Boomburbs: The Rise of America's Accidental Cities

230 Pages·2007·1.76 MB·English

by  Robert E. Lang

RJeonbneirfte rE B. L. LaneFg uanrdg y
00-5114-4 FM 5/29/07 2:56 PM Page i
Boomburbs
00-5114-4 FM 5/29/07 2:56 PM Page ii
JAMES A. JOHNSON METRO SERIES
The Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution is integrating
research and practical experience into a policy agenda for cities and met-
ropolitan areas. By bringing fresh analyses and policy ideas to the public
debate, the program hopes to inform key decisionmakers and civic leaders
in ways that will spur meaningful change in our nation's communities.
As part of this effort, the James A. Johnson Metro Series aims to in-
troduce new perspectives and policy thinking on current issues and attempts
to lay the foundation for longer-term policy reforms. The series examines
traditional urban issues, such as neighborhood assets and central city competitiveness, as well as
larger metropolitan concerns, such as regional growth, development, and employment patterns.
The James A. Johnson Metro Series consists of concise studies and collections of essays designed
to appeal to a broad audience. While these studies are formally reviewed, some will not be verified
like other research publications. As with all publications, the judgments, conclusions, and recom-
mendations presented in the studies are solely those of the authors and should not be attributed to
the trustees, officers, or other staff members of the Institution.
Also available in this series:
On growth and development On trends
Edgeless Cities: Exploring the Elusive Metropolis Redefining Urban and Suburban America:
Robert E. Lang Evidence from Census 2000,vol. 1
Bruce Katz and Robert E. Lang, editors
Growth and Convergence in Metropolitan
America Redefining Urban and Suburban America:
Janet Rothenberg Pack Evidence from Census 2000,vol. 2
Alan Berube, Bruce Katz, and Robert E. Lang,
Growth Management and Affordable Housing
editors
Anthony Downs, editor
Laws of the Landscape: How Policies Shape Cities On wealth creation
in Europe and America Building Assets, Building Credit: Creating Wealth
Pietro S. Nivola in Low-Income Communities
Nicolas P. Retsinas and Eric S. Belsky, editors
Reflections on Regionalism
Bruce J. Katz, editor The Geography of Opportunity: Race and
Housing Choice in Metropolitan America
Sunbelt/Frostbelt: Public Policies and Market
Xavier de Souza Briggs, editor
Forces in Metropolitan Development
Janet Rothenberg Pack, editor Low-Income Homeownership: Examining the
Unexamined Goal
On transportation Nicolas P. Retsinas and Eric S. Belsky, editors
Still Stuck in Traffic: Coping with Peak-Hour
Savings for the Poor: The Hidden Benefits of
Traffic Congestion
Electronic Banking
Anthony Downs
Michael A. Stegman
Taking the High Road: A Metropolitan Agenda
for Transportation Reform On other metro issues
Bruce Katz and Robert Puentes, editors Evaluating Gun Policy: Effects on Crime and
Violence
Jens Ludwig and Philip J. Cook, editors
00-5114-4 FM 5/29/07 2:56 PM Page iii
Boomburbs
The Rise of America’s
Accidental Cities
Robert E. Lang
Jennifer B. LeFurgy
BROOKINGS INSTITUTION PRESS
Washington, D.C.
00-5114-4 FM 5/29/07 2:56 PM Page iv
Copyright © 2007
THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION
1775 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036
www.brookings.edu
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means without permission in writing from
the Brookings Institution Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data
Lang, Robert, 1959–
Boomburbs : the rise of America’s accidental cities / Robert E. Lang and Jennifer
B. LeFurgy.
p. cm.
Summary: "Addresses the issue of ‘boomburbs,’ large suburbs of more than
100,000 residents, and examines who lives in them, what drives their development,
and how they are governed. Explains why America’s suburbs are thriving and how
they are shaping the lives of millions of residents"—Provided by publisher.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8157-5114-4 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-8157-5114-1 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Suburbs—United States. 2. Suburban life—United States. I. LeFurgy,
Jennifer B. II. Title.
HT352.U6L35 2007
307.760973—dc22 2007008338
135798642
The paper used in this publication meets minimum requirements of the
American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for
Printed Library Materials: ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Typeset in Sabon
Composition by R. Lynn Rivenbark
Macon, Georgia
Printed by R. R. Donnelley
Harrisonburg, Virginia
00-5114-4 FM 5/29/07 2:56 PM Page v
Contents
Foreword vii
Ed Glaeser
Preface xi
1
Legoland 1
2
From Settlements to Super Suburbs 22
3
Who Lives in the Boomburbs 55
4
The Business of Boomburbs 75
5
Big Skies, Small Lots: Boomburb Housing
and Master-Planned Development 94
6
The Small Town Politics of Big Cities 121
7
Boomburbs at Buildout 144
8
Emerging Urban Realms and the Boomburbs of 2030 162
Notes 175
Index 199
v
00-5114-4 FM 5/29/07 2:56 PM Page vi
00-5114-4 FM 5/29/07 2:56 PM Page vii
Foreword
S
tatistical work has painted a picture of the American urban frontier.
New development is overwhelmingly in the Sunbelt and it is based
around the car. The metropolitan areas of Las Vegas, Phoenix, Houston,
Dallas, and Atlanta are particular centers for vast amounts of new building,
but this building is more likely to be on the edge of the metropolitan area
than in the older centers. America’s growing exurbs are full of both homes
and jobs, as firms followed people to exurbs built around highways. While
this statistical portrait is accurate, it is also dry and incomplete. It tells us
nothing about the political conditions that made the Sunbelt such a center
for new construction. It tells us little about what that new development is
like or how the social character is being shaped within the space being built.
Robert Lang and Jennifer LeFurgy have turned their strong analytic skills
on the fastest growing areas in America: the boomburbs or booming areas
that are not urban centers. This volume substantially enriches our under-
standing of the growth of these areas. I suspect that by understanding these
places better, we are coming to better understand the very future of urban
America itself.
Lang and LeFurgy’s boomburbs are defined by three characteristics: cur-
rent scale, rate of growth, and not being the centers of their region. Many of
these places are as large and important as far more famous older cities.
Mesa, Arizona, for example has almost 400,000 people. Arlington, Texas,
has more than 300,000 inhabitants. Both of these places are much larger
than Pittsburgh, yet while much of America knows something about the city
vii
00-5114-4 FM 5/29/07 2:56 PM Page viii
viii FOREWORD
of three rivers, few know anything about Arlington or Mesa. Some of the
smaller boomburbs are just amazingly new. Coral Springs, Florida, had less
than 1,500 residents in 1970. Today, it has more than 100,000. These are
the great growing places of the country. Lang and LeFurgy do a remarkable
job of dispelling myths that have occasionally grown up about these new
places. While Americans tend to think of suburbs as prosperous white
enclaves built to escape inner-city ethnic conflict, the boomburbs are
remarkably ethnically heterogeneous. Only 54 percent of their population is
white. On average, 29 percent is Hispanic. Some of these places also contain
remarkable concentrations of Asian population, such as Daly City, Califor-
nia. Some boomburbs, like Naperville, Illinois, are indeed wealthy. Other
boomburbs, like Hialeah, Florida, are substantially poorer than the nation
as a whole. The one thing that they all have in common is heavy automobile
use. The need to own multiple automobiles does tend to make them less
welcoming to the very poor.
The boomburbs also contradict the vision of bedroom suburbs. They are
often major employment centers. While the highest human capital indus-
tries, such as finance, still tend to locate disproportionately in business cen-
ters, I was struck by the remarkable number of corporate headquarters that
have located in boomburbs. Exxon/Mobil, for example, has its headquar-
ters in Irving, Texas. Yahoo is in Sunnyvale, California. In 1900 business
location was driven by proximity to transport hubs like rail yards and har-
bors. Today, businesses still locate near hubs, but they are increasingly air-
ports. Several boomburbs, like Naperville and Irving, owe some of their
growth to the proximity of a major airport.
But in most cases, the biggest business of the boomburbs is building
itself. A city doesn’t add 100,000 people without a lot of new construction
and all of the boomburbs specialize in growth. Lang and LeFurgy teach us
about the two necessary ingredients of high growth places: a vibrant con-
struction sector and progrowth politics. The builders of the boomburbs are
generally big operators who put up homes by the hundreds or even thou-
sands. These homes are, like the original Levittown, mass-produced.
Unlike Levittown, these mass-produced homes are often quite luxurious.
These building assembly lines are turning out Lexuses, not Model Ts. The
buildings are also often built on small lots. New Englanders, who are used
to the highly zoned areas of the older suburbs, are often struck by the small
yards of new homes in desert places such as unincorporated Las Vegas,
which seem to be able to deliver infinite quantities of land. Those small lots
help keep the price of new construction down, and, clearly, people aren’t
demanding all that much space.
00-5114-4 FM 5/29/07 2:56 PM Page ix
FOREWORD ix
Many of the builders do more than just create housing. In many cases,
developers are creating fully planned communities. Shopping malls increas-
ingly play the role of traditional downtowns. Lang and LeFurgy emphasize
correctly that there is plenty of walking in boomburbs, but it takes place in
malls that you drive to. The boomburbs are able to deliver some sort of a
facsimile of a pedestrian experience, where people mix with each other and
experience street life. This experience is, however, planned by developers
rather than delivered through the chaotic functioning of the market. While
traditional urbanists may find these malls no substitute for the market of
the Ponte Vecchio, people do seem to be voting with their feet or at least
their tires. It may make more sense to put effort into humanizing the mall
than into reinvigorating many older downtowns.
The political regimes in the boomburbs are all progrowth, but in many
other ways there is remarkable heterogeneity. In many places, homeowners
associations and private developers take over the provision of basic public
services. In some areas, county governments are particularly important.
The one thing that seems to be missing is old style urban politics, where
ethnic divisions create political warfare over government largesse. These
cities are more into good management than solving society’s wrongs.
We don’t know yet what will happen in many of these places. Will they
turn into perpetual growth machines or reach some kind of natural limit?
We do however know much more about what they look like today because
of Lang and LeFurgy’s excellent work. It is high time that our knowledge
about the growing areas of this country catches up to our understanding of
the declining places in America. Lang and LeFurgy’s book represents a
major step in shedding light on American urban growth.
Ed Glaeser
Harvard University