions. This helps to keep homes from experiencing artificially skyrocketing prices. So, for families seeking a single family home, many places in Indiana offer a good value. But, this doesn’t mean people are looking for a low cost of living. On the contrary, post-COVID population growth is still concentrated in higher-priced cities. As always, families are seeking value, not simply price, when choosing where to live…
Economists have a special name for the value proposition in choosing a home — "quality of life." That search for a place with a high quality of life is now much more important than in the decade preceding COVID. Some of the research my colleagues and I are working on finds that quality of life considerations are three or four times more powerful in predicting population change than they were in the decade before COVID.
I like to sort all amenities into three broad categories — natural amenities, private amenities and public amenities... The good news is that Indiana has several communities that rank really well on all three of these measures. The bad news is that most of the state ranks poorly on all three.”
The same goes for the outmigration trend from cities to suburbs, and from coastal to Sun Belt metros. That is an outcome of cities adapting to young adults taking advantage of quality of life amenities in cities, such as vibrant mixed-use areas, cultural hotspots and fantastic educational institutions, to establish their professional and social lives before moving on to the next phase of life, like family formation. The strongest cities have effectively adapted to this “escalator” trend.
What’s less recognized by researchers is that smaller household sizes and fewer childbirths may mean that singles and couples stay longer in cities and continue to take advantage of the amenities. If current demographic trends hold, I could envision a future where couples and small families will seek out amenity-filled suburban areas as a viable option to city living.
Imagine that. Instead of suburbs winning out over cities, suburbs becoming more like cities.